Hyperlinking is the foundation of the web As users add new content, and new sites, it is bound in to the structure of the web by other users discovering the content and linking to it. Much as synapses form in the brain, with associations becoming stronger through repetition or intensity the connections grows organically as an output of the collective activity of all web users Yahool, the first great internet success story, was born as a catalog, or directory of links, an aggregation of the best work of thousands, then millions of web users. While Yahoo! has since moved nto the business of creating many types of content, its role as a portal to the collective work of the net's users remains the core of its value Google's breakthrough in search, which quickly made it the undisputed search market leader, was PageRank, a method of using the link structure of the web rather than just the characteristics of Bay s product is the collective activity of all its users; like the web itself, e Bay grows organically in ny's activity can happen. What's more, eBay,s competitive advantage comes almost entirely from the critical mass of buyers and sellers, which makes any new entrant offering similar services significantly less attractive. Amazon sells the same products as competitors such as Barnesandnoble. com, and they receive the same product descriptions, cover images, and editorial content from their vendors. But Amazon has nade a science of user engagement. They have an order of magnitude more user reviews, invitations to participate in varied ways on virtually every page--and even more importantly they use user activity to produce better search results. While a Barnesandnoble. com search is likely to lead with the companys own products, or sponsored results, Amazon always leads with"most popular real-time computation based not only on sales but other factors that Amazon insiders call the"flow around products. With an order of magnitude more user participation, it's no surprise that Amazons ales also outpace competitors. Now, innovative companies that pick up on this insight and perhaps extend it even further, are making their mark on the web Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia based on the unlikely notion that an entry can be added by any web user,and edited by any other, is a radical experiment in trust, applying Eric Raymonds dictum (originally coined in the context of open source software) that with enough eyeballs, all bugs a shallow, to content creation. wikipedia is already in the top 100 websites, and many think it will be in the top ten before long. This is a profound change in the dynamics of content creation Sites like del icio. us and Flickr, two companies that have received a great deal of attention of late, have pioneered a concept that some people call"folksonomy"(in contrast to taxonomy), a style of Elaborative categorization of sites using freely chosen keywords, often referred to as tags. Tagging allows for the kind of multiple, overlapping associations that the brain itself uses, rather than rigid categories. In the canonical example, a Flickr photo of a puppy might be tagged both"puppy"and cute"--allowing for retrieval along natural axes generated user activity Collaborative spam filtering products like Cloudmark aggregate the individual decisions of email user about what is and is not spam, outperforming systems that rely on analysis of the message It is a truism that the greatest internet success stories don't advertise their products. Their ado ption is driven by viral marketing"--that is, recommendations propagating directly from one user to
• Hyperlinking is the foundation of the web. As users add new content, and new sites, it is bound in to the structure of the web by other users discovering the content and linking to it. Much as synapses form in the brain, with associations becoming stronger through repetition or intensity, the web of connections grows organically as an output of the collective activity of all web users. • Yahoo!, the first great internet success story, was born as a catalog, or directory of links, an aggregation of the best work of thousands, then millions of web users. While Yahoo! has since moved into the business of creating many types of content, its role as a portal to the collective work of the net's users remains the core of its value. • Google's breakthrough in search, which quickly made it the undisputed search market leader, was PageRank, a method of using the link structure of the web rather than just the characteristics of documents to provide better search results. • eBay's product is the collective activity of all its users; like the web itself, eBay grows organically in response to user activity, and the company's role is as an enabler of a context in which that user activity can happen. What's more, eBay's competitive advantage comes almost entirely from the critical mass of buyers and sellers, which makes any new entrant offering similar services significantly less attractive. • Amazon sells the same products as competitors such as Barnesandnoble.com, and they receive the same product descriptions, cover images, and editorial content from their vendors. But Amazon has made a science of user engagement. They have an order of magnitude more user reviews, invitations to participate in varied ways on virtually every page--and even more importantly, they use user activity to produce better search results. While a Barnesandnoble.com search is likely to lead with the company's own products, or sponsored results, Amazon always leads with "most popular", a real-time computation based not only on sales but other factors that Amazon insiders call the "flow" around products. With an order of magnitude more user participation, it's no surprise that Amazon's sales also outpace competitors. Now, innovative companies that pick up on this insight and perhaps extend it even further, are making their mark on the web: • Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia based on the unlikely notion that an entry can be added by any web user, and edited by any other, is a radical experiment in trust, applying Eric Raymond's dictum (originally coined in the context of open source software) that "with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow," to content creation. Wikipedia is already in the top 100 websites, and many think it will be in the top ten before long. This is a profound change in the dynamics of content creation! • Sites like del.icio.us and Flickr, two companies that have received a great deal of attention of late, have pioneered a concept that some people call "folksonomy" (in contrast to taxonomy), a style of collaborative categorization of sites using freely chosen keywords, often referred to as tags. Tagging allows for the kind of multiple, overlapping associations that the brain itself uses, rather than rigid categories. In the canonical example, a Flickr photo of a puppy might be tagged both "puppy" and "cute"--allowing for retrieval along natural axes generated user activity. • Collaborative spam filtering products like Cloudmark aggregate the individual decisions of email users about what is and is not spam, outperforming systems that rely on analysis of the messages themselves. • It is a truism that the greatest internet success stories don't advertise their products. Their adoption is driven by "viral marketing"--that is, recommendations propagating directly from one user to
another. You can almost make the case that if a site or product relies on advertising to get the word out it isn't Web 2.0. Even much of the infrastructure of the web--indluding the Linux, Apache and Perl, PHP,ol Python code involved in most web servers--relies on the peer-production of open source, in themselves an instance of collective, net-enabled intelligence. There are more than 100, 000 open source software projects listed on SourceForge. net. Anyone can add a project, anyone can dow load and use the code, and new proje cts migrate from the edges to the center as a result of users putting them to work, an organic software adoption process relying almost entirely on The lesson: Network effects from user contributions are the key to market dominance in the web 2.0 era Blogging and the Wisdom of Crowds One of the most highly touted features of the Web 2.0 era is the rise of blogging. Personal home pages have been around since the early days of the web, and the personal diary and daily opinion column around much longer than that, so just what is the fuss all about At its most basic, a blog is just a personal home page in diary format. But as Rich Skrenta notes, the chronological organization of a blog"seems like a trivial difference, but it drives an entirely different delivery advertising and value chain. One of the things that has made a difference is a technology called Rss Rss is the most significant advance in the fundamental architecture of the web since early hackers realized that cgi could be used to create database-backed websites. Rss allows someone to link not just to a page, but to subscribe to it, with notification every time that page changes. Skrenta calls this"the incremental web. others call it the"live web Now, of course, dynamic websites"(i.e database-backed sites with dynamically generated content) replaced static web pages well over ten years ago. What's dynamic about the live web are not just the pages, but the links. A link to a weblog is and notification for each change. An Rss feed is thus a much stronger link than, say a bookmark or a link to a The architecture of Participati systems are designed t age parbcpation In hs pape, Th a brge databar. The frst, demonstra ted by Yahoo, is to pay people to doit. The to perform the same task. The Open Directory Project, an open source Yahoo competitor,istheresult.ButNapsterdemonstratedathirdway.BecauseNapster titsdetaults to automatically musicthstwasdownloaded, every user automatically helped to buld the vaue of the shared database This same
another. You can almost make the case that if a site or product relies on advertising to get the word out, it isn't Web 2.0. • Even much of the infrastructure of the web--including the Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl, PHP, or Python code involved in most web servers--relies on the peer-production methods of open source, in themselves an instance of collective, net-enabled intelligence. There are more than 100,000 open source software projects listed on SourceForge.net. Anyone can add a project, anyone can download and use the code, and new projects migrate from the edges to the center as a result of users putting them to work, an organic software adoption process relying almost entirely on viral marketing. The lesson: Network effects from user contributions are the key to market dominance in the Web 2.0 era. Blogging and the Wisdom of Crowds One of the most highly touted features of the Web 2.0 era is the rise of blogging. Personal home pages have been around since the early days of the web, and the personal diary and daily opinion column around much longer than that, so just what is the fuss all about? At its most basic, a blog is just a personal home page in diary format. But as Rich Skrenta notes, the chronological organization of a blog "seems like a trivial difference, but it drives an entirely different delivery, advertising and value chain." One of the things that has made a difference is a technology called RSS. RSS is the most significant advance in the fundamental architecture of the web since early hackers realized that CGI could be used to create database-backed websites. RSS allows someone to link not just to a page, but to subscribe to it, with notification every time that page changes. Skrenta calls this "the incremental web." Others call it the "live web". Now, of course, "dynamic websites" (i.e., database-backed sites with dynamically generated content) replaced static web pages well over ten years ago. What's dynamic about the live web are not just the pages, but the links. A link to a weblog is expected to point to a perennially changing page, with "permalinks" for any individual entry, and notification for each change. An RSS feed is thus a much stronger link than, say a bookmark or a link to a single page. The Architecture of Participation Some systems are designed to encourage participation. In his paper, The Cornucopia of the Commons, Dan Bricklin noted that there are three ways to build a large database. The first, demonstrated by Yahoo!, is to pay people to do it. The second, inspired by lessons from the open source community, is to get volunteers to perform the same task. The Open Directory Project, an open source Yahoo competitor, is the result. But Napster demonstrated a third way. Because Napster set its defaults to automatically serve any music that was downloaded, every user automatically helped to build the value of the shared database. This same approach has been followed by all other P2P file sharing services