Web 2.0: solving the little problems

Despite the earlier and more comprehensive writeups of the Chinwag Live event Wobble 2.0, I hope I still have something to add...

For me, the speaker whose comments lingered with me long after the event were those of Andrew Orlowski (The Register). Andrew stated that the big returns on investment would come from 'solving the big problems of the world', and that Web 2.0 was never going to do that. I take his point, but who ever said that Web 2.0 was meant to be about solving major problems? In my mind, most of the 'web as platform' side of Web 2.0 is about solving small problems. Fundable, Dropsend, del.icio.us (or any number of mashups involving GoogleMaps) are all about solving those annoying niggles that make you tear your hair out. Innovation doesn't have to be earthshattering to make a difference.

So much of what we think of as innovation is about simply tackling an old problem in a new way; the Dyson, long touted as a leading example of innovation, is a pretty straightforward exemplification of 'building a better mousetrap'. That's what I think Web 2.0 does. You could argue that the earthshattering innovation that solved the big problem was the development of the Internet itself; but even then, Tim Berners-Lee's original idea was about solving a simple problem: allowing researchers to share information easily. It's only now with hindsight and years of growth and further development that we can see the huge impact of the solution to that initial little problem. So who knows what we might think of so-called Web 2.0 years from now?

Comments

[Will Pearson]

Miko, I agree with you, but using Web 2.0 mashups, APIs, mobile-web, tagging and social networking tools provide means to rate and review, and communicate and share, which don't exist in the First World. They can be sterile and impoverished too, in that they can lock you into self-satisfying feedback loops and online silos. Linked all together though they are truly more than the sum of their parts. It's not that individual parts of the Web 2.0 solve problems, it's that they help people visualise, tag, interact and reflect better. They can also throw up creative tools that are before their time- and investors seem to know this. A good case in point is iBloks, which Mashable describe as an application in search of a purpose. Similarly JuiceCaster, an online video casting tool. What I like about Web 2.0 is that people are not quite sure what their creations will do, particularly in relation to traditional media. Of course, there's advertising, and who is laughing now that Rupert Murdoch is making such a profit from MySpace. But truly, innovation is in the little details. It's like the theory of phenomonolgy has been apllied to large chunks of the web and people are just living in their moments irrespective of their cultures. I think it's throwing up some large reflections of society that could just be the answer to some of the bigger socio-political problems of our time.

[Miko Coffey]

Good point re: the whole socio-political angle; I agree that we are only just starting to grapple with how to deal with the issues associated with the global village concept. But I don't think this phenomenon is specific to Web 2.0 (at least not as O'Reilly defines the term), though its growth has certainly increased due to the new ways of connecting offered by the social web. The phenomenon itself is something that has gained momentum over the years as internet/broadband became more widely adopted, and has reached critical mass with the new generation of digital natives. But this is also mirrored offline with the influx of cheap flights, globalisation, etc. I still think it will take some time for us all to make sense of these kinds of questions/issues that the new connected world raise.