“Web 1.0 was about connecting computers and making technology more efficient for computers. Web 2.0 is about connecting people and making technology efficient for people.”
So, what actually changed between the emergence of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0? In this chapter, we’ll compare Web 1.0 companies and technologies with Web 2.0 companies and technologies to begin developing the design patterns that distinguish them. We use the term “Web 1.0” to refer to the Web as it was understood in the period of around 1995–2000, though obviously it’s not a simple matter of dates. To help us get started, Figure 3-1 shows again the list of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 examples that Tim O’Reilly and others compiled during an initial brainstorming session to get a “feel” for what Web 2.0 was.
Note
It’s important to note that some of the Web 1.0 companies included in Figure 3-1 have evolved substantially since Tim made his original comparison. For the latest information, definitely visit each company’s website. Tim’s choosing them as examples actually speaks to their success in that earlier age.
Although several of the companies we use as examples in this chapter are large enterprises or corporations, the patterns themselves don’t apply only to enterprises. In fact, the value of patterns is that you can remove them from an enterprise context and reuse them in other applications. For example, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a pattern of exposing capabilities to potential end users. Whether the SOA pattern is used by online gamers to access the states of each other’s joysticks or by large enterprises to reach into their customer relationship management (CRM) systems and provide users of their websites with rich interactive experiences, the core pattern is the same when abstracted to a high enough level. In both cases, a service offers some functionality or capability that another entity consumes.