Unit Structures: Web 2.0's Breakpoint

Web 2.0's Breakpoint
Posted 6/24/2008 09:08:00 AM |

This was big news Friday, but I'm still processing the fact Joshua Schacter has left Yahoo, and del.icio.us. I've never met Schacter, but I've been a fan of his work for a long time. Memepool distracted me endlessly when I was working for TMF during the first dot com, and Del.icio.us has profoundly shaped my lens on Web 2.0. I'm also hopelessly addicted to del.icio.us - I use it extensively for academic research, it has shaped my thinking about all things social, and Terrell and I employed its design patterns for ClaimID. As Joshua leaves Yahoo and Del.icio.us, I wanted to acknowledge his work and the legacy he leaves behind.

It also strikes me that Schacter's exit, as well as the exit of Flickr co-founders Butterfield and Fake, create a nice breakpoint for Web 2.0. In 2005, we saw the success of Flickr and Del.icio.us as beacons of hope - not only that the web remained monetizable, but that people still cared, that "web people" hadn't just been chasing false hopes and dreams. Looking back from 2008, the frenzy of Web 2.0 looks more like gentle turbulence. Web 2.0 marked a change, in which our software enabled participation, identity and peer production. Perhaps it is now time to realize those facets are no longer novel, as the web turns and searches for its next transformation.

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