Nelson Ko's Blog » Web 2.0

Google The Incumbent When it Comes to Buzz

Nelson Ko — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 04:46:57 +0000

I recently twittered the following:

Social media conv. wisdom is to start out really open, but that assumes new space. #buzz is an add to old space. Rules change. #google

And a friend of mine commented on Facebook (I’ve setup my Twitter feed to update my Facebook status):

Doesn’t it seem like Google is copying facebook’s status updates? I don’t see what the big deal is.

So I thought I should elaborate. Without writing a full essay on the topic, the short and sweet is that the whole “privacy concerns” issue that Google is facing regarding Buzz is less about the functionality that they added than it is about where they added it. A real life analogy (perhaps far fetched) is that it’s all fine if you started telling all your friends at a party about who else you have been hanging out with in the past week, but if you started telling all (or many, more than you normally would) of your colleagues about who you’ve been having meetings with that week, it could start to get weird (depending on the culture of where you work). The response to my friend’s question above (which touches on additional observations I regret not having the space in Facebook comments to elaborate on):

I was trying to make a more salient point, which is that Gmail and Facebook are vastly different social spaces. Facebook is the “new space” where the purpose is originally and has always been for social networking. Gmail is traditionally the space for email, which for some people overlaps with “social networking” but for many others do not. As such, Google, by introducing functionality that is more effective when open into a system that is traditionally more closed, is bound to cause conflicts, and users (not the technorati, but normal people) will get confused. In order to address this, they have to abide by the rules of the old territory so to speak, which is to start closed and then open up, which curtails adoption momentum. However, this is offset by broader reach to an already installed base. On the other hand, Facebook started out being a really open space and then only progressively introduced privacy controls. Google by introducing similar functionality into Gmail does not have the luxury of progressively adding privacy controls, but has to have it from day one in order not to confuse and alarm normal users. In a way it’s ironic that Google in this case seems not to be the disruptive innovator but instead the incumbent (reference “The Innovator’s Dilemma” Clayton M. Christensen).

OECD Report on Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking

Nelson Ko — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:56:44 +0000

A rather lengthy OECD report on Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking has been published. It covers a fair bit of ground, and provides a good overview in language that can easily be understood by people unfamiliar with these concepts or technology. A number of tables and charts provide useful statistics, especially on the prevalence of user generated content across the web. Covering business models, social, economic and policy implications involving the use of practically every technology covered under the broad Web 2.0 umbrella, this is a useful reference that takes the trouble to define the terminology used in a for-granted manner by most of us involved in the field.

Web 2.0 vs. SOA

Nelson Ko — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:43:51 +0000

Web 2.0 and SOA share many common aspects. Web 2.0 can be conceptualized as a global SOA that is hosting millions of services and thousands of composite applications today.

i-Technology Viewpoint: Is Web 2.0 the Global SOA?
— The subject of Web 2.0 has become profoundly important over the last year. Web 2.0 describes the next generation of the Web as an application platform where most of a user’s software experience resides. The subject is somewhat controversial, but it’s becoming ever more apparent as the successor to monolithic system architecture, prepackaged software, and traditional Web applications.

Moreover, many organizations that are currently implementing SOA will increasingly need to connect their Web-facing applications to their internal SOAs. In a sense, Web 2.0 is about the entire Web being a reusable, shareable, public SOA.

However, there are some marked differences between Web 2.0 and SOA. Web 2.0 emphasizes a social aspect that is missing from SOA. SOA has much more central configuration control and management, while Web 2.0 is freewheeling and decentralized. Web 2.0 also emphasizes rich presentation of data for end-users, while SOA does not itself deal with presentation.

Nevertheless, it is possible that Web 2.0 and SOA will eventually converge into an almost indistinguishable set of software development practices, since SOA and Web 2.0 both contribute much to the value proposition of the other. For example, companies such as eBay and Google are already combining SOA and Web 2.0 for competitive advantage.

Web services, the most common implementation of SOA, make it easy to build custom applications to buy and sell goods on eBay, or to harvest eBay’s listings for market research. At the same time, eBay is full of Web 2.0 features such as linking users to potential buyers or sellers according to revealed interests, and collecting feedback in order to build a trust and peer-rating system. In typical Web 2.0 fashion, web services from eBay, Google (such as Search or Maps) and other vendors are often combined to create mash-ups which are analogous to composite services in SOA.

As organizations increasingly search for innovative applications and services to improve their business processes and to enrich the work environments of their knowledge workers, both SOA and Web 2.0 will be fundamental to the roll-out of collaborative business applications in the enterprise as monolithic technologies do not cater well to the emerging ways of distributed, flexible and mobile teamwork.