Dec 31, 06:09 am: Web 2.0 is about mindset

Over at Contentious, Amy Garhan writes about the hype and definition of Web 2.0:

More than anything else, Web 2.0 refers to a mindset. In turn, this mindset yields a decentralized, continuous approach to technology development, and a collaborative way of using tools or creating value.

She then goes on to write about the developer’s and user’s perspective (and it’s so good, I’ll keep quoting):

  • Developer’s perspective: Create a user-friendly web-based service or tool and let people play with it. Make sure it allows some user interaction (or at least interaction of users’ data) by default. Be flexible and open about what your creation can become or how people can use it. “Should” is a bad word in Web 2.0. Just watch how people use it, learn from that, and roll with it. This way, the more people who use it, the richer it gets.
  • User’s perspective: Find new ways to create, publish, share, and explore with the help of simple web-based services, most of which are free. Use these services (or combine services creatively) to collaborate with other people as much or as little as you want. Whatever you create with those services is yours, and you can take it with you if you want to. Oh, and by the way, even if you’re using a service purely for selfish reasons, with no intention of sharing your contributions or creations, you’re still helping to enrich that service.
This certainly helps to enrich what I’ve been thinking of as web 2.0: tools that get better the more people use them.  And I mean “more” as in quanitites of people and quantity of use.  That is: the designers create the frame; the users bring the intelligence. 

Amy’s right, of course, none of this is new.  But it is new on the web, I think, at least in this kind of scalable fashion.

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Marnie Webb  |