According to O’Reilly, Web 2.0 has many key characteristics, such as being very user interactive, with users sharing the data, hypertexting and increasing the popularity as well as the speed of the service. The service also being a key characteristic, instead of packaged software, such as Netscape which quickly was overshadowed. Another key characteristic O’Reilly mentions as uses Amazon as an example of, is having ‘hard to recreate’ data sources, where he then compared Amazon to Barnes and Noble – same products but through using the actual users and tagging, or folksonomy, the product sold on Amazon has more users either backing it up or not. Interestingly enough, though these are some of what O’Reilly states are “Core” competencies of Web 2.0, he also states right after listing them that “excellence in one area may be more telling than some small steps in all seven.”
Throughout the entire article, O’Reilly makes Web 2.0 sound like it is far better than Web 1.0, as it is a step forward, and yet in some of his comparisons, it is questionable. Marketing wise Web 2.0 appears much for targeted and therefore successful. That said, one of the “Web 1.0 v. Web 2.0” comparisons O’Reilly makes is Brittanica Online v. Wikipedia. While perhaps Wikipedia is more Web 2.0 as it allows users to make entries, update them etc, “with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow," he quotes. With some non controversial ‘topics’ or entries that may be the case, but as someone who was an intern and had to check and edit the definitions of “Veal” & “Foie Gras” on Wikipedia on a daily basis, it really depends on who had a faster server and more time (or employees) to devote to the issue. (In my case, Hudson Valley Foie Gras won out.)
Some other quotations he had jumped out at me, the first one being that “Shakeouts typically mark the point at which an ascendant technology is ready to take its place at center stage.” This made me think of in the past, when DVD’s first started taking over, where you could barely find VHS versions of anything, and even now, where analog televisions will no longer work and everything has been switched to digital. Even now, everyone has seen commercials for Blue Ray discs, and it has frequently sparked discussion that often begins with “why would we use that when we have DVD’s” and yet it’s the same argument used for tapes v. CD’s, and PC v. laptop, and now it makes me look at the current standoffs or shake ups, between DVD’s v. Blue Ray, or even Windows Vista v. Mac. While one of the characteristics of Web 2.0 was that users didn’t have to upgrade constantly and buy new software (as with Netscape) it seems that in the big picture, we are having to upgrade in order to stay with what is now Web 2.0, and in the future I’m sure 3.0 and all those that follow
