Web 2.0 Myth and reality

The intermediary transaction SEO diagnoses Taobao guest stationmaster buys the Cloud host technology Hall

I've been running for months, using different angles, hierarchies, and methods to illustrate the "little circle" of interpersonal relationships that are especially important in the Web 2.0 era. Coincidentally, Huang Yanda recently in the "digital wall", also clearly pointed out (human) "relationship" Tdz is the focus of WEB 2.0.

However, in the small circle, in the interpersonal relationship, many people's Web 2.0 is filled with all sorts of myths about how Web 2.0 is, or how, Web 2.0 can be achieved; In a recent public address, I just prepared an "extra bonus" topic about the Web 2.0 of Myth and truth. It took me about 15 minutes to finish the lecture, but I was absolutely able to develop an entire discourse, so from this moment on, I'm going to share with you the common myths and the truth behind them.

The first common myth is that "web 2.0 is always Beta. Quite different from the traditional software industry, there are many so-called WEB 2.0 models that always seem to be in the "open beta" phase, rather than waiting for the tdz to be exposed to the public.

The truth behind this myth is a model called "agile development", which is to timely the life cycle of a product dramatically, and to make relative changes quickly based on the actual situation. This development pattern has a very important premise is that developers must be able to understand very directly the user, including the user's needs and reactions, such as the use of details; I explained in the previous article, "from PTT, 2ch and Slashdot," that the developers themselves should be heavy users, And the product also very naturally should start from the small circle around the developer, gradually outward expands.

This development pattern is tdz feasible only when the developer is the core of the community as a whole. In addition to PTT, 2CH and Slashdot, many Web 2.0 Web sites, including Orkut, Flickr, Hemidemi, and so on.

The next common myth is that "web 2.0 is using the tag cloud. The tag cloud is really just a new attempt, not the end result. I have explained the challenges facing the tag cloud in the life cycle of labels, and when we can understand what the label wants to accomplish, it won't be limited by the popularity of the tag cloud.

For any WEB 2.0 service, the real purpose of using a volume label cloud or label is to allow users to have a concise way of communicating "(the content on the web) to the meaning they represent." It is a complex subject of information architecture, taxonomy and even philosophy to show the meaning of different levels and weights in a systematic way. In the era of not much information, people used the "Yellow Pages" This is the unified classification standard from top to bottom, to organize a variety of content; But when the speed of information production began to soar beyond the speed of consumption, or " The production of information itself has become a means of consumption, which is gradually not enough, so people began to use different methods-for example, from the bottom of the semantic construction, to give the meaning of digital content abstraction.

A label is a concise note of semantics. But the semantics cannot be separated from the context, and the context is to truly understand one's indispensable. We can look at the interesting tagging usage in Amazon to further consider the details: in Amazon, the tags are not written by the user, but are provided by a dedicated planner--does that sound quite web 2.0? Seems to be back to the traditional yellow pages, only to put all the categories again flat? If Amazon stops here, it does go back to the old days; but Amazon then gives users a chance to get involved: users can see which of the books they have purchased are labeled, and they can express their opinions about the method--a book labeled with a label, But it should not be so, or some book is not affixed to a certain label, but should be affixed. Amazon will then recommend other books to you based on these tags.

Behind such a small design, there is a very great idea. First, Amazon does not allow you to write labels on your own, but by planning to provide them so that you can avoid a number of problems, including too many tags, ambiguous labels, and repetitive, cumbersome volume labels. If you have a service that really uses Flickr or del.icio.us, you'll find that they all have this problem--someone's personal page opens up with a 五、六百个 volume label, each of which looks as small and meaningless as it is. Someone marked Star Trek with the label of St. (Star Trek), others labeled language therapy (Speech therapy); it was a picture of a dog, someone labeled dog, someone used dogs, someone else golden_retriever ... And none of this will happen to Amazon.

Although these labels were predetermined by the Amazon people, but users can express what the books mean to them--what they are, what they are, what they are not, what they are not, and so on, so these labels are not just a library classification, but a way for users to A concise way of expressing semantics.

In the end, Amazon immediately uses the user's results to correct the book data to be recommended to users in real time. This means that these "semantics" are expressed not only by the users, but also by the users, thereby improving their use of experience. In this way, users will be more willing to participate in the expression (because of this, their experience will be better), but also more accurately grasp the meaning of each label, and the underlying context (because they can immediately feel the relevant changes).

For Amazon, both the label and the label Cloud are "communicative" means and intermediary processes. Also, when you're designing another Web 2.0 Web service, don't fall into the tag myth, but think about what the "meaning" of the user wants to communicate. How do you make these "meanings" work in the right context so that users, other users, and web operators can master these "meanings" rather than being confused by endless words? Whether or not a tag is used, such a site Tdz really moves toward the Web 2.0 only when "meaning" can be easily used and communicated.

Confined to the limit of space, we should rest here. In the next issue, we will continue to explore other Web 2.0 myths and the truth behind them.

The myth and reality 1#e# of the #p #web 2.0

I explained the "beta" and "tags" of these two Web 2.0 myths, which is more of a Web site methodology level; This time I'm going to say "rounded corners" and "ajax", these two are part of the user interface level of myth.

One of the most interesting phenomena in recent times has been the trend of graphic elements used on various sites: The Web interface is flooded with rounded corners, and the metal/water sample gloss, gradient and reflection effects are heavily used. You can even easily make this pattern in an icon-making program such as the IconWorkshop, an online service like HT.

Because this style is very eye-catching, cause many people feel that "web 2.0 is to this taste. But is that really the case?

One of the most important ideas in the so-called Web 2.0 concept is that "unlike Web web", including Web Software or Web as Service, are born under the idea that we can do what is not a Web interface through a Web page interface. " "Unlike the Web web" is actually very close to the "postmodern" this thinking, in fact, if the "postmodern" at this moment tdz happen, I am afraid will be called "Modern 2.0" bar. No, I mean, there's only one attempt to make a page look like a Web page, including a rounded frame.

Knowing this will make it clear that these visual manifestations are just the beginning of many attempts, not the end. It will not be long before designers are disgusted with the effects of rounded corners and gradients and reflections, just as they did in the previous era, and made a completely different design. If you firmly believe that the design must have rounded corners, in about five years will be eliminated; this generation's web page is far more resilient than the previous generation's Web page-we've jumped out of the square design and are jumping off the fixed design.

This means that the Web page is (really) a form of media that has never been seen before--any audience can make the page look different and interact with it in different ways, depending on what they want. A designer is no longer designed to be a style. More in each pipeline to implement the concept of design, so that any user can feel the design of the place; The graphical interface is also the same, constantly breaking through existing rules, never falling into formulaic slots, this tdz is really WEB 2.0.

As with the rounded corners, there is also a technique called AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) that uses JavaScript and XML to create a layer of architecture between browsers and Web servers to reduce traffic between browsers and servers. It also allows users to get input responses more quickly. This technology also broke the old concept of "Web page", and became one of the modern knowledge of Web 2.0, and even became a myth: "web 2.0 is to use ajax".

However, as with the rounded corners, it is important for readers to understand that there are only two reasons for the success of AJAX: The first is that it breaks the original interactive mode of Web pages, and the second reason is that it does make all kinds of operations more intuitive and convenient. But AJAX is just the beginning of many attempts in this generation, not the end; in fact, the manufacturers are making new attempts, including Adobe from Flash to Flex to AIR (previously called Apollo), or a series of products, such as Apple everywhere using WebKit, as well as Linden Lab Second Life, some of the original restrictions on the Web page of the technology to play outside the field, and some of the original does not belong to the Web page technology to bring in, with the content of the Web page tightly linked.

Beyond these AJAX technologies, they are all Web 2.0 attempts; No doubt, they will not be the end of the Web 2.0, the future is bound to have more new play. For Web 2.0来, how to efficiently store and access content, and how to make content more flexible to form meaningful and interesting expressions, these tdz are really important foundations. Starting with AJAX, these attempts and efforts are all seeking to make the interface more usable and to make the content of the site more approachable.

Learn the reasons for their rise from rounded corners and Ajax, but don't be limited to rounded corners and Ajax, Tdz can really survive the Web 2.0 era. Well, this is about the same period, next time let's talk about the Web 2.0 Web site "use" aspects of the myth.

In the first two articles, I explained the myth of Web 2.0 in Web site methodology and user interface, explaining the "beta", "tags", "rounded corners", "ajax", and the ideas behind them. In this installment, as the end of this topic, I would like to explain the "user-provided content" and "mashup" of these two Web 2.0 myths.

In the Web 2.0 era, communities and small circles became more and more important, and all of the Web 2.0 models possessed such elements and encouraged users to interact--and even many of these web sites were produced and provided primarily by users. As some websites thrive in this mode, they quickly burst into popularity, by the merger of large companies, many people who "do a Web 2.0 Web site" As the goal, initially feel that "our site is to be the user to contribute content", that only for users to provide content, will go "successful Web 2.0 Website "Road.

However, many people who set this goal often fail to answer the question, "Why do users think of your Web site production"? Some of them are just "because users want to write things", "users have expressed desire" and so on, and these reasons, in other words, with a specific site, but there is no correlation between.

Especially when the well-known manufacturers of services have to stand on top of the hill, the problems mentioned above will become increasingly significant. Now that you have Flickr, why do you think users want to post photos on your site? Now that you have Youtube, why do you think users will upload the movie to your site? Since there are bloggers and countless blogs, how can users open new blogs on your site?

To dismiss such myths, it is important to understand that the real key part of the WEB 2.0 era is the relationship between "people" and "content"--what is the link between what the user produces and what the users of the output content are. No matter what kind of service, if the user is willing to use the service to produce content, then users will be able to immediately receive reciprocal feedback. This feedback word is "better use of experience"; for example, interacting with Amazon's online bookstore will give users more accurate access to the books they are interested in--not only will the experience increase as they interact and contribute, but these changes are immediately reflected, So users will naturally be happy to engage in these things.

In other words, the question that a successful web 2.0 site has to answer is how the site interacts with users and how to get users to benefit instantly from what they do. In other words, the site from the past simply as a carrier, the role of the platform, transformed into a living organism, users and users, users and content, and content and content between the ecological circle. Not because the user generated content, Tdz created a successful web 2.0 site, but because the site is designed so that users are happy to produce content.

When users are not exposed to cold platforms, and when their actions do change their environment, the content generated by the user is tdz and rich and important.
What's the point? By looking closely at what these users produce, they will find that they are no longer the rigid things of the last century, but interact with other content. When interacting, the content is sampled, blended, tiled, and even mixed with completely different types of content, expressed in different forms. The ニコニコ animation (Nico Nico Douga/nico Video) is the type of subtitle film that goes to Amazon's online bookstore using the recommended bibliography of the volume label cloud, as small as the update on Twitter, or Diggirl's newest, hottest, Are the same: extract parts of elements from the content generated by many users, rearrange them in certain ways, and then present them in a visually-suggestive manner.

If you happen to read the author's previous article, it will be understood: the user output of the bulk of the content is a spoof (くそ/kuso) Ah! and parody--sampling, mixing, collage--is the core of Web 2.0 and the content that these users produce.

What these pranks need is not only the content of the material itself, but also the technical and other aspects. When we understand that the purpose of the site is only to allow users to spoof, we can understand that the technology required to achieve this goal is not necessarily the whole of their own to provide. Web 2.0 is generally thought to be "mixed" myth, but it is the Web site technology and architecture of the spoof-the focus is not on who is to provide these services, but who can put the user's usual environment together to help users to spoof the content.

As a result, the Real Web 2.0 site does not need to write a blog again, do not need to get a group of Wai Ji, do not have to do an online album or video gallery, do not have to make a map system, because users already have bloggers, Google Docs, Google Maps, Youtube, Flickr, Pixnet, Urmap and other services are available, and what they do on so many different sites can be pooled on your site--not just on display, but on the data, content, and tricks.

Next, with OpenID gradually popularized (hey, even Yahoo! This large company also began to use OpenID), before long, users do not even have to register the account everywhere, everywhere "join as Friends", identity authentication, interpersonal relationships and other information will be under the control of users, one application. To make this future possible, it's not "mashup," it's because there are more and more web designers who know how to deal with their websites in an open, rigorous format, through open application interfaces (APIs) that allow websites to collaborate in ways that we can't imagine at the moment, Not competition--this is the spirit of parody, and the Web 2.0 way.

Good WEB 2.0 services, whether technically, socially or legally, can always be used by users to spoof. Any friend who is going to be a Web 2.0, please always keep this in mind before you can master the future development of Web 2.0.