Web 3.0

SpunOne writes "Apparently Jeffrey Zeldman is as sick of Web 2.0 as many of us have become. In his latest article, titled "Web 3.0," he really sticks it to the Web 2.0 fan boys, and dispels a lot of the hype generated by our young new friends. It's easy to grow apathetic when a new idea gains so much traction so quickly, but his points are clear and accurate, and deserve consideration."

Comments

what's

[iogan]

What's web 2.0?

Re:what's

[generic-man]

It's a lot like Web 1.0, but with JavaScript instead of Flash and RSS instead of RSS.

Consider a web site you visited 10 years ago. Now replace all the boring HTML with exciting AJAXified scriptaculosity!!

Also RSS is really important to Web 2.0, even though it's been around for 10 years and still has glaring flaws that remain unaddressed since that time. (How do I indicate something's been updated or deleted without triggering duplicate entries in everyone's feed reader?)

Re:what's

[ortholattice]

exciting AJAXified scriptaculosity!!

You mean, exciting AJAXified unhyperlinkability!!

Re:what's

[wootest]

(How do I indicate something's been updated or deleted without triggering duplicate entries in everyone's feed reader?)

You change the entry's summary or other content and keep the same GUID. As there's no way to determine what's a GUID in RSS 2.0 this week (because Dave Winer controls that, and he doesn't mind retconning the semantics of the spec while not actually explaining it in the spec but in weblog posts), a wise course of action would be to use Atom.

More like 0.2 than 2.0

[Billosaur]

From A List Apart:It soon appeared that "Web 2.0" was not only bigger than the Apocalypse but also more profitable.

The only difference between 1.0 and 2.0 comes down to the languages used to generate the content. Switch from C++, Java, and Perl to Ruby On Rails, PHP, and Python, change HTML tables to XML, use AJAX liberally. Result? OK, you get Flickr and the like, but it still runs on the same tired architecture. "Web 2.0" doesn't become a reality until "WWW: Then Next Generation" comes to pass, where security and efficiency become the flavor of the day.

Re:More like 0.2 than 2.0

[electroniceric]

Gmail may or may not be the best living example of AJAX. But the bottom line is that AJAX is an attempt to use a scripting language inside a document model. Conceptually not unlike using VBA to program a UI inside a Word document.

The grandparent's point that most of that functionality should be pushed down below the scripting level is spot-on. There's a reason why UI development kits like .NET are popular: they are far more complete and robust than a scripting language attached to a markup renderer. For example, how do you lock the behavior of your AJAX application so it cannot be modified by the end-user? The Asynchronous part of AJAX is the big advance. The XML part is a modern, smart and, basically standards-compliant way to do RMI. But it's hard to see how the JavaScript part can substitute for a full-fledged UI programming language.

I still welcome our new AJAX overlords - they will get people doing what Java was originally supposed to do, which is to allow a browser to serve as a deployment platform for an application. Once end-users are used to that and demand it, people will gradually, as you and the grandparent point out, rewrite the browser to be a proper UI rendering toolkit.

Web 2.0: Where solutions don't need problems?

[germ!nation]

I imagine many people will bite here, however this is not a troll post.

Having worked in web development for many years now, I really find that, today, Javascript is a solution looking for a problem to solve. It seems to have only legacy relevance to today's development requirements.

AJAX? Why?

Well, I guess in the 'war' between Gmail and Hotmail, fancy AJAX front ends might make something of a difference, if all other things are pretty even, however for your average developer, how does it apply.

Yes, some people might get a bit of internet fame for creating some bit of software that has rounded corners and gradients, and you can update stuff without the page refreshing, but in my development cycles if I were to propose this:

Planning Phase
Development Phase
Testing Phase
(now we have a working, accessible application)
Development Phase 2 (AJAX it up while maintaining accessibility)
Testing Phase 2
Release

I would be having serious questions asked of me in terms of whether the extra time and cost would ever justify the "benefits". Bear in mind that when we have discussed AJAX implementations at work the first response was "well, aren't people kind of used to page refreshing now anyway? so aren't we potentially confusing people the other way? They expect a page refresh as an indicator of something having changed or happened".

Flame on... I'm gone (but not very sweet)

Re:Web 2.0: Where solutions don't need problems?

[nahdude812]

AJAX? Why?

Well said. This is really the fundamental question present, isn't it? We've been doing it for a couple of years, before the "AJAX" term appeared. As a sidenote, I believe the reason this term took off so well is because the web had been naturally moving in this direction, a lot of bleeding edge developers felt it, knew it in their bones, but until that point, didn't have any term to latch onto. Like a chemical reaction where all the reagents are present in the right quantities but the catalyst is missing.

The answer of course depends on your business circumstances. Ajax isn't right for everyone, but because it's the current buzz word, you'll see a lot of abuses of ajax in the coming months. Sadly it'll detract from the elegance that the technology can lend users.

So anyway, to answer your question in a general fashion, it's got several advantages from traditional web development.
Most importantly, from a user perspective, a well thought out ajax application means a much more responsive interface, and really nothing else. If you expose anything else about ajax to your users, you're doing it wrong (IMHO). The snappiness comes from two aspects. First, asynchronous requests means that the user can keep working while something is processing in the background. Second, there's simply less data to transfer in a well thought out site, so the page itself downloads faster (though usually only on the 2nd and later hits since the first hit involves downloading a potentially sizy library).

Now this point should not be under-considered. From an evil marketing perspective, having a website where users can complete the ordering process in 7 seconds from search to receipt means more sales. Not because you can handle a higher volume (though that's another of ajax's benefits), but because users have less time to reconsider their purchase. Less opportunity to say, "Wonder if I'll find a better deal elsewhere," or, "Do I really want to spend $400 on a new camera when my old one actually does everything I need."

From a technical perspective, I see two main benefits in practice.
First, it represents lower server loads. Traditional web development means you have to rebuild every page every time the user clicks anything. The framework, the navigation, and the logic that goes into determining whether the user sees specific page elements, all has to be redone from scratch every page hit. That takes time and resources: memory to hold that page data on a buffered system, network bandwidth to transfer it, and cpu time to generate it. On a low volume site, this is meaningless. If you're serving 500-1000 hits a second though, this adds up. Of course in that case you're going to have load balancing, and money to throw at additional hardware.

However our work has shown about half the load on a heavily ajax based app from a traditional app, so that's fewer things to go wrong, fewer 2am calls because a hard disk crashed, and fewer hours spent troubleshooting why your edge optomized routing isn't optomizing its edge routing.

Also, from a development perspective, this is exactly the Model View Controller framework that so many people really like to enforce in their development practices. The roles are also clearly defined, since each role happens in a different location. No matter how many MVC frameworks I've worked in, it's always felt forced to me. You end up doing things in an odd and counter-intuitive way in order to pound your complex business logic (which invariably seems to affect display).

The biggest problem is that often business logic *is* the display. In the end, either you end up passing many dozens of flags to your display to affect these things (the correct way, but with more flags, becomes increasingly difficult to not make mistakes), you end up generating some of the display in the model portion (much easier, so lazy programmers will often take this route), or worst of all, you end up putting business logic in the displa

Get over yourself already

[darjen]

This rant is no better than someone bragging that they liked such and such a band before it got popular. Then they proceed to complain that the band sold out and no longer writes good music. Oh please!

Web 2.0 doesn't really sound like the web

[Cougem]

According to Wikipedia:

'Proponents of the Web 2.0 concept say that it differs from early web development, retroactively labeled Web 1.0, in that it is a move away from static websites, email, the use of search engines, and surfing from one website to the next, to a more dynamic and interactive World Wide Web.'

Moving away from email? Email has absolutely nothing to do with the WWW. It's a completely different service. It sounds more like Internet 2.0. You'd never call an email a webpage.

If you can't explain it in fifteen seconds...

[AEther141]

It's probably bullshit. The world is full of concepts which aren't really concepts - big balls of fluff that proport to be explaining this hard-to-explain idea but are really just hiding the total lack of substance. Web 2.0 is very much one of them. Web 1.0 is trivial to explain and the concept of hypertext really was revolutionary. A simple idea excecuted well that allows people to do something new, or do something old in a radically new way. Same goes for pagerank, same goes for ebay, same goes for every billion-dollar idea that didn't go out with pets.com. Web 2.0 has no meat, no heart, no simple revolution. Smoke and mirrors for marketers and dwellers of the blogospheric ghetto.

Re:Screw that, I wrote about Web 4.0

[romiir]

Quote:
Instead, I propose that:
Web 1.0 is about allowing individuals to create and share ideas.
Web 2.0 is about allowing groups to create and share ideas.
Web 3.0 is about allowing societies to create and share ideas.

Actually it's quite the opposite...

Web 1.0 is about allowing societies to create and share ideas.
Web 2.0 is about allowing groups to create and share ideas.
Web 3.0 is about allowing individuals to create and share ideas.

Yes, from day 1, anyone could put up a simple webpage, but dynamic content, and truely meaningful webpages which can actually get some readers were reserved for only businesses with lots of money. Now today with opensource languages which are free to use, and operate on a free OS, you can run your own webserver with dynamic content for nearly free (the cost of your internet connection).

It is a way to get another bubble

[SmallFurryCreature]

Oh okay maybe that is over cynical. However what was the first bubble? Was it perhaps that the world believed that somehow a combination of tech was going to change the way we lived our lives?

Well yeah. EVERYONE had to have a website. Didn't matter what you sold you had to sell it online as well. Billions were invested in making everything available online. Clothes, food, pets, toys. Some made sense (porn) most did not.

Yet at the time it was claimed that the Information Superhighway (remember that one?) was going to totally change the way we lived. The new economy because the old one was just not the way to do it anymore. You actually had companies loosing stock value because they had not announced an internet strategy. Profits? Who cares.

In hindsight of course it all seems perfectly silly. Snail mail disappearing as email takes over. Eheh, tell that to the poor guy slumping a ton of mail with all the christmas cards. Brick and Mortar stores a thing of the past? Oh sure, tell your girlfriend that there is no need to go shopping with her, she can just browse on the laptop while you play Battlefield 2 and it will be just the same.

So the bubble burts, a few companies survived and things more or less went back to business as usual (wich it always does).

Ah, but surely the failure was because the tech was not ready for it? Well now we know better and we are ready for another try. Instead of portals now the buzzword seems to be social networks. Whatever those may be. It is again a combination of tech that has been around for a while but been buzzed up and vague promises about a social revolution.

Bloggs probably are part of it as well.

So what is it? Old tech in a sexy skin and hype. Is it bad? Hell no! I loved the bubble. Fat paychecks, easy going atmosphere and nobody in charge who had a clue as to what it was what you were doing. Websites with a dozen visitors written in code that would crash at the 1000th post and running on sun hardware and oracle databases. The job ads promising a company car have appeared again. Just hope that the geeks this time get proper regonistion and the sex from gullible girls that we so richly deserve.

Re:It is a way to get another bubble

[thomas.galvin]

Yet at the time it was claimed that the Information Superhighway (remember that one?) was going to totally change the way we lived.

It did totaly change the way we live. It just did it in a subltle manner.

I used to spend hours a month writing and mailing checks. I used to have to drive to the bank to transfer money between my checking and savings accounts. Now I do it all on-line.

I used to have to buy a paper to find out what time a movie was playing. Now I go to the cinema's website. If I want, I can even buy my ticket on-line, and print it out at home. No more standing in line.

If I wanted to order a book, I'd have to go to this thing called a library, and use this thing called a card catelog, and look through a bunch of tiny pieces of paper (think punch cards without the holes). Then I could either fill out the request form, or hope that my local bookstore had it in stock. Now, I can hit Amazon or B&N, and if I don't want to order on-line, I can grab the ISBN and have my local bookseller get me a copy.

When I wanted to talk to people, I had to actually talk to them. Completely synchronos. Now I email them whenever I get the chance, and the get back to me when they have the chance. I can send the same message to a dozen people, and there's no "telephone game" involved.

If I didn't know something about a topic, it was another trip to the bookstore, or hope for a good PBS special. Now it's a quick trip to Google or Wikipedia. Information is just there, waiting for me to be curious.

Our lives have changed. Not in a Back to the Future 2, wow, that skateboard is flying way, but in a thousand subtle, essential ways, so much so that it is honestly hard to imagine life without the net.

Heck, I just used Yahoo Maps to look up a zip code, and Google to find out a bookstore's hours.

Re:Web 2.0 brought on some interesting solutions..

[generic-man]

Apache, mod_perl, and PHP have always been Free as in Beer Speech FLOSS FLUSH, and they were used for all the "Web 1.0" apps. People have been hacking on them since the dawn of the Web. How did you ever "need" thousands of dollars to start a company before, where you don't now? Stupid VCs will flush money down the drain almost as readily now (blogs! community! sticky eyeballs! contextual ads!) as they did then (portals! community! sticky eyeballs! banner ads!).

Re:That's all well and good. . .

[xtracto]

Yes, I agree more or less with you.
I HATE "WebForms" and all that things that try to resemble Windows like interfaces using a browser, I hate also "server based" processing, Damn, we have processors that run at 3 Ghz!!! give them some use. And third, I hate having to put my data on others places. What is all that nonsense??

That's all well and good. . .Behind the 8-ball

[Anonymous Coward]

"Come on people, we're all sick of buzzwords, but you can't deny the reality of Web 2.0!"

Here's a way to look at it.

Web 1.0: What I know.

Web 2.0: What my counterpart in India knows.

A fool and his money?

[SloppyElvis]

It seems everyone in this forum is clear on the fact that Web 2.0 isn't the revolution VC's want it to be. At best, its hopeful it will displace the real estate bubble as the bubbliest bubble around.

Ironic that there seems to be some emphasis on usability, as if this weren't possible with the antiquated Web 1.0. What a pant-load! I find Google to be usable. In fact, there are many "old fashioned" sites that are perfectly usable.

People don't go to Netflix because it has "dynamic content"; they go because they want movies mailed to their house. They visit ebay because they want to buy or sell stuff. Am I going to visit ESPN because now there's more crap floating around the screen screaming at me to click-it? Nope, I visit only to see the scores of last night's game, or possibly even to read some commentary. The experience has never been good enough to be a draw in and of itself. Heck, there's a new IMAX theater in town, and I won't even go there until a decent show is screening.

The same basic tenet applies to all versions of Web x.x...

If your site is useful or entertaining people will visit. Dynamic content can help A LITTLE BIT in IMPROVING a site, but they cannot make the site good just by their being employed.

Dumb Terminals 2.0

[cyberjessy]

The real problem with Web 2.0 is that it completely ignores the power of the client machines. Even if you have a screaming processor with a gigabyte of RAM, it is just the same as if you had a 3 year old machine. While its ok, even ideal for documents and general reading is that what we desire from Applications, which is what Web 2.0 is about? The Web has not really grown up from HTML Docs.

In my Web 3.0, I want applications to use my machine. I want applications to be sandboxed, I want to run them securely, and they need to be fast and capable. Java applets (although everyone hated it) is much closer to Web 2.0 than anything we have now. As much as the Slashdot crowd might hate it, the next version of the Web might come with Windows Vista, with Xaml (SVG like) applications, hardware accelerated 3d graphics, and running with limited permissions. I hope there are alternatives too.

Before you start flaming me, think about cycles wasted per second.

Technology, VCs, and Users

[Infonaut]

Users tend to like Web 2.0 apps. A friend of mine showed me his company's Basecamp setup and I was blown away. He had over 30 employees and outside vendors working on about a dozen different projects, and all of it was managed in Basecamp. For $100/month, he is able to keep much better track of everything than in the past, when he relied on Entourage and a variety of other apps to pull it all together. He has people using Windows, he has people using Macs. He has a slim IT department. His people actually enjoy using Backpack, which also makes his job easier, because he doesn't have to cajole them all the time.

The best of the Web 2.0 apps have a transformative effect for users not because of any technological revolution, but because the apps feel much more like client-side apps. They operate smoothly and feel more fluid. Scoffing at this is akin to saying that user interface improvements are not very important, which is odd coming from someone like Zeldman. Even subtle changes in how an app works at the user end can make a huge difference in how the user feels about the app. The very fact that people refer to Web 2.0 products as apps rather than sites shows this. Sure, dynamic websites have always really been applications. It's just that to most users, they didn't feel that way. Now, because of new coding approaches, the apps feel like apps.

Is this an epic revolution? No. But it is the start of something new, in that a host of small companies with far less startup funding than in the Dot Com era are starting to pop up. They're trying different things. Many of them are trying the same things in slightly different ways. Most of them will not last very long. But this time, the money situation is different. Web 2.0 isn't about huge VC money and absurdly valued IPOs. It's about real businesses following established business practices. Figure out how to make something that people want to use. Figure out how to make money doing it. Go do it.

I can understand why Zeldman is wary of the hype, but just because the VCs are jumping on the bandwagon doesn't mean that Web 2.0 is pure hype. To me it is invigorating to check out my TechCrunch feed and see so many interesting web applications popping up. The future has not yet been commoditized. As a whole, the web development community has learned a great deal about what works and what doesn't, not just from a technology perspective, but from a business persepective. In my opinion, Web 2.0 is much more about applying those lessons than about the breathless hyperbole of VCs. It really is different from the Dot Com era.

In support of your argument, you cite... a blog?

[Old Man Kensey]

jg21 wrote:

Just so. Indeed, may I just offer, amid all this indignant debunking, a simple metric based on fact rather than prejudgement?

First, you obviously didn't read the link in the post you're replying to. (Unless you're being equally tongue-in-cheek.)

One of the many blogs hosted at SOA Web Services Journal is one by Web 2.0 Workgroup member Dion Hinchcliffe. In terms of page views, the blog crossed the 500K mark after just over 90 days...

Second, the popularity of a blog or the ideas therein does not in any way constitute a benchmark of the validity of those ideas. And the stats you quoted (that I snipped) aren't even that impressive. 55 posts in a hundred days? Less than 400 comments? jwz posts more often than that in his LiveJournal and gets that many comments in a week. Should we be talking about jwz as the new hotness in web technologies? Obviously he's more relevant than Web 2.0!

The topic of Web 2.0, and related offshoot movements like Identity 2.0, TV 2.0, Democracy 2.0, Law 2.0 is a major grassroots topic of interest. It's as simple as that.

So is the alien autopsy at Roswell, the number of people associated with the Clintons who've died, and abiotic oil. Just because people have an opinion about it doesn't make it relevant either.

"Web 2.0" is just the latest incarnation of herd behavior in VCs and pretentious web-design fanboys who take themselves way too seriously. Google did not set out to create a "Web 2.0 application" with Google Maps, nor, I would wager, did the guys who created Flickr or other tagging sites, or the developers of any successful site using Ajax. They just created something they thought would be useful and used a new tool (AJAX/Ruby on Rails/etc.) to make it a little spiffier than it would have been otherwise.

Web 2.0 is not the radical break with the past that everyone seems to want to believe it is: this is just the latest swing of the user-side/content-side pendulum back toward putting code on the user side. (For another increment of the swing, see Google Earth.)

Re:Oh boy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused...aren't we at least at Web 5.0 already?

1.0 = text based
2.0 = mosaic & pictures
3.0 = gold rush era
4.0 = server-side era
5.0 = AJAX era

Re:That's all well and good. . .

[drinkypoo]

Putting your data somewhere else is a feature, not a bug. If you see it as a bug, I suggest you stop using web apps, and start using PC apps again.

Am I the only one

[jamesmacaulay]

...who's heard way more backlash against Web 2.0 hype than actual Web 2.0 hype?