Category: Web 2.0

DeviantART, where I house some of my photography and prints are just about to revolutionise their website. And amongst all the Web 2.0-style sites that are doing the rounds at the moment, I’m just not sure that this is a good idea.

If you take a look at the first link in the post you’ll arrive at my profile page, get a feel for the look, the structure, how everything appears and works…. then take a look at the second link. Whatever about new websites and businesses adopting a “web 2.0 strategy” or approach to how their site is designed and run, is it really worthwhile to perform a radical changeover after almost 5 years of the same style of site, a site which currently holds 2m+ users and 20m+ works of art?

If you’re that well established, would you make the move?

Update: Ok, following investigation it looks more like a bad taste april fools joke – but I still think it raises a valid question, irregardless of whether the change goes ahead or not. If you were in their position, with a solid userbase on a particular model of a website, would you still press ahead and make such dramatic changes?

CNN.com is today taking a look at the “25 startups that are reinventing the web“, but they don’t like Web 2.0. No! With all its reinvention and reinterpretation, CNN are going for another phrase… ‘Next Net’.

We are in the early stages of what might be better thought of as the Next Net. The Next Net will encompass all digital devices, from PC to cell phone to television. Its defining characteristics include the ability to interact instantaneously with any of the more than 1 billion Web users across the globe — not by, say, instant messaging, but by evolving instant-voice-messaging and instant-video-messaging apps that will make today’s e-mail and IM seem crude.

Under categories such as Social Media, Mashup & Filters, The New Phone, The Webtop and Under The Hood there’s plenty of old heads and new heads with Amazon and Skype dubbed ‘incumbent to watch’!

Incumbent meaning that you pretty much have to watch them (thank you dictionary.com) – but to be honest, you can’t really avoid the developments at both Amazon and Skype anyway with what their doing for online life.

In no particular order and in a nice paragraph fashion, the top 25 companies to watch are…

Digg, Last.fm, Newsvine, Tagworld, YouTube, Yahoo, Bloglines, Simply Hired, Technorati, Trulia, Wink, Google, Fonality, SipPhone, Iotum, Vivox, Skype, JotSpot, 30Boxes, 37Signals, Writely (‘and writely so…), Zimbra, Microsoft, Brightcove, Jigsaw, SimpleFeed, Salesforce, Six Apart, Amazon.

To be honest I’m actually unaware of the activities of several of the afore named companies – anyone else in the same boat?

Reminder mails being sent out this morning so its a good time to highlight IrishDev.com’s first joint venture with the IIA in the Morgan in Temple Bar. The lecture will “feature an introduction to Web2.0 Technologies, Business & Marketing implications and code based demonstrations, teaching you to build Web2.0 asynchronous software on .Net and Enterprise Java platforms.”

The plan of action for the night is as follows…

• Registration and refreshments
• Welcome to IIA/IDN and intro to their strategic partnership by Fergal O’Byrne (IIA) and John Brennan (IDN)
• Introduction to Web 2.0, Definition, Business, Marketing, Software Design, by Fergal Breen and Paul Browne
• Configure and create an Ajax web application using .Net (Fergal)
• Configure and create an Ajax web application with Enterprise Java (Paul)
• How to develop your Web 2.0 Software and sites using Agile techniques
• Wine reception

…and booking details, reservations etc. can be made by visiting the event site here.

The Carson Workshop’s Future Of Web Apps summit is underway in London and Emmet Connolly is posting his notes and thoughts via the Web 2.0 Ireland blog. Seems to have a nice little Irish contingent over there, wouldn’t have minded going myself I think! There’s live notes also available here from Futurilla.

What have tagging, aggregation, filters & ranking, syndication and mashups got in common? They’re ZDNets popular elements for websites in 2006… if you don’t have them, you’re not in!

The article does mention that a lot of the featured that were “web 2.0” are now commonplace among websites and that some of these features have gone way beyond the web 2.0 label. So does that mean we’re looking at web 2.01? 2.5? 3? Or is it all a load of cod anyway? Just a fancy label for things that people have been able to do for ages anyway….

[On another note, I’ve just passed 100 posts on the blog 😀 ]

TechCrunch is reporting that online video sharing site, YouTube, has signed a deal to be acquired, putting another notch in the web 2.0 acquisitions belt. Its funny to think how the whole industry has turned on its head, at least thats what it looks like. I know they say that everything comes full circle but this is mad. There isn’t a day going by that some Silicon Valley startup isn’t being acquired by a higher cause. There’s no names around yet as to who exactly is going to snap it up but seen as Google already launched Google video, can we say that Yahoo are going to step up to the plate? Maybe AOL? YouTube itself isn’t even 12 months old yet!

This is gas… by that I mean pretty funny, though looking at it on the outside, it does hold some valid points. Want to become a Web 2.0 success? Or at least get that Web 2.0 ball rolling?

Here’s a good one that I had to reproduce… all credit goes to Suhail over at Imaginathon. The article and comments in full can be found here.

The standard template of a Basically Blah 2.0 web-startup is to first select a name totally devoid of any meaning in the context of the service the application provides. If it starts with digits, all the more better. To convert this name into a hotshot thingie, all you have to do is register a URL and make a big-buttoned-app-name-in-text as the logo.

Add another small icon like a leaf, or a fruit or something “herbal/organic” which looks appealing enough that you might want to eat. Throw some RSS feed icons everywhere across the page. Keep a big text box wherein you beg for visitor’s emailID and promise them that exciting ideas are being thrashed out. In your “About” page spout some of the words from the above list. Ajax is mandatory. Wait till you make half a million accounts.

Screw up with the browser’s back button. Sell out to Yahoo for a few million. Profit. Throw parties, attend conferences, generally move around like a hotshot. Start a blog on how to save 30 seconds while blowing your nose. Give it an equally stupid name, like ummm…30seconds? Move to the Silicon Valley.

Add that “a Yahoo company” superscript to the logo. Introduce planned downtime and say that you are moving servers to Yahoo. And ofcourse your App remains in a perpetual Beta state for continuous customer satisfaction. Thusly, nirvanification shall be attained.

Once again, the original web 2.0 article can be found here….