Web 2.0 and What it Means to You

I've been working on a website and it made me start thinking about internet "buzzwords". Everyone in the design and coding community is talking about "web 2.0", but the end users of websites don't know what that means and probably don't care. I subscribe to several design related newsletters, each one with slightly different interpretations of what works in terms of design, marketing, page rank and search engine optimization (seo), etc.

I have a background in design, not computer related design, I learned that on my own because it wasn't available when I was in college. I actually studied art and believe design principles (balance, proportion, rhythm, emphasis, unity) apply to any media including the computer screen.

I've read several articles lately about poorly designed websites such as craiglist and myspace that are popular, the implication being that design doesn't matter. I disagree. The underlying application framework on those sites works, therefore the functionality and usability is what makes them popular. I would also disagree that the myspace core pages are ugly, they're basic, but not ugly. Myspace becomes ugly and loses functionality because the users' pages look bad and they don't know how to integrate the applications (video and music players).

Some of the technologies of "web 2.0" sites have been used for years and are suddenly being recognized as an intrensic component of a well built site. (I also say building databases and constructing legislation, so for anyone getting bogged down by semantics, just deal with it.) The explosion of blogs is a good example of 2.0 and has created a new method of marketing for business websites allowing fresh content to be syndicated and embeded into other websites complete with branding from the originating site. This is especially important for business website seo because the link gets counted from each of the syndicating sites, while the summary gets broadcast on all the blogosphere sites (like Technorati and del.icio.us) you have set up to ping.

If this all sounds a little technical and your eyes are starting to cross, have no fear. I'll move on to one of my personal pet peeves about websites, and unfortunately it's one of the things a lot of potential clients say they absolutely "need" on their website: proprietary applications like Flash, Java, or Windows media player. I cringe every time someone says they want a Flash site or at least a Flash intro. Why? It's not that I don't like Flash sites or have anything against Macromedia. It's because when I go to one of those Flash intro sites I immediately look for the "skip intro" button. I know I'm not the only one because that button wasn't put there just in case I visited the site. Most people skip the intro, so why do you want to pay someone to make it for you?

Even more annoying is when I go to a site and get a message that I need to update my Flash player to be able to even see what's there. Sometimes I decide I want to see your site after I've updated the player, sometimes I decide I've already wasted enough time and should get back to work and never go back. As far as Windows media player, well, you may have noticed in the sidebar it says there is no Microsoft software on my computer and that's a decision Microsoft made, not me. You see, I don't use Windows operating system, I use Linux. Microsoft will not make any of it's products compatible with Linux, so when you put any of their proprietary embeds on your website, you are excluding people like me.

Once again, I don't dislike Microsoft per se, what I didn't like when I did use Windows was viruses, crashes, rebooting all the time, security patches, external firewall software, etc. You know, all the things you probably do all the time because you think you have to. The fact is, Microsoft will not make applications available for Linux because a lot of programmers use Linux and they might rewrite the code, improve it (gasp!), and release it as open source. And, my computer hasn't crashed since I started using Linux except when I f'ed with the kernel and had to re-install the original kernel.

I'm sure some people at Microsoft think Linux users are freeloaders because we all use free open source software and that's why they won't make their apps usable for us. The fact is I've bought plenty of software and most of it hasn't done exactly what I needed and I ended up finding something similar in open source and making it do what I needed. The beauty of open source is that there are a lot of smart people willing to tinker around with code and contribute it back to the community. That's why there IS web 2.0.

So basically when you hear the buzzword "web 2.0" you should know it doesn't have anything to do with style, design, or proprietary software. The new internet is based on open source technologies and server-side scripting like php, perl, AJAX, ruby, and python. They are written for use on Linux servers using open source databases like mySQL. And most importantly, they are community driven with some level of user interaction. This could be as simple as a comment box on a blog or the ability to create a page like a wiki or myspace. The "new" internet is something you're already using and you didn't even know it.

Related Articles: What is Web 2.0? Tim O'Reilly 9/30/2005

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