Web 2.0

On my way to visit RedStripe earlier this month, I’m struck by the fact that my observations so far have been a mixture of navel-gazing and soap opera. It still feels far too soon to know what I’m going to be writing about.

To assuage my conscience I read a long piece by Tim O’Reilly on Web 2.0 (a term that’s been bandied about a lot at Project Red Stripe but which I only vaguely understood). In the same vein, they talk about Economist 2.0 as the beast they are going to design and implement (perhaps).

O’Reilly - who wrote his piece in September 2005, so it’s already out of date, but still seems sensible to me – identifies a number of key differentiators between first- and second-generation Internet successes (Web 1.0 and 2.0). Since RedStripe is developing a second-generation Internet presence for The Economist, let’s look at some of these differentiators now:

Web 1.0 - Publishing

Web 2.0 - Participation

This looks, on the face of it, to be the key differentiator for a publisher like The Economist, whose business has been built on the quality of the proprietary information that it gathers and publishes. In Web 2.0 models, user participation is the key – Wikipedia vs. Britannica Online, for example. This might look alarming, except that Economist readers are highly-intelligent, well-informed people [Q. What might Wikipedia look like if its contributors were exclusively Economist readers? A. Well, better in parts. Its coverage of the OECD or trading in carbon emissions might be more extensive, informative and hotly debated, while its coverage of hip-hop or ramming speed computer games would probably be thin.]

The key phrase in all this is probably ‘hotly debated’. The conversation that would take place between all Economist readers would be potentially riveting (for other Economist readers). But, as the article also identifies, user-participation is a rather too simplistic model: “only a small percentage of users will go to the trouble of adding value to your application.” Therefore, set inclusive defaults for aggregating user data as a side effect of their use of the application.

In other words, knowing what other Economist readers think is useful. But limited. Knowing what other websites they use would be potentially more useful.

Other attributes:

Web 1.0 - All rights reserved

Web 2.0 - Some rights reserved

What can RedStripe achieve by syndicating, disseminating, letting go of copyright control of its content with a view to getting more people to visit its site?

Web 1.0 - Serving the head

Web 2.0 Serving the long tail

Where The Economist’s print products have to deliver as many articles as possible of maximum interest to its core readership, Economist 2.0 has to find ways also to serve exceptional readers with outlandish or niche interests.

Web 1.0 - Static sites

Web 2.0 - Dynamic sites

How can Economist 2.0 deliver a database-backed site with dynamically generated content that matches the individual user’s needs?

Web 1.0 - Control

Web 2.0 - Co-operate

Web 2.0 services (and they’re services, not platforms or products) are built of a network of co-operating services. Therefore: offer web services interfaces and content syndication, and re-use the data services of others. Support lightweight programming models that allow for loosely-coupled systems.

So, how might RedStripe bring all this together? Not my job fortunately. But we can match their ideas against this list. That’s if they decide for go for a Web 2.0 idea. Currently, their idea evaluation process has two levels (out of 5) that are more advanced than Web 2.0.