Sunday, February 7, 2010
Introduction
In 2004, we realized that the Web was on the cusp of a new era, one that would
finally let loose the power of network effects, setting off a surge of innovation and
opportunity. To help usher in this new era, O’Reilly Media and CMP launched a
conference that showcased the innovators who were driving it. When O’Reilly’s
Dale Dougherty came up with the term “Web 2.0” during a brainstorming session,
we knew we had the name for the conference. What we didn’t know was that the
industry would embrace the Web 2.0 meme and that it would come to represent
the new Web.
Web 2.0 is much more than just pasting a new user interface onto an old application.
It’s a way of thinking, a new perspective on the entire business of software—
from concept through delivery, from marketing through support. Web 2.0 thrives
on network effects: databases that get richer the more people interact with them,
applications that are smarter the more people use them, marketing that is driven
by user stories and experiences, and applications that interact with each other to
form a broader computing platform.
The trend toward networked applications is accelerating. While Web 2.0 has initially
taken hold in consumer-facing applications, the infrastructure required to
build these applications, and the scale at which they are operating, means that,
much as PCs took over from mainframes in a classic demonstration of Clayton
Christensen’s “innovator’s dilemma” hypothesis, web applications can and will
move into the enterprise space.
Two years ago we launched the Web 2.0 Conference to evangelize Web 2.0 and
to get the industry to take notice of the seismic shift we were experiencing. This
report is for those who are ready to respond to that shift. It digs beneath the hype
and buzzwords, and teaches the underlying rules of Web 2.0—what they are, how
successful Web 2.0 companies are applying them, and how to apply them to your
own business. It’s a practical resource that provides essential tools for competing
and thriving in today’s emerging business world. I hope it inspires you to embrace the Web 2.0 opportunity.
—Tim O’Reilly, Fall 2006
Web 2.0 is a set of economic, social, and technology trends that collectively
form the basis for the next generation of the Internet—a more mature,
distinctive medium characterized by user participation, openness, and
network effects.
Web 2.0 is here today, yet its vast disruptive impact is just beginning. More than just
the latest technology buzzword, it’s a transformative force that’s propelling companies
across all industries toward a new way of doing business. Those who act on the Web
2.0 opportunity stand to gain an early-mover advantage in their markets.
O’Reilly Media has identified eight core patterns that are keys to understanding and
navigating the Web 2.0 era. This report details the problems each pattern solves or
opportunities it creates, and provides a thorough analysis of market trends, proven
best practices, case studies of industry leaders, and tools for hands-on self-assessment.
To compete and thrive in today’s Web 2.0 world, technology decision-makers—
including executives, product strategists, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders—need
to act now, before the market settles into a new equilibrium. This report shows you
how.
What’s causing this change? Consider the following raw demographic and technological
drivers:
1. One billion people around the globe now have access to the Internet
2. Mobile devices outnumber desktop computers by a factor of two
3. Nearly 50 percent of all U.S. Internet access is now via always-on broadband
connections
Combine drivers with the fundamental laws of social networks and lessons from the
Web’s first decade, and:
1. In the first quarter of 2006, MySpace.com signed up 280,000 new users each
day and had the second most Internet traffic
2. By the second quarter of 2006, 50 million blogs were created—new ones
were added at a rate of two per second
3. In 2005, eBay conducted 8 billion API-based web services transactions
These trends manifest themselves under a variety of guises, names, and technologies:
social computing, user-generated content, software as a service, podcasting, blogs,
and the read–write web. Taken together, they are Web 2.0, the next-generation, userdriven,
intelligent web. This report is a guide to understanding the principles of Web
2.0 today, providing you with the information and tools you need to implement Web
2.0 concepts in your own products and organization.
Perpetual Beta When devices and programs are connected to the Internet, applications are
no longer software artifacts, they are ongoing services. This has significant impact on the entire software development and delivery process. Therefore, don’t package up new features into monolithic releases, but instead add features on a regular basis as part of the normal user experience. Engage your users to be real-time testers, and structure the service to reveal how
people use your product.
Overview: End of the Software Adoption Cycle
“What version of Google is this?” Millions of customers use Google’s software every
day yet never have cause to ask this question. Why? Because In the Internet era, users
think in terms of services not packaged software, and they expect these services to
just be there and to improve over time. No versions, no installations, no upgrades
needed. The traditional design-develop-test-ship-install cycle of packaged software is
ending. Software has become a service—a service that is always on, always improving
(see Figure 33).
(figure 33 : example of beta services)
For development organizations, this shift impacts the entire software development
and delivery process. Success now relies on adoption of the perpetual beta development
model in which software is continuously refined and improved, users become
co-developers, and operations—the daily care and feeding of online services—become a core competency. It is Web Development 2.0.
Benefits
- Faster time to market
- Reduced risk
- Closer relationship with customers
- Real-time data to make quantifiable decisions
- Increased responsiveness
Best Practices
1. Release early and release often. This edict of the open source development
model is now a critical success factor for Internet-based software. Use agile
and iterative development methodologies to package bug fixes and enhancements
into incremental releases that respond to user feedback. Use automated
testing and a rigorous build and deploy process to streamline QA and
release management. eBay deploys a new version of its service approximately
every two weeks. Flickr photo-sharing service took this even further, deploying
hundreds of incremental releases during an 18 month period from February
2004 through August 2005. Compare this with the traditional product
release cycle as exemplified by Microsoft Windows.
It’s not just new products that can benefit from this approach: Yahoo! Messenger
went from 1 release every 18 months to 4 releases per year.
2. Engage users as co-developers and real-time testers. Real-world user behavior provides a much more accurate model for assessing new product features than marketing requirements documents, prototypes, or any other form of non-production feedback. The nature of web-based applications and the creator’s ability to actively monitor how the software is used in the wild is
a dramatic shift from the days of desktop software. Use statistics and controlled experimentation to make informed product decisions. Establish feedback models such as dynamic A/B testing in which a small percentage of your site visitors are presented with alternative features and experiences. Amazon.com runs multiple A/B feature tests on its live site every day. The results of these tests feed a rigorous data-driven process that spurs evolution of not only the application but the business as well.
3. Instrument your product. In the development process, you need to plan for and implement not only the customer-facing application but also a framework for capturing how customers are using your product. What users do often tells you more than what they say. This framework of instrumentation must be guided by business objectives and be as carefully planned for and thought through as the product itself. As with A/B testing, the data captured must answer specific questions as a means for measuring how well objectives are being met and driving product development.
4. Incrementally create new products. New and existing products should evolve through rapid releases, user feedback, and instrumentation. Experiment with new product ideas through planned, but incremental processes. Google has launched some of its most successful products including Google Maps and GMail following this approach. The Google Maps beta was publicly
launched in February 2005 and stayed in beta for eight months. During that time, Google gained significant feedback from users, incrementally added new features, and gained valuable early-mover advantage, which put it far ahead of slower competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo!.
5. Make operations a core competency. When software is an always-available online service, it is no longer just software development that determines success, it’s operations—that day-to-day ongoing management of data and services. Google’s success is due not just to its patented PageRank search algorithms but how well it builds and runs its data centers. Doing this well
creates competitive significant cost and quality advantages. These operational
strategies and competencies include:
-Using horizontal scaling techniques and commodity hardware
components for simplified fault-tolerance and high availability
-Using low-cost software (typically open source) to leverage
large support communities and resources
-Ensuring that adequate systems monitoring and management
is in place
-Ensuring that operations planning and staffing are first-class
priorities
-Feeding lessons learned from operational experience back into
the core product—features, stability, and scalability
At an application level, this means no longer having the development team
throwing it “over the wall” to operations and forgetting about it—they
must actively integrate deployment, data management, feedback loops, and
metrics.
6. Use dynamic tools and languages. Rapid release cycles and agile, responsive
development models benefit from appropriately flexible development
tools and languages. Employ platform-independent, dynamic languages
such as Python, PHP, and Ruby to enable adaptability to change, speed,
and productivity. Consider development frameworks that focus on simpli-
fication and productivity, such as Ruby on Rails (initially created as part of
37signals’ Basecamp and later released as open source) or Django for Python
(developed as part of the project Ellington and also released as open source
code). 37signals often notes how the strengths of the Ruby programming
language helped enable it to build Basecamp in four months with a team of
2.5 people.
Misconceptions
1. User testing replaces quality assurance. Do not use the perpetual beta as
an excuse for poor quality, stability, or a lack of accountability. This risks
alienating and losing valuable customers. Engaging users as real-time testers
is about validating and refining functionality, not quality.
2. Versions no longer exist. Users may no longer be aware of versions but
underneath the covers they are as vital as ever. Some companies with
extremely short development cycles “ship timestamps, not versions,” yet
source code control is used for both. Development tools need to support
high-quality rapid software development; the more frequent release cycles
require disciplined build, deployment, and support processes.
issues & debates
1. Beware of excess. Just because you can quickly deliver new features to users
does not mean you should. Avoid creating confusion or feature fatigue with
your customers.
2. Beware of release thrashing. Rapid release cycles quickly become counterproductive
and inefficient if not supported by appropriate internal tools and
processes.
3. Uptime is not cheap or easy. Do not underestimate the cost and effort
necessary to achieve high levels of service availability (e.g., “five nines”). As
seen with Salesforce.com’s high-profile reliability issues,64 any service-quality
failures can lead to customer- and public-relations challenges. Because every
application has its own level of criticality—an air traffic control system and
an in-house collaboration tool are quite different—so look to match servicelevel
requirements to needs.
3. Privacy. Instrumentation of applications and profiling user behavior must be
done within appropriate privacy and security guidelines.
4. First impressions. There is always tension between the desire to release a
product early and the reality of making a good first impression. This requires
rigorous focus on feature prioritization—understanding what’s most important—
as well as ensuring that what is released is adequately functional and
reliable.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Web 2.0
While Web 2.0 has become a popular term these days, few people have taken the time to weigh the pros and cons of these evolutionary change. While the advantages are heavily touted by those who are proponents of Web 2.0, there are also those who feel that this technology will do more harm than good.
In this article, I wish to go over the key advantages and disadvantages of Web 2.0, and this will give readers the ability to decide what they think. However, to understand the pros and cons of Web 2.0, it is first important to know what it is. Web 2.0 is an enhancement of the existing Internet. To break it down into a single definition that is relatively simple, Web 2.0 is a system in which online users become participants rather than mere viewers.
With Web 2.0, information can be pulled from a number of different places, and it can be personalized to meet the needs of a single user. Applications can be built on the existing applications that comprise theWeb 2.0 interface. It could be said that Web 2.0 will allow the mass population to communicate with each other and spread ideas rather than receiving their information from a single authority. Based on the descriptions above, it should be easy to see the advantages of this system. Information will flow freely, and people can express their ideas without fear of repression. Web 2.0 would make the Internet a true democratic system, a digital democracy.
The population as a whole would become more informed. Instead of getting information from once source that could have an agenda, they can receive their information from multiple sources, and this will allow them to make better decisions about the world around them. A good example of this is the ability to read newspapers from various countries other than the one you reside in. You can view events from more than one perspective, and this allows you to be a more well informed person. Another powerful advantage ofWeb 2.0 is communication. It has become obvious that the Internet is one of the greatest communication mediums in the world.
In my personal opinion, the Internet surpasses even the telephone and printing press. The reason I say this is because the masses can communicate with each other without the oversight of governments or corporations. This has created an environment where ideas and freedom is allowed to flow unrestricted. People can communicate from around the world for a fraction of the cost they would pay to make an international phone call. Web 2.0 will make the Internet more personalized. Everyone has different needs, and Web 2.0 will allow each individual to have information that is tailored to their needs and interests.
However, there are a number of disadvantages to Web 2.0 as well. Unfortunately, this information is rarely discussed in the media. Too many people push the benefits of Web 2.0 without taking the time to educate people about the problems. One of the key problems with Web 2.0 is dependence. I'm a good example of what happens when you become heavily dependent on the Internet. If your connection should go down, how will you access theinformation that you come to depend on? Because many web services will be offered for free, they won't be secure, and they could easily be targeted by hackers.
*Source of References:
-http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
-http://www.exforsys.com/tutorials/web-2.0/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-web-2.0.htm
