Web 2.0 wrap up

So, the Web 2.0 conference was pretty good and I’d like to thank John and Tim for inviting me to participate. There was a fair amount of hype present, but that’s to be understood (and I’ve been guilty of a fair amount of irrational cheerleading on this issue myself). Largely, I think that Web 2.0 as it was presented at the conference is a bit of a pipe dream** (partially because guessing about what the Web is going to be like in 3 years is bound to be fraught with difficulty), but there is a lot of neat stuff happening that feels like it’s part of a new kind of Web.

Everyone at the conference had their own definition of what Web 2.0 was about, but I think Bezos got it right when he said it was about machine to machine communication versus the machine to human communication that typified the early days of the Web. And that’s nothing new..it’s just that it’s starting to really take off as an idea that people are buying into, both literally and figuratively. Portable structured data formats (e.g. XML) have been around for several years now, but it wasn’t until an ecosystem evolved around RSS (blogs producing freely available content and newsreaders to read said content) that people had tangible evidence that, yes, this structured data thing has legs.

** Bloggers, journalists, please don’t quote this part out of context because if you keep reading, there’s a Sir Mix-a-Lot-sized but after it.