Deconstructing Web 2.0 To The Next Level
posted Thursday, 15 June 2006
I recently had the opportunity to sit down for a lengthy conversation about Web 2.0 with Adobe's technical evangelist, Duane Nickull, who has some interesting perspectives on the topic. Tim O'Reilly famously defined Web 2.0 as a set of "design patterns and business models" for the next generation of the Web, and then proceeded to outline some fairly distinct if high-level concepts. In the interim, after much industry discussion, these have since gelled around one central organizing principle, "harnessing collective intelligence." But these definitions have left many people wanting more details and specific guidance, but until now they have largely been left to do without.
The good news is that the state of the art continues to improve and, as part of the software industry's effort to capture the essence of the New Web, Duane has come up with his own unique approach. He notes that detailed, actionable blueprints are what software developers actually need in order to take concrete steps that will trigger or access the benefits of Web 2.0. This includes things things like tagging, The Long Tail, architectures of participation, and so on. In fact, Duane has started assembling these from his own direct observations using the more canonical design patterns format that software developers are familiar with. There's lots of fascinating material in this discussion. However, you don't have to read my interpretation of Duane's views, we were fortunate enough to capture the entire discussion as a TV show for the Web 2.0 Journal, and I encourage you to view it when you get a chance.
And while our discussion is informative, I don't expect that you'll be able to get a full conception of what we're talking about without a concrete example of your own in turn. Consequently, Duane has been kind enough to send me an advance preview of one of his design patterns around the concept of tagging, that famous loosely-coupled shared organization system that so many Web 2.0 sites use. And while these formal descriptions may not make a lot of sense to end-users, the point is that the specific concepts around Web 2.0 are getting increasingly formalized, teachable, and intellectually worked out from a design and deveoper perspective.
Note that Christopher Alexander himself, the inventor of design patterns, famously had problems fostering adoption of design patterns in building architecture, fortunately the software world has tended to have much less difficulty (my analysis of this phenomenon with Web 2.0 here) and I expect that Duane's efforts, and ones like his, should be relatively fruitful.
Finally, renewed attempts at explanations of Web 2.0 (which I still see described as Ajax, or a new bubble, and other things incomplete or inaccurate) will only improve the industry's level of knowledge. I do wish Duane a great deal of luck in his efforts to organize the body of knowledge around the design elements of Web 2.0 software. Also be sure to read Andre Charland's and Duane's own comments about this conversation about Web 2.0 design patterns.
Important Aside: Birds-of-a-Feature (BOF) Sessions Needed for AjaxWorld Conference and Expo in October
As the AjaxWorld Conference and Expo planning gears up for October, now is the time to plan your Birds-of-a-Feather sessions. Great BOF sessions might include ones on Ruby on Rails, Dojo, JSON, Comet, OpenAjax, and many other topics. BoF sessions are terrific grassroots ways to organize a meeting of seimlar minds around your favorite Ajax topics at what we hope is the very best Ajax gathering in the world. Please send BOF suggestions to ajax@sys-con.com. Hope to see you there!
Does the world still have a huge challenge in understanding Web 2.0 or are articles like this on MSNBC finally helping?links: del.icio.us
Matt also blogged on this topic:
http://www.mac-kenzie.net/blog/
