Is Web 2.0 Emerging from Adolescence?
posted Thursday, 25 May 2006
Reading Richard MacManus' recent musings on his on-again, off-again relationship with the term Web 2.0, along with Web 2.0's seemingly newfound respectability as serious organizations bandy the term about, has me thinking that we're entering a new phase in its evolution. Increasingly, everyday people are becoming aware that the Web is changing. And yes, as I've pointed out recently, though Web 2.0 was mostly possible early on in the Web, the bandwidth, users, skills, and even the accumulated content wasn't there to trigger the necessary network effects. Or take things over the tipping point like we're seeing today (examples: the blogosphere, BitTorrent, MySpace, YouTube, etc.) Web 2.0 does seem to leaving that gawky, awkward early phase and getting more serious as it emerges from an earlier trough of disillusionment.
That's not say everything is heading in a positive direction. That Web 2.0 curmudgeon extraordinaire, Nick Carr, declared only this week that Wikipedia, one of the most well-known Web 2.0 poster children, has died. The proximal cause of death? The extremely slippery slope that seems forms on the edge of trying to prevent the chaos that comes out of large-scale user contributions. Specifically it was the announcement of new but mostly hidden behind the scenes control that Nick thinks has started its "demise".
But I'm not one for generalizing the near future based on a few isolated data points. Or to be more accurate, I'll do it but try to be clear that it's a generalization. So I fired up the terrific new Google Trends to see what we can see. I took a few key concepts in Web 2.0 and ran the terms through the Google's trends analyzer and it turned out that a very interesting, if slightly unscientific, picture emerged.
The first chart shows Web 2.0 against the only other major organizing principle in software these days, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Both are rising but Web 2.0 is on a faster growth curve and the service-oriented aspect of Web 2.0, WOA will likely be more popular than SOA soon. I've written many times about the strikingly similarities between these two concepts, but it's been increasingly clear of late that SOA is too rigid, unwieldy, and complex to survive effectively against a much more vibrant, nimble, and social competitor (yes, I'm referring to the Web 2.0-style of services and software here.)
The second chart provides additional evidence of the points in the previous paragraph. HTTP, the core protocol of the Web, is actually more popular a term by far than SOAP and REST, and it should be (though in my professional opinion, REST is actually the preferred method of applying HTTP for Web services in most cases). HTTP is the protocol underpinning all Web services and our recent re-discovery that this is where we should be spending our time, instead of higher up in a cloud of WS-* standards, is likely demonstrated in this graph.
Things get very interesting in the third chart, which gets away from technical concepts and buzzwords, and just compares traditional, old-school publishing to blogs. While I'll emphasize again that these comparisons only represent search volume on the terms, it's fascinating to see more evidence of what many people believe: There is a shift of control from centrally controlled forms of communication (a few publishers pushing out content to the masses) vs. a vast, world-wide ecosystem of peer production publishing, namely blogs.
The last chart provides yet more evidence that the game is continuing to change and new players are emerging in the user experience. The rise of Ajax since the term was created in February, 2005 has been truly amazing. I've been tracking and working with Ajax virtually since its inception and it's clear that it has changed the way people think about Web software. Ajax has helped usher in a rich age of Web-based software entirely based on the pure capabilities of the browser and the Web, instead of any underlying platform and the implications continue to be felt strongly in all segments of the software industry.
Things are moving so rapidly that my recent overview of the State of Web 2.0 is already outdated. Web 2.0 is nowhere near old news but it is now fully upon us and I expect the next couple of years will continue to show dramatic changes in places expected and unexpected both. And possibly not for the better if dying industries try too hard to save themselves. Net Neutrality is one of the biggest concerns overall, as will be a potentially dangerous over-consolidation of the industry as the latest round of startups run low on cash and seek acquisition. So strap yourselves in; it's going to be bumpy, but endlessly interesting ride.
Where do you think all this is headed? Tell us your Web 2.0 predictions below....links: del.icio.us
Here's a prediction for you:
