Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide 151
lamaditx writes "There is a good chance that you have heard about "Web 2.0" — the buzz-word coined by Tim O'Reilly in 2005. You will find several reviews of books about this topic on Slashdot. These cover mainly technical aspects of implementation whereas this book introduces the strategical thinking behind the whole Web 2.0 movement... Web 2.0 is so much more than the technology.' The table of contents is available from O'Reilly, together with a chapter preview. The book does not come with any extras but includes the usual free 45 days access to the book on Safari. When reading a book I usually flip through it quickly to get an impression for it, in this case there are three things which I noted right away." Keep reading for the rest of Adrian's review.
First, I was drawn by the the foreword by Tim O'Reilly. Since I have read his article about Web 2.0 back then I came to the conclusion that the strategy guide is a kind of successor. The next think I was looking at is information about the author. Amy Shuen concentrates on business models and teaches entrepreneurship, strategy, and venture finance on major business schools around the world. Amy is currently a Professor of Management Practice at the "China Europe International Business School" (CEIBS).
| Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide | |
| author | Amy Shuen and Simon St. Laurent (editor) |
| pages | 266 |
| publisher | O'Reilly Media , Inc. |
| rating | 10 |
| reviewer | Adrian Lambeck |
| ISBN | 978-0-596-52996-3 |
| summary | Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations |
Secondly I noticed that there are a lot of footnotes on every page which reference other publications that fit the current topic. This is perfect if you want to drill into the details about a specific issue or lack some background knowledge.
The last thing I notice are the really big "End Notes" which spread across 40 pages and the bibliography which consists of 22 pages. This means that around a quarter of the book is additional information. I am pretty sure this fact is due to the academic roots of Amy Shuen and I think it is appropriate for this kind of guide. Actually this is what I expect from a guide — it should guide me through the topic and summarize the overall picture.
After flipping through the book I started reading it — and couldn't stop. I had to travel to Munich the other day — I boarded the plane with nothing else but the book and my boarding pass. I received the book on Thursday and finished reading it on Saturday.
Reading this book is fun for several reasons. I hate authors that put graphics into their books and don't provide you with additional information. That is not the case in this book, all the graphics are easily read (the only exception is a picture on page 5). Most graphics, functions, and screenshots are self explanatory. From my own experience I know it is not easy to find the right mixture between too much detail and too little.
Another important point are the numerous case studies in every chapter. Of course they do not include all information and details but they emphasize the theoretical point and provide you with a good feeling about the business case. Reading these kind of "historical" stories also adds some life to the book. Even though I have written a paper about Google's Page Rank algorithm and therefore a rough understanding of it, I learned many details about the competition between Google and GoTo (later known as Overture) that I did not know. It also teaches you that the effortless looking success of a company like Google involved tough times in the past. Running the Web 2.0 track is not always that easy as it looks like.
Talking about the big names: This book is interesting for anybody involved in a Web 2.0 (or escaping Web 1.0 ;-) ) environment no matter if you are working in a big, small, or start-up company. Amy stresses this point several times as she points out "Your business probably isn't Facebook, LinkedIn, or even something that looks much like them".
So how are you be able to transfer the knowledge you gained from the book to your own Web 2.0 concept? Amy to the rescue. Each chapter ends with a "Lessons Learned" section to summarize the most important points. After that she provides you with a section "Questions to Ask" which cover strategic and tactical issues with these tools at hand. The last chapter will also support you to "apply Web 2.0 strategic thinking to your business". Maybe you are writing a business plan or a project proposal to get your idea started. The last chapter will help.
In the end I would like to talk about the rating I am assigning to this book. I rated it as 10 which means it is "excellent" or one might call it a "classic work". I have not talked much about the content of the book because I did not want to provide you with a plain summary. I expect this book to become one of the "must-read" in business as well as technical classes since more and more business models will evolve in a Web 2.0 environment. Another reason is the well explained and easy to read writing style. Technical terminology is kept to a minimum thus not requiring a lot of prior knowledge.
Adrian Lambeck is a master student in "Information and Media Technologies" in Germany and thinks about starting his own (Web 2.0 ?) business.
You can purchase Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
web 2.0 doesn't exist! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:web 2.0 doesn't exist! (Score:5, Funny)
Speak for yourself. I'm running Web 2.3 beta 5, and it's nice to have a numeric metric that proves how much I'm ahead of the rest of you chumps.
Re:web 2.0 doesn't exist! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:web 2.0 doesn't exist! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Chump.
O'reilly is a thief! (Score:2)
Bastard stole my idea after I called his second wife "divorce 2.0"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I hear Microsoft is about to release their version of Web 2009 in Home, Business, Premium, and Ultimate Editions.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, in 2014.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
ORLY?
You're just miffed because... (Score:2)
...you're still on 2.0, while anybody with any hipness is all the way on 4.5.
next release (Score:1)
I'm gonna hold out on buying it till they release it in book 2.0 format. My new eyes 2.0 aren't backwards compatable.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's just a way of succinctly describing various developments (both social and technological) which have occurred on the web in the last few years. It's true that people tend to overuse it and the point that it becomes a meaningless buzzword, but here the use is very appropriate. I don't find it insulting or dumb at all - what's in a name?
Twitter is up...down...up...down...Whats on TV? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really how we expected the Internet to develop.
Re: (Score:2)
Well at least there are options like the Google App Engine [google.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
With Google, the current epitome of Web 2.0-ness, there's no such thing as a 'central server outage'. Google has no 'central servers'. Such is the benefits of distributed computing.
Re: (Score:2)
"Does Web 2.0 mean that n-tier solutions are retreating to client-server?"
Re: (Score:1)
No. With things like Silverlight and Adobe AIR, I contrarily predict an explosion of desktop-like n-tier solutions will become available.
Re: (Score:2)
Could you argue that the flagrant use of XmlHTTPRequest() to give you that shiny Web 2.0 experience binds the browser so tightly to the server as to be more like client-server?
Daring a bit of research, Wikipedia clearly answers no:
Though it can do synchronous fetches, it is virtually always asynchronous, due to the greater UI responsiveness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Well, that's what the first A in AJAX stands for, after all.
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone else noticed that almost all Web 2.0 applications are strongly centralised and cannot survive a central server outage? Not really how we expected the Internet to develop.
They'll survive outages of your own computer, don't they? When all your little friends in your network lose their Internet connections, does the site go down? I mean I'm sure global thermonuclear war would knock Facebook off the net (thank God) but these days most non-DoD networks are not being designed with a narrow focus on global thermonuclear war.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's already a problem. Most desktop apps for taxes do regular updates from the server to ensure they have the latest information. They also allow for e-filing, which is another area of connectivity that could fail.
The solution is not to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that it's too hard. The solution is to size capacity for the expected load. Companies lik
That is the big plus to cloud computing... (Score:2, Insightful)
You DON'T (in theory) have to worry too much about scalability. At least not the infrastructure side of it. So if you're caught being slashdotted, you're OK.
Not saying these services are all the way there yet, but it appears to me that there is a whole class of sites that more and more are likely to have high traffic variability. It can be pretty hard to predict too. Cloud style utility computing is definitely one answer to that.
So it would seem to me that 'learning how to size their solution' may be exactl
Re: (Score:2)
The authorities in the UK had exactly that problem with tax returns a few months ago. IIRC, they ended up having to extend the official deadline for filing, because so many people tried (perfectly within the rules) to file their returns on the last day, but couldn't because the system was down.
centralized server vs. distributed server (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone else noticed that almost all Web 2.0 applications are strongly centralised and cannot survive a central server outage?
A "Web 2.0" application being based on a strongly centralized server is a problem of defective implementation, rather than defective concept.
Google is an example of good implementation, i.e. distributed server with no central chokepoint.
central (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone else noticed that almost all Web 2.0 applications are strongly centralised and cannot survive a central server outage?
Partly true, and in that, partly necessary.
A lot of what's going on in what I will reluctantly call the "Web 2.0" world is built around database-centric frameworks. The SQL RDBMS is a strongly centralized approach, and since it was invented in the days of the mainframe, that's not a big surprise. So if you start out with a normal PHP or Rails setup, you've implicitly bought into centralized thinking whether you need it or not.
Sometimes, that centralization is a pretty poor approach, and compute offerings from Amazon and EC2 push people away from that. It's a struggle for some; people who have only built SQL-backed web apps have a strong bias to centralization. It always worries me when I talk with a team that can only talk about "the database" (or "the server" or "the application"); if you grow sufficiently, one of anything isn't enough.
Sometimes, though, centralization is legitimately hard to avoid. A lot of Web 2.0 apps are inherently social, and social graphs are hard to partition. If you are moving to London and want to find people in your social network who live there, that's not an easy problem to distribute, especially if you need things to stay up to the minute and work reliably.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
XML! Everyone knows that XML is the answer! ...please don't hurt me, I'm only joking. :(
XML isn't enough anymore... (Score:2)
...we have to standardize on RICH XML frameworks to demarginalize our proactive data delivery paradigm.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think there is a good generic recommendation. It depends on your application.
The main thing that I think people need to do is to think beyond the notion of The One True Database and focus more on grouping data and related computation behind clean interfaces. Sometimes behind that interface you use a traditional SQL database, and sometimes you do something else. But so many people build systems where the database is both the internal API and the single integration point, turning a historical accident
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't have to be 'strongly centralized':
You can have multiple database servers geographically dispersed in the cluster. Network Attached Storage could also be dispersed. Similarly you could have geographically dispersed web servers (probably congruent with your data cluster and NAS nodes). Your switch would provide redirection to properly distribute traffic throughout this network. Only the entry point would need to be centralized...you could even publish direct URIs for the distributed nodes to av
Re: (Score:2)
If you watch what the big players are doing - they appear to be positioning exactly that way (dispersed data centres)
They are doing dispersed data centers, but often not around SQL servers. See Google's BigTable and Amazon's Dynamo as examples of this. An SQL database is inherently strongly centralized, no matter how much magic you do with your network and hardware. BigTable and Dynamo have a different philosophy, ones that puts a little more explicit burden on programmers, but scales much better because their philosophy matches the realities of distributed computation.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Web programming gay
fixed it for ya !
Priceless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Priceless (Score:5, Insightful)
Web 2.0 is all the things you could do with popups and IFrames across an intranet, except now we use XMLHttpRequests, and you don't have to worry about the secretaries with the PII 350 getting pissy as their machine chokes to death on Javascript.
Not really that exciting.
Re:Priceless (Score:5, Funny)
What are you, some kind of commie? Look, hype is all we have left. Hype is a precious natural resource and you are squandering it. If people don't get pumped up about the idea of social interactive service oriented web enabled crap, how will we get another wave of ridiculous investment? Without that wave of investment, when will we regain our Aeron chairs and foosball in the lobby?
What, do you expect us to work for a living? That's for suckers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
90's, please. I used to do it by sending old Yeller up the hill to let me know when our cow Betsy would get home from the pasture. It worked really well most of the time except sometimes when he'd get lost on the way back and he'd get a race condition. As time passed it got worse, he was doing core dumps in the livingroom daily. That's when we knew we had to put him down.
Don't even get me started on the Carrier Pidgeon Protocol.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope... (Score:3, Insightful)
Pundits want to explain it (hi Tim!) businesses want to understand it. But we continuously end up talking about the technologies used (yay AJAX! yay Javascript!) or the days most popular implementations (OMG Social Social Revolution!) while we miss or ignore the simple fact t
Re: (Score:2)
What I'm arguing is that the only significant things that have changed is that you can rely on your users having a high speed connection and a computer powerful enough to run JavaScript applications in a browser without choking and dying. Nothing particularly significant or innovative has changed on the software side, it's just stepwise refinement of hardware allowing the tools to be used for things that were obvious to any developer worth their salt back in 2000.
Re: (Score:2)
Which brings me to the point: you want a strategy guide for web 2.0? I got it right here. It's not even mine, I read it on some website [zuavra.net] a while ago:
Re: (Score:2)
And all that noise you're hearing is business trying to make sense of a changing landscape and pundits gushing to provide (seemly mostly wrong) answers.
So next time you hear someone froth up about the wonders of AJAX and the Web 2.0 maybe you can just smile to yourself knowing all their really trying to
Re: (Score:2)
It's more then that (and I'm sure you know it).. (Score:5, Insightful)
What's news is websites have become services.
Mull that over for a second if you want.
Now days there are 2 kinds of websites: destinations and services.
A destinations major draw is it's content and it relies on this content to draw visitors and to thereby grow its site. A service will also have content, but like the name suggests a service also provides it's visitors with services and it relies on its content *and* the usefulness of its services to grow the site.
Now if we extrapolate that for a second we can create two imaginary retailers: musicshop01.com and musicshop02.com
Musicshop01.com is a good old music retailer. They sell cds, lps and t-shirts and have a great selection. People love to go to musicshop01.com and find the latest music.
Musicshop02.com just opened and they have a similar selection, but the owners a bit younger with some computer experience and a few programming buddies. People can browse catalogs and lists just like they could at musicshop01.com but they start to notice a few other features: they can create tags, add comments, create and manage lists, add ratings or reviews, view personal history, suggestions, search these items, add friends and send and receive recommendations. The website owner is happy because the cost of this user-generated content is very low (increased overhead) and the users are happy because the peer-generated content provides additional information which can prove useful.
Over time users realize that the services provided by musicshop02.com are convenient and can save them time and can help them find products that they might not find otherwise.
At the same time growth at musicshop01.com has been flat and is now beginning to drop as users become increasingly familiar with the services available at musicshop02.com.
Welcome to the social revolution.
Re: (Score:2)
they can create tags, add comments, create and manage lists, add ratings or reviews, view personal history, suggestions, search these items, add friends and send and receive recommendations.
Until the user realizes they've been suckered into working for the website owners. Then they become much more selective about what they contribute. The only ones left are the young, the naive and the marketing parasites all of whom tend to take away value rather than add value.
No social revolution. Just a new way to ta
Re: (Score:2)
I thought about this for a while myself. I work from both angels 1) as a user who values my privacy *and* my freedom 2) as a technology professional working in the development industry.
The thing you need to understand is that while yes, companies *are* rubbing their hands together thinking user generated content is a big fat freebie, no, that's not how it actually works (or will work out).
The thing to remember is that th
Re: (Score:2)
But the reason I make the distinction is because I think it's important to reiterate the over arching concept, which is the shift towards services, and how that really has been a useful and fundamental change in our focus.
Once we establish that it's easy to see that social services are/(*cough* well, can) be a useful subset of possible services. But more importantly we can see much more clearly what makes todays site more (services based) or less (destination based) relevant and t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You say there are two kinds of web sites. Yet, ALL web sites are destinations. If usefulness is what gages service-ness then, well, a useless destination is one that no one goes to, so all destinations are pretty much services to a degree.
Your example translated into a real case is pretty much what amazon.com and buy.com were during the first IT bubble, so bringing that up now 10 years later is not news. In fact, if you consider amazon or google or match.com or myspace or ebay to be services, well they've b
A strategy guide for the interwebs? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Dude, I still can't get past the social networking level. WTF am I supposed to do? I've got 12M friends, and I guess I have to out-friend that guy Tom, but every time I get a new one he gets like 5. Also, some of my friends are dying off or de-friending me while I'm not looking.
Also, anybody know if the Web 2.1 patch fixes the endless Wikipedia loop? Sometimes I have to restart my browser just to get out of it, although this technique doesn't always work with Firefox 3.
Re: (Score:1)
Dude, I still can't get past the social networking level. WTF am I supposed to do? I've got 12M friends,
You're doin' it wrong. It's like WarGames: The only winning move is not to play.
Re: (Score:2)
Damn this struck me funny for some reason. Well done, sir.
Re: (Score:2)
Blink (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that really supposed to be a selling-point for this crowd?
Re: (Score:2)
Strategy guide? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Strategy guide? (Score:5, Funny)
On the other hand, there's a C cheat code as well: your character moves and attacks lightning fast, but you have to write your own spells. And robe. And wizard hat.
The secret (Score:5, Funny)
The boss is easy to beat. You give him a lot of venture capital, ask for fifty new features that confuse the user interface and when his user base starts to dwindle, you pull the funding.
"Strategical"??? (Score:1)
Who writes your stuff? President Bush?
"Strategic" is an adjective, exactly the word you need there. "Strategical" is a nonsense word.
The Best Web 2.0 Strategy Is... (Score:2)
... Figure out what Web 3.0 is, then do that.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Web 3.0 = FUFMe
web 3.0 is already more than 2 years old (Score:2)
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/web3point0/ [alistapart.com]
It was obvious that Web 3.0 was the answer more than 2 years ago. Why are slashdotters so slow?
Web 364.29891 (Score:5, Interesting)
The next think I was looking at is information about the author
Did they proofread the book or rely on a spill chucker two made surly tea spilled thins wright?
Amy Shuen concentrates on business models and teaches entrepreneurship, strategy, and venture finance on major business schools around the world. Amy is currently a Professor of Management Practice at the "China Europe International Business School"
This is the LAST person I would want to read a webmaster guide by.
provide you with a good feeling about the business case
I finally figured out the difference between web 1.1 and web 2.0. Web 1.1 was about content, web 2.0 is about filthy lucre.
This book is interesting for anybody involved in a Web 2.0 (or escaping Web 1.0 ;-) ) environment no matter if you are working in a big, small, or start-up company
There it goes again. As if the internet or the WWW is only about businesses and money. Dammit, Jim, I'm a nerd, not a businessman!
I thank you for the review; I see this is not the book for me. You may have saved me checking it out of the library.
Re: (Score:2)
Coincidentally enough, I was in a bookstore yesterday looking at this book and considering whether or not to buy it. As someone interested [blogspot.com] in Web 2.0 (technology and economics), I thought that I might pick it up and give it a read. Also, the book was already discounted.
My impression after scanning the TOC and leafing through random pages was a sense of the author attempting to pander to that crowd who is interested in adding the Web 2.0 check mark to their business. It's kind of like a digital "keeping u
Re: (Score:2)
Most, if not all, human activities are about 'profit', either material or psychological (or both). In the end, you wouldn't have the Internet or computers if people did not have the drive to gain 'profit'.
Do NOT upgrade to Web2.0 until the 1st service pak (Score:3, Funny)
Do NOT upgrade to Web2.0 until at least the 1st service pack!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm a former beta tester for dirt. It's still full of bugs, nobody ever bothered to write a service pack. So we may not actually get a web 2.0 servoce pack.
Bzzzzzz (Score:5, Funny)
This is the first in O'Reilly's new Buzzword series. Coming soon: "Blogospheres", "Synergy", and "Social Cloudcasting"
Re: (Score:1)
"Social Cloudcasting"
Please tell me you're making that up. Surely it must be a joke, right?
Re:Bzzzzzz (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, you caught me. But the first person to run with it ought to be able to pick up a few million in VC money.
Re: (Score:1)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Most websites on the internet are porn.
Most porn sites are not free.
Therefore, your idea is already used by most of the internet.
Steps to Making a Successful Web 2.0 Site (Score:3, Funny)
2. Make sure there are tons of shiny multicolored buttons for everything even when not necessary
3. Implement a buddy system even though your site has nothing to do with anything social
4. ?????
5. PROFIT!!1!11
Still no answer (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
At risk of answering a facetious post seriously, period characters in version numbers (which "web 2.0" is an homage to) are pronounced "point".
P2P is Web 2.0 (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm waiting (Score:3, Funny)
For the revision that will cover Web 2.0.98, patchlevel 4.
Web 2.0 is the new golf (Score:2, Insightful)
Something for the rich and tasteless to sink their cash into, with any expectations of long-term success being relegated to wishful bar talk.
Also, it's a good browse spoiled.
Web 2.0 PC98 (Score:3, Funny)
There is a good chance that you have heard about "Web 2.0"
WTF is this, 2002 ? Is this book written for the Amish ?
Web 2.0 is now old hat. The magpies have moved on to bigger, shinier garbage like AIR and Silverlight.
Re: (Score:2)
technically AIR and Silverlight is part of the whole Web 2.0 buzz crap.
Though I saw scary shit recently. Some CMS system advertising Web 3.0 features >.> I wanted to murder someone.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm just waiting for Web 4.0 to do away with HTML entirely, going 'round full-circle back to ActiveX binaries. Screw CSS, I'm using GDI primitives!
A good teacher (Score:4, Funny)
In the same vein, readers might also be interested in these other entertaining books:
"Running a Business", by Someone Who's Never Run A Business
"Orgies: How To Feel Your Way Through If You're Blind", by Helen Keller
Re: (Score:2)
The review was written by the student. Great proofreading.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, wtf, it's just reading, not proofreading. Pah, it's midnight here, too late for me. :(
A quarter of the book is wasted (Score:2, Interesting)
Is that even a word? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ummmm...strategical?
Excuse me (Score:2)
Review = 2 out of 10 (Score:2)
"I have not talked much about the content of the book because I did not want to provide you with a plain summary."
- because telling me what the book was about would be.. like totally wrong or something.
captcha: docile .. similar to the sheep buying into web 2.0
Does it cover this? (Score:2)
Does the guide cover how to beat the end boss of the Internet?
Let me just say this. (Score:2)
If you are reading a 2.0 strategy guide now, you have definitely missed the bandwagon. It may indeed be a great book, but hindsight is 20/20.
Re: (Score:2)
Y'all need to try harder. Just one -1 Troll ain't gonna cut it. I need at least two more -1 Overrated and a +1 Funny. I have a birthday coming up, get busy please.