Copyright,2006-07

1

Web 2.0 – Tsunami or Mirage

Roger ClarkeXamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra

Visiting Professor, ANU, UNSW, Uni HK

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/...

.../EC/Web2C-ANU070730{.html, .ppt}

ANU DCS – 30 July 2007

Copyright,2006-07

2

Web 2.0Agenda

• Why?• ‘Web 1.0’• Three Views of Web 2.0

• The Marketer / ‘Neo Dot.com’ Movement

• The Technical View• The Communitarian View

Copyright,2006-07

3

Why?

• Little 'serious' literature evident yet• CIOs and management are 'flying blind'

and falling victim to supplier hype• So:

• Document interpretations• Is it empty marketing-speak

(Mirage)?• Is it revolutionary change (Tsunami)?

Copyright,2006-07

4

The Web ... or ‘Web 1.0’

• 1991- ‘Static HTML’• 1992- Ways to Discover a Web-Page• 1994- HTML customised 'on the fly',

using database extracts• 1996- Markup; and Display Control• 1995- Means to Manipulate Data,

Display• 1996- 'Dynamic HTML'• 2003- Web Services

Copyright,2006-07

5

Mature Web 1.0Means to Manipulate Data and

Displays

Client-Side Processing• Cookies• Javascript /

ECMAScript• Plug-ins, esp. Flash,

Acrobat, QuickTime• Java (with ‘sandbox’)• ActiveX/.NET

(without!??)

Server-Side Processing• Customised HTML

e.g. Apache SSI, MS ASP, PHP, ...

• Web-Forms• State Maintenance• CGI Scripts• ‘eCommerce Web-

Servers’

Copyright,2006-07

6

Late Web 1.0Web Service Architecture

STEP 1Create Catalogue Entry

using WSDL

ServiceRegistryService

UserServiceProvider

STEP 2Discover Service

using UDDI

STEP 3Invoke Service

using SOAP

Copyright,2006-07

7

‘Web 2.0’ – by Marketing Cliché

A way of thought, rather than a technology:• ‘The world has changed’ (get with it)• ‘Loosen up’ (you can’t control)• ‘Open up’ (you can’t stay closed)• ‘Be accessible’ (not just web-browsers)• ‘Involve’ (get users on the inside)• ‘Mutate’ (continuous improvement’ /

‘gamma’;or is that just an excuse for ‘permanent beta’?)

Web 2.0 Conferences (now 'Summits') Oct 04, Oct 05, Nov 06, Apr 07, Nov 07

Copyright,2006-07

8

'The Long Tail'

• Conventional Business Models:Recognise the 80-20 PatternAvoid high-cost / low-volume business

• Digital-Era Business Models:Exploit low-cost / low-volume business

Brynjolfsson (2003) in Mngt Sci.Anderson (2004, 2006) in Wired and airportsAmazon, Apple iTunes

Copyright,2006-07

9

Web 1.0 Web 2.0• DoubleClick Google AdSense• Ofoto Flickr• Akamai BitTorrent• (mp3.com iTunes) • (Napster, FastTrack BitTorrent)• Britannica Online Wikipedia• personal websites web-blogs / blogs• page views cost per click• publishing participation• content mngt systems wikis• directories (taxonomy) tagging

(‘folksonomy’)• stickiness syndication

After O’Reilly (2005)

"The Sense of ‘Web 2.0’ by Example

Copyright,2006-07

10

‘Web 2.0’ – by Features

• Content Syndication

• Advertising Syndication

• Storage Syndication

• The 'Architecture of Participation'

Copyright,2006-07

11

‘Syndication’• Originally, a ‘syndicate’ was

a group of investors, cf. a joint venture• More recently, a means of distribution

esp. of media material e.g. sports photos, cartoons, and opinions by commentators

• Recently, arrangements by which a party that originates content (a) licenses others to utilise it, and(b) facilitates dissemination of copies of it, and of metadata about it

Copyright,2006-07

12

‘Content Syndication’• Posts to Usenet News, Fora, eMail-Lists• Personalised eNewspapers

(originally by fax, then email, ...)• eMail Notification when a web-page changes• Mirrors of web-page content• ‘Web-Logs’ / ‘Blogs’• 'Who I'm Reading' feature of blogs

• 'Feeds' of recently-published headlines & URLsusing XML/RDF-based RSS and Atom

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

Copyright,2006-07

13

Defining Aphorism

s of Cyberspa

ce

The New Yorker

5 July 1993

Copyright,2006-07

14

Prof. Dr. Miriam Merkel

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Copyright,2006-07

15

‘Content Syndication’Categories of Content

• Text• Image• Sound

esp. Music• 'Multi-Media'

esp. Video withsynch'd Sound

Copyright,2006-07

16

‘Content Syndication’Categories of Content

• Text• Image• Sound

esp. Music• 'Multi-Media'

esp. Video withsynch'd Sound

• Good• Bad• Indifferent

• Opinion• Information• News• Entertainment• Education

• Paid• Gratis• Nicked

Copyright,2006-07

17

‘Advertising Syndication’• From ‘Pay-per-ad’ (per

insert/appearance)• To 'Pay-per-click’ (per click on an ad):

• Advertisers use metadata (‘keywords’)to indicate what the ad is about

• They do pay to use a keyword• They don’t pay for an ad display• They do pay when someone clicks on it

Overture (2001)Google AdWords

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Copyright,2006-07

18

Maturation of ‘Pay-per-Click’

1. Web-sites that attract large visit-counts(relatively small numbers)

2. Web-sites with much smaller visit-counts(vast numbers) through ‘Affiliation’

• Theoretical basis: the 'long tail' dictum

• Practical application: Google AdSense

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Copyright,2006-07

19

Advertising Industry View• Page-Owners make space on their pages

available to Advertising Intermediaries (AIs)• Page-Owners provide data to AIs so that AIs

can select the most relevant ads to display (and/or the highest-paying ads ...)

• Page-Owners provide data to the AI that enables the delivery of the ads into the reserved space in the requestor's browser-window (requestor’s IP-address)

• AIs can target ads into diverse communities

Copyright,2006-07

20

Consumer View• The AI pushes a transaction to the user,

even though the user made no request to it• The AI can include in the payload any

available device, e.g. active code, web-bugs• The AI can place non-consensual, long-term

cookies on the unsuspecting requestor's device – in defiance of IETF RFCs 2964-65

• If the user clicks on an ad, a substantial set of interlocking data becomes available to the AI (incl. cookie-contents, the IP-address, and associations with the original request)

Copyright,2006-07

21

‘Storage Syndication’• From Client-Server architecture• To Peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture

• Napster in 1998• Kazaa/FastTrack in 2001• eDonkey/Gnutella in 2003• BitTorrent in 2005• ...

• Distributed Catalogues• Distributed Repositories

Copyright,2006-07

22

P2P Differentiated from Client-Server

Copyright,2006-07

23

P2P Supports Many Payloads, incl. Ads

• P2P applications:• Music • Software• Images • News• Video • Virus Signatures

• Provision of repository-space is consensualbut how could the user ever really know?

• The Business Model for commercial P2P has been ad-based from the very beginning

• The ads are stored on users’ devices, and disseminated from users’ devices

Copyright,2006-07

24

'The Architecture of Participation'

aka ‘Harnessing Collective Intelligence’

and ‘The Surging Wisdom of Crowds’

• Self-Publishing / 'Vanity Press'Now called ‘Content Syndication’

• Collaborative Publishing:cf. CSCW – shared text-documentsWikis generally, esp. Wikipedia

• Free-Text Metadata:‘folksonomy', ‘tags’, ‘tag-clouds’

Copyright,2006-07

25

Tag Cloud for Web 2.0

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloudsc. 21 Mar 2007

Copyright,2006-07

26

Tag Cloud for Web 2.0

http://www.andybudd.com/presentations/dcontruct05/images/meme3.jpgc. 12 November 2005

Copyright,2006-07

27

'The Architecture of Participation'

Benefits for Business• Affiliated Advertising Space• Raw Material for Data Mining, esp. by

Google• Training Ground for Contributors

People are lured into providing gratis services

in pseudo-community environments, e.g.• Amazon book reviews• product reviews• product FAQs, which are written and

maintained by unpaid volunteers rather than as a supplier support service

Copyright,2006-07

28

Web 2.0 – The Technical Perspective

• Additional Facilities:• ‘Mixing’• ‘Mash-ups’ – more or less ad hoc

combination of content from multiple sources e.g. maps and descriptive data

• 'Lightweight Programming Models' – a reaction against over-blown ‘Web Services’

Copyright,2006-07

29

‘Lightweight Programming’ – AJAX

• 'Asynchronous JavaScript and XML'• A Successor to the vague ‘Dynamic HTML’• Applies well-established tools:

(X)HTML/CSS -> XML, JavaScript/ECMAScript • Utilises the XMLHttpRequest Method of HTTP

in particular to enable partial-window-refresh

• Involves an 'Ajax engine' within the browser, which intercepts and processes user-requests and server-responses

Copyright,2006-07

30

AJAX Features• Server-side control over user interface, esp.

to overcome the ‘frequent blank-screen’ experience

• Proprietary features in MSIE have defeated the Web. With AJAX, a single application can/could work consistently on all client-platforms. So the Web’s original universality is recovered (maybe only briefly)

• Corporate View:Server-side control over consumer device, data

• Consumer View:Subversion of the concept of the WebHijack of the functions of the browser

Copyright,2006-07

31

Architecture of Participation? of Exploitation?

The Web era has seen continual attempts to expropriate communitarian effort, and 'monetise' it:

• "There will be billboards along the Information Superhighway" (Kelly 1994)

• Proprietisation of Internet Spaces (CompuServe, AOL, Apple eWorld, many M$ failures, 1995-96)

• 'Web-Casting' (1997)• 'Info-mediaries' (Hagel & Armstrong 1997)• ‘Portals’ (1998-)• Consumer Profiling (1999-)

–––– The Dot.Com Implosion (2000-05) ––––• will we ever see 'mass micro-marketing', 'mass

customisation', 'one to one' consumer marketing?

Copyright,2006-07

32

The Communitarian Perspective:

An Architecture of Collaboration?

• Wikipedia• a reference repository• collaborative authorship

• Flickr:• a photo repository• free-text meta-tags• hence a ‘folksonomy’

(cf. taxonomy)• hence ‘tag-clouds’

(word-size in displayproportional to frequency)

• Del.icio.us:• a bookmark

repository• with free-text

meta-tags• on to ‘folksonomy’

and tag-clouds• YouTube:

• a video repository

• on to ...• ...

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.QuickTime™ and a

TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

Copyright,2006-07

33

What Role in Web 2.0 forSocial Networking Services ?

• ?• Plaxo• ...• LinkedIn• ...

Copyright,2006-07

34

What Role in Web 2.0 forVirtual Worlds?

• Board-games?• MUD (Multi-User

Dungeon)Trubshaw, Essex University, UK, 1979

• CyberspaceGibson’s ‘Neuromancer’, 1983-84

• The MetaVerseStephenson’s ‘Snowcrash, 1992

• SecondLifeRosedale, Linden Labs, 1999

• ...

Copyright,2006-07

35

Three Views of Web 2.0

• The Marketer / ‘Neo Dot.com’ Movementincl. 3 or 4 dimensions of 'syndication'

Make money by co-opting collaboration

• The Technical

Get inside users’ devices and do things

• The Communitarian

Collaborate

Copyright,2006-07

36

A Very Few References Worth Reading

• The O’Reilly Article (30 Sep 2005):http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

• The Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2but see also entries on specific topics (Flickr, Tag Clouds, etc.)

• Bill Higgins on Ajax and REST (2 Oct 2006):http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/wa-ajaxarch/

• Chris McEvoy’s ‘Why Ajax Sucks’ (Dec 2005):http://www.usabilityviews.com/ajaxsucks.html

• David Best’s ‘Web 2.0’ (11 Jan 2006):http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/~best/uni/WIS/Web2.pdf

• For lots of Vacuity, see the Web 2.0 ‘Summits’:http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/49/schedule.html