RSS feedsNew technologies spawn new business models, generating a powerful challenge to the stalwarts of a sector. In the last 12 months Web 2.0 has emerged as a technology capable of bringing about the sort of business upheaval that was initially attributed to the web back in the heady days of the dotcom boom. Commentators have predicted that Web 2.0 will destroy traditional news providers and that community and collaborative information resources will sweep online publishers away in a tide of new business models.
If the last boom in internet growth is anything to go by, we should not expect any change to be too radical. But it would be a mistake to dismiss Web 2.0 technology . It represents a significant change in the way that users interact both with each other and with information.
So how will the traditional online information providers adapt and cope in the Web 2.0 world ? Huddled together in a hotel in west London, IWR discovered a cabal of bright young Web 2.0 things debating the issue with online publishers from the legal and scientific worlds.
At first there was the appearance of never the twain shall meet, with the Web 2.0 crew sporting jeans, trainers and a laid-back air of confidence while the traditional online publishers were impressively corporate in suits and ties.
Tom Coates, a technologist from Yahoo Technology Development, kicks off by summing up the disruption in attitude that is affecting information providers. “It’s in your interests as an author, researcher or scientist to get your work read, so you slap it on the internet, but that is not in the interests of your publisher,” he points out.
Paul Miller, technology evangelist at library automation supplier Talis , adds: “The debate is how do publishers and scholars share data, yet formulate a business model?” For Talis, Web 2.0 is anything but disruptive. “The library market is not growing,” Miller says. “We were looking at taking our information management knowledge out to new markets.”
Web 2.0 has offered Birmingham based Talis a vehicle for doing just that as it looks for new business models. Miller, though, has a message for information providers looking to do the same. “How does a traditional publisher position itself in a changing market?” he asks. “Blogs and wikis are buzz – they will go away.”
Iain Tait, creative expert for a
Web
2.0 agency, Poke , believes the speed of change is creating
problems: “It’s very difficult for big companies to
transform and be more nimble.” So Web 2.0 isn’t all analyst-led hype, then?
Miller again: “Web 2.0 came along at the right time and it has captured the developments as a label for what we are all trying to do.”
“It’s easy to be cynical of the term,” Coates says. “But the term is trying
to make sense of what is going on in the web environment currently. Web 2.0
is also an association of people with very similar visual design styles and
frameworks,” he says of the de facto methods used in blogs and wikis.
“The challenge to publishers is how we put our content into new and meaningful contexts,” says Peter Lake, managing director of legal information provider Sweet & Maxwell , which after 207 years of serving the same marketplace could certainly be accused of being a traditional publisher.
Lake understands the need to adopt Web 2.0 themes for his digital services, but is at pains to point out that some markets present real challenges. “The problem is trying to get the benefit of Web 2.0 to people who are restrained by rules,” he says.
ENFORCED CHANGE
Miller at Talis believes there has been an enforced change taking place. “The
sharing of information goes on all along. Previously, you only shared
information post-publication; now, the act of publication becomes a distraction
rather than something you really want to do,” he says of the new collaborative
working methods researchers are using as a result of Web 2.0 technology.
Coates believes the organisation that recognises this yet remains a traditional information publisher is Nature. “Nature has recognised communities,” he says of its Connotea service for sharing research resources and tags.
Analyst David Worlock of EPS agrees: “Nature recognised where people were, and recognition of natural communications is very important. You cannot create communities and expect people to collaborate.” Which poses an interesting question for everyone from users to providers and information departments: do we recognise communities that are naturally communicating?
Coates divides Web 2.0 usage into two areas: “Collective intelligence and social software is one clump; the reuse and openness with data is a second theme of Web 2.0.” Connotea is an example of both clumps in action: the service is built on collective intelligence, with scientists sharing links and research on subjects like bird flu. The collective intelligence re-uses information and Nature as a publisher accepts that not all of it will be from its own stable of journals.
Worlock has a warning for information providers that do not adopt Web 2.0. “We have never known a level of user impatience as we have now. Users’ expectations have soared from web usage: they really do expect to find everything at the same place – information and services – and be able to cross-search all of them.”
Victor Camlek at Thomson Scientific agrees. “What goes on in the mass market resonates in the specialised markets,” he says of the increasing interaction between users and each other and the information provider. “They are highly skilled consumers that need information.”
Lake at Sweet & Maxwell says he is fascinated by how information providers can offer applications for collaboration with customers and they collaborate among themselves. According to Worlock, Web 2.0 is inevitable. “It is an acceptance of living in a networked society. My customers talk of bringing their information together with public information.”
WORLD OF RELATIONSHIPS
Worlock says that for information providers Web 2.0 is nothing more than the next stage in an online strategy to meet their users’ needs. “Web 2.0 is symptomatic, rather than problematic,” he says. “We are moving from putting offline information online into a world of relationships and communications.”
Camlek agrees. “So what is all the fuss of uploading? It has become expected that people can comment on your content.” He sees Web 2.0 as an obvious move with, increased contact with Thomson Scientific customers .
Major information providers such as Thomson Scientific have invested heavily in what they all term workflow, whereby applications for managing the information are provided by themselves, the information providers.
Lake says Sweet & Maxwell wants to act as an “honest broker” for
information such as pay rates and is researching a system where users can
anonymously contribute their own details to build a better picture. Even if such
systems do not use Web 2.0 technology, increasing the interaction between users
and suppliers has a Web 2.0 ring to it. Miller at Talis believes this is exactly
what Web 2.0 is. “Web 2.0 is
opening up data, not always free data, and making it available to be dropped
into other services and sites.”
There are clear distinctions between the two camps, though. “I’m arguing for a gradual decline in proprietary data and an increase in the value of services,” says Yahoo’s Coates, citing encyclopaedias as a good example of the change wrought by Wikipedia .
Coates suggests to Sweet & Maxwell that court proceedings information should be opened up, enabling users to annotate that information for their own purposes and share the additional layer of information they have created.
Not so fast, says Lake: “Legal publishers are always adding on top of proprietary data. The legal market is based on people commenting.”
The difference of opinion seems to be about interpretations of community. Many in the web 2.0 community want everyone to have a voice and an opportunity to comment on a mass of information made freely available. Lake appears to be suggesting that the legal community as it currently exists can communicate. Nature’s Connotea seems to prove the point. It is free to join, but is mainly used by scientists, so opening up information doesn’t necessarily mean the mob will invade and tear down the pillars of proven methods.
Surely the best outcome for users and information providers depends on not tipping the baby out with the bathwater in a rush for change. No one expects ISI to become a blog or Westlaw a wiki, but the win-win for information providers will come if they can supply more information and more information that is useful.
Web 2.0 technology – or, more accurately, methods – could allow both users and providers, to build up pictures and databases of information that is ultimately useful.
All
del.icio.us
Digg this
reddit!
