…is Who 2.0. That’s according to an interview with Tim O’Reilly, the man who popularised Web 2.0. On Basque news site eitb24, he said that he thinks:
…certain kinds of databases are going to become really big and really useful. We are just in the early stages, digital identity doesn’t really work yet. But that will, you know, start to coalesce, where all these different sources of identity will start to be resolved and connect to each other. And we’ll have a rich identity system you could call Who 2.0.
I definitely agree. Think about the amount of information that Yahoo! has about you. It’s got most of my email, my address book, my pictures and my bookmarks. Google has got my search history, some more of my email and pictures, my RSS feeds, my calendar and another address book. Both know about this blog, and know it’s connected to all that other stuff.
O’Reilly is bullish that this will be empowering: “What web 2.0 teaches is that we’re using people to make computers smarter.” A web that knows what you like, what you probably want to do next, and the information that is relevant to you. Larry Page once said: “The ultimate search engine… would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.” It’s going to need to know a lot about you in order to do that. A move towards single-sign on, whereby your web identity across Yahoo!, Google, Amazon, e-Bay and the rest remains the same, will help to facilitate this ‘rich identity’.
It’s also quite worrying to a lot of people, though. If your Firefox password manager — the single sign-on we have today — turned out to be flawed (gulp) then that’s quite a big portion of your life on show, and abusable. Think about the explosion of identity ‘services’: Garlik, Reputation Defender, OpenID, ClaimID, SAML and OSIS, to name but a few. Identity Theft is already rife — 4% of us suffered it this year alone. Probably a lot of people aren’t yet aware of how much information about them is openly available on the web. As internet use matures, they’ll become more aware, and there will be greater outcry against incursions into our privacy.
The trouble is that we’re moving forward without having cracked the basic problems around security. Password-based systems suffer from user laziness, get hacked or the information given away for free. Smartcards and the like get stolen, forgotten or lost. Public/Private key programs are too complex for most users. Biometric systems are expensive, not universally available and are also said to be ‘too secure’ — once someone figures out how to fake your fingerprints, for example, how will you ever get your identity back? Combinations of these techniques are more secure, sure, but since their ingredients are vulnerable, they’re ultimately vulnerable too. I’m no expert on this matter, but I’m well-aware that there’s considerable unease about the inability of machines to tell if it’s really you.
And that’s why Who 2.0 is going to be such a hot potato. On the one hand we’ve got people like O’Reilly, the top brains at Google and the like trying to make the web do more. To make it work more intelligently according to what sort of person you are, what your interests are and the context. On the other, web users are thinking ‘hang on, how did you know I wanted that? I’m not comfortable with this.’
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Hi Ian,
have a look here:
http://www.fchouse.com/archives/single-passport-for-the-web-20/
there are some thoughts about it, posted some time ago!
Cheers
Well either great minds think alike or fools never differ! ;)
The ‘who watches the watchmen?’ angle wasn’t something I considered here — thanks for the input.
Should I sue him for using Who 2.0 without permission? I had applied for a trademark on it about 4 months ago.
http://evolvingtrends.wordpress.com/2006/06/21/who-20-real-world/
Obviously, only joking re: trademark.
But I don’t think he’s cool. What he did in threatening to sue companies for using the term Web 2.0 wasn’t cool.
Marc
Marc — if you look into the discussions, he didn’t try to trademark web 2.0; the lawyers from the events management company did. It’s a great case study of f**king up on the blogosphere, nonetheless.
Oh. Interesting. I didn’t know that.
Thanks for clarifying.
Marc
With respect to the “Web 2.0″ trademark case, Who 1.0?
I always love a good pun, Roddy, so I looked it up for you.
The Irish Web 2.0 conference that was the original bone of contention went ahead. Don’t believe they were ever prosecuted.
Not sure anyone has tried it on in the States, where the ™ would have a bit more legal weight. O’Reilly himself wouldn’t press for such a case, I’m sure of it, since he apologised for the misunderstanding publically on his blog.
Have you heard about a new story, using web 2.0 concept? It introduces modern China to chinese and non-chinese through a series of detective stories. This story is called Krem Trekker.. Check out the latest Krem Trekker story from http://www.kremtrekker.com
It is becoming more transparent each passing day that Web 2.0 will forever impact the way Internet marketers of all sizes conduct their business. Social Networking sites are popping up left and right — steadily becoming crucial assets to any Internet marketering arsenal.
As companies like, Google, News Corp, Yahoo and MSN pay BIG dollars to acquire Web 2.0 brands they are doing so for a few reasons. First they are looking for creative ways to push new, in-house products and services to targeted consumers and businesses alike. I would have to argue that Google is leading the pack in this arena.
Next, they are trying to position their companies for rapid long-term growth, each headed in strategically aligned directions. In my opinion, all 3 are great companies and not any one of them is better than the other in regards to their directions. Rest assured that the overall concept, audience, and appeal of any recently acquired or soon to be acquired Web 2.0 brand is a solid reflection of the direction the acquiring company is headed in.
Like it or not Web 2.0 is here to stay!
Source — http://www.rxpop.com
Like it or not Web 2.0 is here to stay! It is becoming more transparent each passing day that Web 2.0 will forever impact the way Internet marketers of all sizes conduct their business. Social Networking sites are popping up left and right — steadily becoming crucial assets to any Internet marketering arsenal. As companies like, Google, News Corp, Yahoo and MSN pay BIG dollars to acquire Web 2.0 brands they are doing so for a few reasons. First they are looking for creative ways to push new, in-house products and services to targeted consumers and businesses alike. I would have to argue that Google is leading the pack in this arena. Next, they are trying to position their companies for rapid long-term growth, each headed in strategically aligned directions. In my opinion, all 3 are great companies and not any one of them is better than the other in regards to their directions. Rest assured that the overall concept, audience, and appeal of any recently acquired or soon to be acquired Web 2.0 brand is a solid reflection of the direction the acquiring company is headed in. Like it or not Web 2.0 is here to stay! (source — http://rxpop.com/)
Sorry for the duplicate post above. I think the WordPress platform was experiencing some issues during my initial submission which got hung during my attempt to post. My appologies for hitting the Submit button multiple times trying to correct the error and get my post submitted. I noticed it took it twice somehow and then WordPress sent me to a duplicate message detection page or something like that.
Anyways back to the topic of Web 2.0! What does Web 2.0 mean to you?
[…] From twopointtouch, the next big thing ‘according to Tim O’Reilly’ is Who 2.0. Now, while there is some really interesting discussion here on Identity, what’s the deal with all things 2.0? In a previous article I suggested that Web 2.0 among other things, is a great marketing term but I probably should have refined that to just 2.0. There are so many * 2.0’s out there now but some seem to just jump straight there. I am joining the bandwagon for a while and appending 2.0 to the title of this blog. […]