The end of Web 2.0 part II

Monday, March 19. 2007

The end of Web 2.0 part II

We blogged last week that we felt that FOWA 07 was the High Watermark of the Web 2.0 movement - or the hype at least - seems this is occurring to other people as well now - Here at Crosslink, and Jeff Clavier

A month or so ago, Andrew Orlowski of the Register opined that Web 2.0 was a presentation layer technology, and it would eventually need to integrate with infrastructure layer technologies to continue adding value. This seems to be the case.....however, we think its a bit soon to start the Scribblerati off on Web 3.0 or even Web 123

And for that last Web 2.0 posterchild, it would seem that the twittering about Twitter at SXSW was not only due to virality, good old fashioned Cashola played a role too. And there are now a few pieces of reasonable comparative analysis emerging.

Postscript - End of Web 2.0 is picked up on GigaOm here

Posted by Alan Patrick in Social Networks at 23:51 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) | Top Exits (0)

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Thanks for picking up on that, Alan.

I did say that today's web experiments are problematic, because they're "presentation layer people trying to solve infrastructure level problems".

(I left any further inferences entirely to the audience, however.)

"Adding value" is a problem for the entire communications value chain right now. It's facing commoditization, but it has an infrastructure that doesn't support it, pricing models that don't encourage it, and a user base that expects everything to be free.

(That's why we have a lot of Web 2.0 evangelists telling everyone to work for nuthin' - because their utopian vision won't work unless we do).

AT&T is as much caught up in this thresher as Google.

Unless the infrastructure improves, and legal settlements to reward rights holder are put in place (such as collective licensing), we're looking at a gigantic red herring.

The Web won't die, but it may well bobble along for many years, perhaps becoming an EPG for a public access cable channel that nobody watches.

#1 Andrew Orlowski (Homepage) on 2007-03-21 00:44 (Reply)

Andrew, I enjoyed your talk (actually blogged it in more detail in an earler post here) - apologies for putting any words in your mouth, clearly the law of unintended inferences was in operation

What did you mean then btw

I would stick by the view that the "easy" bit of Web 2.0 is over, and now it needs Infrastructure 2.0.

Commoditisation is an interesting area and needs a blog article on its own...the different layers of the 'Net (transport, infrastructure, applications) are all commoditising, but in different ways, but everyone is caught up, especially where the layers interact with each other (eg video traffic over DSL).

The likely endgame imho will be some form of subscription to a transport and infrastructure layer, with a combination of Ad supported, and free/ premium subscription based services - but in the growth time the model of give it away free to get customers is very (too?) seductive

The Rights issue is one of the main areas impacting commoditisation of the applications layer - I pointed to a post on the Game Theory of rights in my next article on this blog, I think there is an interesting conflict between owning rights and a "use it or lose it" dynamic that the Web creates. I agree with you that some form of collective licencing is a likely endgame, but the current stasis (a suboptimal Nash Equilibrium) of the industry makes it unlikely any one party will unilaterally move towards it.

#2 alan p on 2007-03-21 10:23 (Reply)

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