Web 2.0: Too Smart by a Half?

By Joe Sokohl


Ah, yes, it’s time to update your blog, check your tweets on Twitter, update your LinkedIn connections, and Web 2.0-ify your life. Or maybe you’re feeling pressured to 2.0-ify your company? As businesses rush to follow Web 2.0 ephemera, what effect are applications having on people and their ability to just get stuff done? Does the mere fact that a widget exists mean that a user experience is somehow better?

Many innovations come through in Web 2.0 implementations. Users are presented with a wide variety of controllable, malleable, formable experiences. Lightweight engineering solutions break the stranglehold of ponderous approaches that have stifled innovation.

And yet…what is the impact of so many choices? Will the Web 2.0 generation’s epitaph be, “They died with their options open?” When is too much choice too much? In addition, a rush to add the coolest glows and shapes and transitions might win over marketing suits but lose users.

THE USER EXPERIENCE OF WEB 2.0
When we talk about Web 2.0, we need to define of course what we mean. First of all, the innovation of a service-oriented architectural approach can innovate an organization’s idea of the Web as a platform and a service. In addition, we now see the rise of Enterprise 2.0, a melding of Web 2.0 approaches with the sensibilities of the productivity, cost-efficiency, and innovation that enterprises demand.

Yet Web 2.0 also means application development can quickly provide unique interaction behaviors and quick access to persistent data. Using technologies and approaches such as AJAX, RSS, Ruby on Rails, Adobe’s Flex, Microsoft’s Silverlight, and others, developers can develop unique, specific applications quickly. They can easily deliver rich Internet applications (RIAs) using Web technologies, mimicking behaviors that desktop applications provide. Beyond Web 1.0, the new approaches provide expressiveness possibilities that have simply not been technically available. Too, new thinking creates approaches such as mashups, which can bring powerful and meaningful combinations of data together with almost no development effort. And within organizations, groups are creating lightweight collaboration tools, encouraging innovation across organizational silos, and increasing the speed and utility of information flows through self-publishing as well as the bottom-up creation of ad-hoc networks.

We’ve gotten across the chasm with the Web; no longer are masses of people outside looking in. Instead, most people understand and accept that the Web is useful, that it provides information and transaction that they need and (sometimes) trust, and that it pervades their working lives. And as Web 2.0 approaches become ubiquitous, people encounter them not just on their Internet-connected computers but also on their phones, in their cars, and in their homes.

Now, users have more control over their experience. They can choose how to view data, how to display information, and which specific applications to use with almost unfettered control. Web 2.0 technology enables developers to create almost anything…and therein lies the problem.

Associated Link: Full article: Web 2.0: Too Smart by a Half?

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