Degree of Web2ness
Categories: Web 2.0
Tags: 2.0, long_tail, models, network_effect, oreilly, social, software, tim, web, web2ness
While there are a bunch of wonderful posts out there that explain web 2.0 principles and ideas (see Tim O’Reilly and Robin Good ones for example) very well, new startups and services come out everyday in varied flavours and with deeply different features until the point to which saying what is web 2.0 and what is not becomes really hard.
So I pretty love the Tim idea of classifying web 2.0 applications in a decreasing order of web2iness or the extent to which basic web 2.0 principles are implemented:
Level 3 - Network Centered - The application could only exist on the net and it is heavily based on the network effect generated by people and/or applications linking together. Examples: EBay, craigslist, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype, Amazon, Last.Fm, the web itself
Level 2 - Commmunity Centered - Even if the application could exist offline, leveraging an online community gives it a characterizing power that differentiates it from more traditional predecessors. Flickr is a great member of this category.
Level 1 - Network Empowered - The application could work both online and offline, but the web empowers it with additional features. Writely is the best example here because collaboration is provided only online.
Level 0 - Web Data Empowered - The application would work offline if the data could be stored locally. MapQuest, Yahoo! Local, and Google Maps here.
I wonder on which level mashups belong. Any idea?
In the same category:
September 7th, 2006 at 5:47 am
“the network effect generated by people and/or applications linking together” as per this definition, i think mashup will fall under Level 3. They rely on data from other sites and necessarily need network.
September 7th, 2006 at 9:06 am
Srangana, thank you for your comment. I’m not sure how mashups would fit because, the network effect is not only related to a network availability for me. Being connected through a WOA or a SOA is only a technical issue that cannot guarantee an exponential growth in the user base and usage that can be considered a ‘network effect’.
Probably this classification is not still able to address all the web 2.0 phenomenon.
October 24th, 2006 at 4:56 am
srangana has a good point, but as the 2.0 phenomenon keeps growing mashups will probably have another class altogether.