Why blogging isn’t a Web 2.0 thing
Web 2.0 is a fine idea, so long as it actually refers to something. I am increasingly hearing blogging mentioned as a Web 2.0 application. I beg to semi-differ.
As I understand it — and Tim O’Reilly’s seminal piece on Web 2.0 backs this up — blogging is a 2.0 app insofar as it enables the connecting of pieces in new ways. RSS is 2.0. Permalinks are 2.0 also, although not the best example.
But blogging as an enabler of individual voices talking together is (IMO) a great example of Web 1.0. The ability to talk in our own voice about what matters to us and to do so in conversation is exactly what got hundreds of millions of us onto the Web in the first place.
Why does this matter since Web 2.0 is just a made up term? Because if we get muddled and start talking about blogging-as-voice and blogging-as-conversation as 2.0 apps, we’ll misunderstand the great impulse behind the Web from the beginning. [Tags: web2.0 TimOReilly blogging rss]
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Call it Web 1.5.
Maybe blogging isn’t a “feature” of Web 2.0 per se, but it is driving demand for a lot of features of Web 2.0.
Also – the fact that blogs aren’t firmly in the 2.0 camp is somewhat due to the limitations of the underlying software. The common thread in Web 2.0 is decentralization. Blogs as a whole are decentralized, but individual blogs are not.
We used to laugh at geeks when I was growing up. There’s no question that they can do some amazing things, but sometimes I wonder if their revenge for being ridiculed as geeks is to paint everything in software release terms.
All blogging really is is opinion and conversation – people speaking their mind and sharing information.
The Ancient Greeks would have loved it.