The Pixel Experience

What is Web 2.0

For those of you who are not familiar with the term ‘Web 2.0′, or aren’t too sure what it means, don’t worry your are not alone. Since the term first became popular amongst technologists and developers, there has been little agreement on the exact details that make up ‘Web 2.0′. I personally prefer the very broad definition laid out on by Wikipedia:

Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.

So essentially we’re looking at websites like flickr, digg, wikipedia and facebook. All great sites, most of which I use on a daily basis. When I use these websites I am constantly in communication with many other users with similar interests, which is great, but can become a little overwhelming sometimes.

The problems with Web 2.0

Currently these websites are very popular, and are often bought out from their owners by huge companies for large sums, but I think that things have to change soon - the bubble has to burst.

The problem is that the more sites that you join, the more information you become bombarded with, and the more time you need to deal with it. Not only that, but sites you already belong to are evolving to add more ’stuff’ than they had before.

Take Facebook, a great social-networking site with the aim of staying in touch with friends, and that aim is what drew me to the site. But I could already do that, using email, skype, online games, and the pub. So what really convinced me to need to use Facebook? Well, nearly all of my friends were already using it, and by joining I was able to get in touch with friends I hadn’t spoken to before. So it is a sort of Web 2.0 version of friendsreunited.com. However, as I’ve slowly increased the number friends listed on my account, so the shear amount of online spam has increased (let’s call this ‘Spam 2.0′), and although my friends have generated it, it has actually become a barrier between me and them. The amount of online time I have to interact with them in any meaningful way is now limited and the thought of logging in to check up on my friends has become a burden.

Facebook isn’t alone, MySpace, has also become quite bloated and appears to require quite a bit of dedication to keep going.

My predictions

So interaction is good, but so long as it does what it says on the tin, and not much more. I think that these ‘bloating’ trends need to happen and hope that users will vote with their feet. Hopefully, developers will start to streamline their websites and focus on what they are rather than what else they can become.

Of course, users probably won’t vote with their feet, and are generally happy with the way these websites are evolving, but I urge all developers involved with these websites to continually consider the amount of information users have to consume!