The Web is changing. Mighty forces are at work and a new Internet is slouching towards a monstrous liquidity event. This reborn Web is vast, huge and unimaginably significant and intense. In fact, it's a new Web -- it's called Web 2.0. You may have heard some buzz words: folksonomies, mashups, social networking. You may have been to Flickr, Wondr, Del.icio.us, Orkut, or Listl (note the daringly misspelt or awkward names, to ensure a nice Google ranking -- very Web 2.0).
But do you really understand Web 2.0 -- the way you understand fishing, traffic lights or tangerines? You may have had to fake it when a colleague mentioned a new Web site being "totally two-dot-oh". You nodded. Yeah right. You even made air quotes: "Two-dot-oh". If so, you're a fakr. A losr. Farked. Or at least you were -- until you found this bluffer's guide to Web 2.0.
Don't keep it stupid, simpleton
You mustn't think of Web 2.0 as an idea that can be expressed simply. It's very hard to build buzz, organise conferences or develop an intimidating mystique around so-called 'ideas'. These can be quickly explained and dismissed. For example, "Eating too much makes you fat." That'll never fly: think food pyramids, combinations, lactointolerant dieting strategies. Use wicked-smart metaphors to give your theory weight: Web 2.0 doesn't have a 'hard boundary', it's got a 'gravitational core'. And whatever you do, don't make it clear. Just 'tease out the principles', 'evoke the memes' and 'drill down to the root meanings'.
The Web as platform shoes
The first important Web 2.0 principle is 'The Web as platform'. This means that your Web site isn't a low-heeled ordinary application, like Microsoft Word, that you wear and then throw under the chair when you get home, like a pair of dirty old trainers that nobody wants. It means it's a finger-poppin', high-steppin' Web process -- teetering along on platform heels that other Web sites want to put on because they're so goddamn funky and clever and open.
For example, terrorists can look at Google Maps and work out dense population areas that would make great targets for so-called 'dirty bombs'. By simply mapping their own database of active cell members around the world they can create a simple 'mash-up' that combines the two data sets, to generate a third, much more useful application they can use to plan atrocities. And amazingly, this will cost them absolutely nothing.
Harnessing mob rule
This is also known as 'collective intelligence'. This means that the Web site exploits the ideas of millions of people in bedsits and student dormitories from Dundee to Basingstoke. Imagine you're in your bedroom trying on a new hat and you ask your partner if the hat works and they say, "Yes, it's lovely. Can we go now?" Then you go to a party wearing the hat and people snicker and you hear sarcastic comments all evening, have a big fight and come home in tears and say, "Why didn't you tell me I looked like an idiot in this hat?" In this situation you've exploited the 'wisdom of crowds' to get a true judgement of how appalling your hat is.
This is how Google works. You think your Web site is pretty cool, but Google checks to see what everyone else thinks, and they think your Web site is rubbish. One caveat: in certain situations, such as when creating a man-monster from grave-robbed body parts, the crowd may grab pitch-forks and storm the castle and burn it to the ground. This is a very hard business model to monetise.
Rich online experiences
Finally, the most important thing to remember about Web 2.0 is that it's all about building a 'rich online experience'. Many original Web 1.0 applications were built in order to solve an interesting technical problem, push the envelope on a new idea, or to express the ideas and beliefs of gifted technical people. This is all very well, but many of the businesses failed to see the potential of what in Web 2.0 parlance is called a 'rich online experience'.
In a rich online experience, the idea is to build a Web platform (see above) to harness collective intelligence (see above) and sell it to an end-user, or 'millionaire', in order to get 'rich'. Imagine you're an ordinary Australian media mogul who's never been interested in the Web before. Then along comes a fascinating new application like MySpace.com and bang: you buy the company for $580m. This kind of rich online experience, or 'pay-off' is much more exciting than debugging Linux device drivers because of your commitment to open-source principles.
So there you have it. Now you know Web 2.0!
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