Tim O'Reilly on Web 2.0

I have been quite busy with my job and family works, so posting was a bit light recently. This is the first comeback with a light version of an excellent session by Tim O'Reilly at SAP TechEd this year.

The video is available here but is quite big, so I also include below a summary courtesy of SAPInfo.

"Invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not in the world it is started," Tim O'Reilly quoted at SAP Tech '07, being held in Las Vegas, Nevada from October 1 - 5. The founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media is convinced that, despite past pitfalls and bloated hype, the Web is the crucible (still) producing the greatest inventions of tomorrow. These inventions often carry the descriptor Web 2.0, a term he coined in 2004 and which has permeated technology copy around the world ever since. And Web 2.0 was the focus of his keynote.

O'Reilly commanded the stage nearly as well as he commanded the subject - and exuberantly ran off his six rules of Web 2.0 to an immersed audience:

Rule 1: Users add value
According to O'Reilly, the key to competitive advantage in Internet applications is the extent to which users add their own data to that which is already provided. The result is a database swelling with valuable information. "Don't restrict your ‘architecture of participation' to software development. Involve your users both implicitly and explicitly in adding value to your application," he said.

Rule 2: Network effect by default
Only a small percentage of users will go to the trouble of adding value to an application. Therefore, O'Reilly says, companies need to set inclusive defaults for aggregating user data as a side-effect of their use of the application. O'Reilly's example was the photo sharing application flickr, which, after assembling a critical mass of users, accelerated ahead of then-rival Shutterfly to almost monopolistic proportions. Why? A simple difference in its model: Where Shutterfly made users explicitly mark their photos as public, flickr made the photos public by default.

Rule 3: A new programming paradigm
"We have to turn IT inside out," O'Reilly said. Where architecture is now predominantly based on a processor at the core of a PC platform that runs the software, the architecture of tomorrow consists of data at the core feeding a Web platform that runs the software. The result, he says, will be a transition from a desktop application stack to an Internet application stack.

Rule 4: Software above the level of a single device
"The PC is no longer the only access tool," O'Reilly said. Like Apple with its iPod and iPhone before (most of) them, IT companies need to provide their applications on various devices and design applications from the get-go to integrate services across handheld devices, PCs, and internet servers.

Rule 5: Data is the next "Intel Inside"
"Applications are increasingly data-driven. Therefore, owning a unique, hard-to-recreate source of data may lead to an Intel style single-source competitive advantage," O'Reilly said. "Data is the Intel Inside of these applications, a sole source component in systems whose software infrastructure is largely open source."

Rule 6: Offer Web-service interfaces and reuse data
Web 2.0 applications are built on a network of cooperating data services. Therefore, O'Reilly said, companies need to offer Web-services interfaces and re-use the data services of others. "If the users of your applications aren't surprising you by the way they use them, then you're doing something wrong. If they are surprising you, learn from them." O'Reilly highlighted the success of a few companies who have built very successful Web 2.0 tools - some intentionally, others completely by accident. Craigslist for example, an online classified site with little manpower and even less financial ambition, tore out large chunks of revenues from larger, conventional advertising media by developing a more effective software model.

Comments

[Ngoc Pham]

Very attractive presentation.