Australian Web 2.0

So this week the Churchill Club is running a program, called Australian Web 2.0 Success. There seems to be a hang-up in Australia about what Web 2.0 actually is, and whether we have any successful companies in that space. When asking around, there seemed to be a lot of consent that Atlassian, was one of our most successful Web 2.0 Companies, as they supply Web 2.0 software to many of America’s Fortune 500. However there was also a dissenting voices, that say Atlassian supply Enterprise Software that that produces Web 2.0 functionality, and are not actually a Web 2.0 company. Their products include Wiki’s and bug trackers.

So what’s Web 2.0?

It appears that Tim O’Reilly http://radar.oreilly.com first used the term Web 2.0 in 2003, but many of the things (applications, technologies, methodologies) talked about as Web 2.0 date back to the beginning of the world wide web in 1989.

There are many definitions for Web 2.0, and plenty of information can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2 , however the main thrust is as follows. Web 1.0 was about placing traditional business models on the Web. Web 2.0 is about taking the natural attributes of the internet, and using them to make new business models. For example, Web 1.0 was online publishing, Web 2.0 is about blogging (grass level content generation). Web 1.0 is putting your putting up a home page, Web 2.0 is about creating a MySpace or Facebook page that is linked to others in your social network. Web 1.0 is creating tree like structures of categorisation, Web 2.0 is about tag clouds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_clouds.

So does the definition matter?

I would argue not really, as there are lots of definitions and they mean different things to different people. To the technologist, Web 2.0 is about technologies such as XML, AJAX, SOAP and Ruby on Rails. (Yes these really are computer technologies). To content providers, its about user generated content, to marketers its all about authentic messages, and to financiers its about grabbing market share before layering in products and services.

To members of social networks or tribes I am sure the definition matters, but since I’m not an anthropologist, I won’t comment further.

Are Atlassian a web 2.0 Company?

Form my point of view they are, as they are harnessing the power and attributes of the internet, to ramp up their business, which just happens to be enterprise software that provides web 2.O functionality. I hope this makes sense.

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