Web2konomics 101

There are times when discussions about Web 2.0 remind me of the old tale of The Blind Men and the Elephant. Each person has his or her own measure of what makes (or doesn’t make) a Web 2.0 story.

And if you can’t describe the beast, how can you measure it, leave alone estimate its capabilities and values? Or from the part descriptions, can we still approximate what the possibilities are?

Part of the reason why Web 2.0 is so fuzzy, is because the elements described are themselves abstract. Semantic Web, Web as the Platform, Social Networking, Network as Enabler; each of these is enough to trigger off arguments about what each one means.

Yet another part, derives from Ross Mayfield’s Web of Verbs formulation. We google, skype, paypal, blog, meetup and digg during the day - words that describe our activity perfectly to another practitioner, but that can’t be explained in short, jargon free sentences. “I talk around the world using a peer-to-peer Voice-over-IP network from my personal computer”. Simple?

So how does one put together a basis for analysis? Adaptive Path has a framework that makes sense. An attribute based characterisation, with examples illustrating the attributes.

Foundation Attributes :

User created value : A large part of classical economics is based on diminishing marginal utility, increasing marginal cost. But what happens when you stand that on the head – increasing user value as usage goes up, decreasing supply cost as usage increases?

The Long Tail : Chris Anderson’s exposition of how wagging the dog is both feasible and valuable.

Network effects. : Not just simple one to one; consider also the many-to-many.

Experience Attributes :

Decentralisation : Speed, Personalisation, and many more – not to mention self organizing patterns.

Co-creation : Users as producers and consumers. Which simplifies both creation, and delivery.

Remixability : Use. And Re-use. Again, and again, and again.

Emergent systems : Where user behavior shapes the evolution of the service, and therefore of the user.

Each of these drives a virtuous cycle, unlike the classical vicious cycle model. And the interactions of these cycles creates immense value.

More on these tomorrow. But until then, you might find these resources interesting reading.

Resources :

The Blind Men and The Elephant by John Godfrey Saxe

Ross Mayfield’s Web of Verbs

The Long Tail - where it all began.

Brandon Schauer of Adaptive Path, on the DNA of Web 2.0

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