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Web 2.0

Roger ClarkeXamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, CanberraVisiting Professor, Uni. of Hong Kong,

U.N.S.W., A.N.U.

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/...

.../EC/Web2C{.html, .ppt}

Uni Koblenz – 22 May 2007

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Web 2.0Agenda

• ‘Web 1.0’• Three Views of Web 2.0

• The Marketer / ‘Neo Dot.com’ Movement

• The Technical View• The Communitarian View

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The Web ... or ‘Web 1.0’

• 1991- ‘static HTML’• 1992- Ways to Discover a Web-Page• 1994- HTML customised 'on the fly',

using database extracts• 1996- Markup; and Display Control• 1995- Means to Manipulate Data,

Display• 2003- Web Services

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‘Static’HTML

InternetServicesProvider

FilePossessor

Requestor

InternetAccess

Provider

A: Upload

B1:Request

B2: Request

B3: Response / Download

B4:Response / Download

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Ways To Discover a Web-Page• Guess the URL (e.g. cocacola.com,

audi.com.de, uhk.hk, sydneyopera.org)• Know the URL (e.g. see it on a bus or

business card, have it stored in a bookmark/favourites)

• Receive the URL in an email or other message

• Follow a Hot-Link in another web-page

• Follow down a Menu Hierarchy• Search for it. This may be based on:

• a free-text concordance or index• a meta-data index or catalogue

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Search Architectu

re

TheInternet Web-

Servers Client (Web-

Browser)

ReferenceList

Spideror

Robot

Indexer Indexor

Concordance

QueryEngine

ResultsFormatter

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Markup; and Display Control

• SGML• HTML• XML

• XHTML• XML DTD• XML Schema, RDF• UBL

• CSS• XSL

• XSLT• SMIL

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Means to ManipulateData and Displays

Client-Side Processing• Cookies• Javascript /

ECMAScript• Plug-ins, esp. Flash,

Acrobat, QuickTime• Java (with ‘sandbox’)• ActiveX/.NET

(without!??)

Server-Side Processing• Customised HTML

e.g. Apache SSI, MS ASP, PHP, ...

• Web-Forms• State Maintenance• CGI Scripts• ‘eCommerce Web-

Servers’

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The Primary Web-Services Protocols

Find using UDDI Universal Description,Discovery and Integration

Catalogue using WSDL Web Services Def’n Language

Invoke using SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol(XML-RPC)

Format using XML eXtensible Markup Language_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Transmit using HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocol

I.P.S. Internet Protocol Stack generally

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Web Service ArchitectureSTEP 1

Create Catalogue Entryusing WSDL

ServiceRegistryService

UserServiceProvider

STEP 2Discover Service

using UDDI

STEP 3Invoke Service

using SOAP

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‘Web 2.0’ – by Marketing Cliché

A way of thought, rather than a technology:• ‘The world has changed’ (get with it)• ‘Loosen up’ (you can’t control)• ‘Open up’ (you can’t stay closed)• ‘Be accessible’ (not just web-browsers)• ‘Involve’ (get users on the inside)• ‘Mutate’ (continuous improvement’ /

‘gamma’;or is that just an excuse for ‘permanent beta’?)

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Web 1.0 Web 2.0• DoubleClick Google AdSense• Ofoto Flickr• Akamai BitTorrent• (mp3.com iTunes) • (Napster, FastTrack BitTorrent)• Britannica Online Wikipedia• personal websites web-blogs / blogs• page views cost per click• publishing participation• content mngt systems wikis• directories (taxonomy) tagging

(‘folksonomy’)• stickiness syndication

After O’Reilly (2005)

‘Web 2.0’ – by Difference

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‘Web 2.0’ – by Features

• Content Syndication

• Advertising Syndication

• Storage Syndication

• The 'Architecture of Participation'

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‘Syndication’• Originally, a ‘syndicate’ was

a group of investors, cf. a joint venture• More recently, a means of distribution

esp. of media material e.g. sports photos, cartoons, and opinions by commentators

• Recently, arrangements by which a party that originates content (a) licenses others to utilise it, and(b) facilitates dissemination of copies of it, and of metadata about it

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‘Content Syndication’• Posts to Usenet News, Fora, eMail-Lists• Personalised eNewspapers

(originally by fax, then email, ...)• eMail Notification when a web-page changes• Mirrors of web-page content• ‘Web-Logs’ / ‘Blogs’• 'Who I'm Reading' feature of blogs

• 'Feeds' of recently-published headlines & URLsusing XML/RDF-based RSS and Atom

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Prof. Dr. Miriam Merkel

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‘Advertising Syndication’• Overture (2001)• Google AdWords

• From ‘Pay-per-ad’ (per insert/appearance)• To 'Pay-per-click’ (per click on an ad):

• Advertisers use metadata (‘keywords’)to indicate what the ad is about

• They do pay to use a keyword• They don’t pay for an ad display• They do pay when someone clicks on it

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Maturation of ‘Pay-per-Click’

• Initially implemented on relatively small numbers of web-sites that attract large numbers of visits

• Then deployed on vast numbers of much smaller web-sites through ‘affiliation’

• Theoretical basis: 'long tail' dictum• Practical application: Google AdSense

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Advertising Industry View• Page-Owners make space on their pages

available to advertising intermediaries (AIs)• Page-Owners provide data to AIs so that AIs

can select the most relevant ads to display (and/or the highest-paying ads ...)

• Page-Owners provide data to the AI that enables the delivery of the ads into the reserved space in the requestor's browser-window (requestor’s IP-address)

• AIs can target ads into diverse communities

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Consumer View• The AI pushes a transaction to the user,

even though the user made no request to it• The AI can include in the payload any

available device, e.g. active code, web-bugs• The AI can place non-consensual, long-term

cookies on the unsuspecting requestor's device – in defiance of IETF RFCs 2964-65

• If the user clicks on an ad, a substantial set of interlocking data becomes available to the AI (incl. cookie-contents, the IP-address, and associations with the original request)

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‘Storage Syndication’• From Client-Server architecture• To Peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture

• Napster in 1998• Kazaa/FastTrack in 2001• eDonkey/Gnutella in 2003• BitTorrent in 2005• ...

• Distributed Catalogues• Distributed Repositories

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P2P Differentiated from Client-Server

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P2P Supports Many Payloads, incl. Ads

• P2P applications:• Music• Images• Video• Software• News• Virus Signatures

• The Business Model for commercial P2P has been ad-based from the very beginning

• The ads are stored on users’ devices, and disseminated from users’ devices

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'The Architecture of Participation'

aka ‘Harnessing Collective Intelligence’

and ‘The Surging Wisdom of Crowds’

• Self-Publishing / 'Vanity Press'Now called ‘Content Syndication’

• Collaborative Publishing:cf. CSCW – shared text-documentsWikis generally, esp. Wikipedia

• Free-Text Metadata:‘folksonomy', ‘tags’, ‘tag-clouds’

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Tag Cloud for Web 2.0from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_clouds

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'The Architecture of Participation'

Benefits for Business• Affiliated Advertising Space• Raw Material for Data Mining, esp. by

Google• Training Ground for Contributors

People are lured into providing gratis services

in pseudo-community environments, e.g.• Amazon book reviews• product reviews• product FAQs, which are written and

maintained by unpaid volunteers rather than as a supplier support service

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Web 2.0 – The Technical Perspective

• Additional Facilities:• ‘Mixing’• ‘Mash-ups’ – more or less ad hoc

combination of content from multiple sources e.g. maps and descriptive data

• 'Lightweight Programming Models' – in reaction against over-blown ‘Web Services’

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‘Lightweight Programming’ – AJAX

• 'Asynchronous JavaScript and XML'• A Successor to the vague ‘Dynamic HTML’• Applies well-established tools:

(X)HTML/CSS -> XML, JavaScript/ECMAScript • Utilises the XMLHttpRequest Method of HTTP

in particular to enable partial-window-refresh• Involves an 'Ajax engine' within the

browser, which intercepts and processes user-requests and server-responses

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AJAX Features• Server-side control over user interface, esp.

to overcome the ‘frequent blank-screen’ experience

• Proprietary features in MSIE have defeated the Web. With AJAX, a single application can/could work consistently on all client-platforms. So the Web’s original universality is recovered (maybe only briefly)

• Corporate View:Server-side control over consumer device, data

• Consumer View:Subversion of the concept of the WebHijack of the functions of the browser

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Architecture of Participation? of Exploitation?

The Web era has seen continual attempts to expropriate communitarian effort, and 'monetise' it:

• "There will be billboards along the Information Superhighway" (Kelly 1994)

• Proprietisation of Internet Spaces (CompuServe, AOL, Apple eWorld, many M$ failures, 1995-96)

• 'Web-Casting' (1997)• 'Info-mediaries' (Hagel & Armstrong 1997)• ‘Portals’ (1998-)• Consumer Profiling (1999-)

–––– The Dot.Com Implosion (2000-05) ––––• will we ever see 'mass micro-marketing', 'mass

customisation', 'one to one' consumer marketing?

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The Communitarian Perspective:

An Architecture of Collaboration?

• Wikipedia• a reference repository• collaborative authorship

• Flickr:• a photo repository• free-text meta-tags• hence a ‘folksonomy’

(cf. taxonomy)• hence ‘tag-clouds’

(word-size in displayproportional to frequency)

• Del.icio.us:• a bookmark

repository• with free-text

meta-tags• on to ‘folksonomy’

and tag-clouds• YouTube:

• a video repository

• on to ...• ...

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What Role in Web 2.0 forSocial Networking Services ?

• ?• Plaxo• ...• LinkedIn• ...

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What Role in Web 2.0 forVirtual Worlds?

• Board-games?• MUD (Multi-User

Dungeon)Trubshaw, Essex University, UK, 1979

• CyberspaceGibson’s ‘Neuromancer’, 1983-84

• The MetaVerseStephenson’s ‘Snowcrash, 1992

• SecondLifeRosedale, Linden Labs, 1999

• ...

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Three Views of Web 2.0

• The Marketer / ‘Neo Dot.com’ MovementMake money by co-opting collaboration

• The TechnicalGet inside users’ devices and do things

• The CommunitarianCollaborate

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Some References Worth Reading

• The O’Reilly Article (30 Sep 2005):http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

• The Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2but see also entries on specific topics (Flickr, Tag Clouds, etc.)

• Bill Higgins on Ajax and REST (2 Oct 2006):http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/wa-ajaxarch/

• Chris McEvoy’s ‘Why Ajax Sucks’ (Dec 2005):http://www.usabilityviews.com/ajaxsucks.html

• For lots of Vacuity, see the Web 2.0 ‘Summits’:http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/49/schedule.html