Nobody Loves “Web 2.0″

by Ben Rigby

We all know someone who loves to drop high-tech terms into common conversation. These are the people who deal in phrases such as: “Hm, I’ve noticed that your power cord is fraying. Just be careful you don’t fry your dual rank DDR2 SDRAM. It would make a nasty Voronoi carpet burn.” With the exception of these enthusiastic term-droppers, the phrase “Web 2.0” has few fans. However, I argue that it can be useful and even an entrée to a fascinating social-change discussion, once you poke a bit into its history and context.

Initially, the term “Web 2.0” referred to a group of popular technologies that survived the dot-com bust, so called 2.0 because they picked up from the previous generation of technologies invented during the last wave of Internet innovation (circa 1995-2002). Overall, these newer technologies made the Web more like desktop computer applications – featuring smoother transitions between screens and easier methods for providing user input.

But around 2004, something interesting started to happen. The Web sites that used these Web 2.0 technologies became immensely popular such as Amazon.com, Flickr, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Wikipedia, and many other of the big-name Web sites with which you’re bound to be familiar. And people noticed that most of these successful Web sites were doing something different – they were allowing users to create content and to connect with each other.

Instead of communicating in a one-way direction (broadcasting), these businesses encouraged user participation. For example, Amazon.com took the radical step of allowing customers to rate and comment on their entire inventory! This feature seems quite common now, but at the time, it seemed downright foolish. If you want to sell more product, the thinking went, you don’t let potentially irate customers write negative comments about your service or the products you sell. But it turned out that there was a tremendous pent-up demand for services that offered this type of participatory transparency. In fact, services like YouTube and Flickr thrived entirely on the active participation of their users.

The term “Web 2.0” then underwent an evolution from describing a loose set of technologies to referring to Web sites that were outstandingly popular and that offered an architecture favoring user participation. Massive confusion resulted. The term now referred to everything from text fading smoothly onto a page to a business model that encouraged social connection and participation. And this is where we are today: in a state of massive confusion around the term. Technical people despise it because there is no technical definition. There’s no documentation, manual, or standard. Nontechnical people dislike it because they think that it may be a technical term that they just haven’t yet completely grasped… despite the fact that their organization has tasked them with an initiative to “build a Web 2.0 Web site.”

But here’s where the opportunity lies. We share this term. From grandmothers, to Unix coders, to volunteer canvassers, we are familiar with it. In addition, most of us believe that something big is happening and that it has to do with the Internet. We see the world changing dramatically around us – and we tend to call it “Web 2.0.”

I propose that we stop trying to nail it down – to give it myriad definitions – or to figure out what is or isn’t Web 2.0. It’s a phenomenon. Across technical, social, economic, and regional boundaries, there’s a substantial group of us who believe that we’re entering into a new era. This epoch is defined by radical economic, social, and technological shifts in which the very notions of “consumer” and “audience” are falling away in favor of a much more fluid relationship between those who create, sell, and consume. This shifting relationship affects nonprofits as deeply as it does commercial enterprises. It speaks to redefining approaches to membership, marketing, messaging, and organizational hierarchies.

“Web 2.0″ is certainly not the most precise phrase to describe this phenomenon - It underwhelms by coupling itself to mere technical advances. However, it’s seeded across almost every social circle. It’s a starting point and a common ground for engaging in discussion around deeply important social movements. Let’s use the term to start building a more nuanced understanding of forces shaping our era.

About the Author

Ben Rigby is the founder of MobileVoter.org, an organization dedicated to using new media to politically empower young people, and the first organization in the world to engage young voters via text messaging (SMS). He has worked as CTO and president of several new media firms, developing and devising web and mobile strategies for nonprofits and Fortune 1,000 companies. He is currently working on a project tentatively called “Volunteer Now,” a mobile phone application that allows people to volunteer on the spot - anywhere/anytime - in 20 minutes or less. Edited by Rock the Vote, Rigby is also the author of Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize, and Engage Youth.