Bubble 2.0: brace yourself

Tim Berners-Lee would have us think that the label 'Web 2.0' is a piece of jargon and a complete misnomer. There is some validity in his argument. The majority of technologies commonly associated with Web 2.0 applications have been at the disposal of developers since well before Bubble 1.0 burst. Even the social and collaborative aspects that have - rightly or wrongly - become synonymous with Web 2.0 were well versed by Amazon (since 1995!) and eBay. That the web has entered a new phase of development is incontrovertible though; but when I think of Web 2.0 I prefer to focus on the use of web service APIs to create new information services and harnessing the potential of structured data (e.g. applications of XML, RDF, etc.).

Be that as it may, Web 2.0 has now been with us for a few years because people believe it is actually happening; that Web 2.0 is upon us all. 2005-2008 has witnessed a proliferation of so-called Web 2.0 companies, many 'built to be bought'. Was del.icio.us really worth $30 million when Yahoo! bought it in late 2005?

This frenzy of activity, aggressive over speculation, and the impending credit crunch now has many technology and financial commentators (and protagonists) nervous. Bubble 2.0 is soon to burst. High stock values and high P/E ratios simply contribute to this perception. The storm clouds do indeed seem to be gathering over Silicon Valley and a near certain second dot-com crash is approaching (Adam Lashinsky's article inspired this post). Perhaps if people had been listening to Tim Berners-Lee at the beginning of the Web 2.0 phenomenon things wouldn't have spiraled out of control; enthusiasm might have been tempered.

The ridiculous nature of the Web 2.0 scenario and its impending doom can never be properly articulated by the technology or business press. It takes popular culture to deliver a good, hard slap to the face. To this end the Richter Scales provide us with an astute appraisal of the current state of Web 2.0, its tenuous origins and its future, all to the tune of 'We didn't start the fire' by Billy Joel. Enjoy 'Here comes another bubble'. It's educational.


Here Comes Another Bubble - Richter Scales

Shout 'Yahoo!' : more use of metadata and the Semantic Web

Within the lucrative world of information retrieval on the web, Yahoo! is considered an 'old media company'; a company that has gone in a different direction to, say, Google. Yahoo! has been a bit patchy when it comes to openness. It is keen on locking data and widgets down; Google is keen on unlocking data and widgets. And to Yahoo!'s detriment, Google has discovered that there is more money to be made their way, and that users and developers alike are – to a certain extent - very happy with the Google ethos. Google Code is an excellent example of this fine ethos, with the Google Book Search API being a recently announced addition to the Code arsenal.

Since there must be some within Yahoo! ranks attributing their current fragility to a lack of openness, Yahoo! have recently announced their Yahoo! Search 'open platform'. They might be a little slow in fully committing to openness, but cracking open Yahoo! Search is a big and interesting step. For me, it's particularly interesting...

Yesterday Amit Kumar (Product Management, Yahoo! Search) released further details of the new Yahoo! Search platform. This included (among many other things), a commitment to harnessing the potential of metadata and Semantic Web content. More specifically, this means greater support of Dublin Core, Friend-of-a-Friend (FOAF) and other applications of RDF (Resource Description Framework), Creative Commons, and a plethora of microformats.

Greater use of these initiatives by Yahoo! is great news for the information and computing professions, not least because it may stimulate the wider deployment of the aforementioned standards, thus making the introduction of a mainstream 'killer app' that fully harnesses the potential of structured data actually possible. For example, if your purpose is to be discovered by Google, there is currently no real demand for Dublin Core (DC) metadata to be embedded within the XHTML of a web page, or for you to link to an XML or RDF encoded DC file. Google just doesn't use it. It may use dc.title, but that's about it. That is not to say that it's useless of course. Specialist search tools use it, Content Management Systems (CMS) use it, many national governments use it as the basis for metadata interoperability and resource discovery (e.g. eGMS), it forms the basis of many Information Architecture (IA) strategies, etc, etc. But this Google conundrum has been a big problem for the metadata, indexing and Semantic Web communities (see, for example). Their tools provide so much potential; but this potential is generally confined to particular communities of practice. Your average information junkie has never used a Semantic Web tool in his/her life. But if a large scale retrieval device (i.e. Yahoo!) showed some real commitment to harnessing structured data, then it could usher in a new age of large scale information retrieval; one based on an intelligent blend of automatic indexing, metadata, and Semantic Web tools (e.g. OWL, SKOS, FOAF, etc.). In short, there would be a huge demand for the 'data web' outside the distinct communities of practice over which librarians, information managers and some computer scientists currently preside. And by implication this would entail greater demand for their skills. All we need to do now is get more people to create metadata and ontologies!

Given the fragile state of Yahoo!, initiatives like this (if they come to fruition!) should be applauded. Shout 'Yahoo!' for Yahoo! I'm not sure if it will prevent a Microsoft takeover though...