c. scott andreas

I love the web. I love great web apps. I love making them. And I love using them.

I’ve got a lot invested in the “sematic web,” open source philosophy (and practice!), APIs, the late-90s dictum that “information wants to be free,” and still think “What is Web 2.0” is a great article.

We’ve been drinking the punch since the rise of the second bubble - and who wouldn’t drop by the open bar? It’s been damn good. But things are starting to change.

Remembering The Dream

I remember reading TIME Magazine’s 2006 “Person of the Year” article (”You”) with rapt attention:

“But look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story, one that isn’t about conflict or great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before…

It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.”

I remember reading TechCrunch for the first time and checking out all the new startups that were cropping up. I’d read up on the latest mashups, spend hours playing with new APIs, and find ways to shoehorn unnecessary products into my workflow.

Flickr was really cool, YouTube was revolutionary, Google was cranking out new products developed in-house, and Facebook was the ultimate un-MySpace that spooked the giant from a Harvard dorm.

From “Mash” to “Mush”

But things have cooled down in 2007. I’m less and less excited about what’s being released. Innovation isn’t focused upon experimenting with new technologies or finding creative niches and meeting needs with absolute simplicity. It’s an endless re-hashing of mish-mashed mush that won’t mash any more. There are hundreds of social networks, dozens of ways to create your own, and at least 20 ways to aggregate your fragmented identities. And you can be sure that someone will post a Digg-baiting list of them all.

I don’t want to replace powerful, fancy, dependable desktop apps with web-based hack jobs that suspend my data “somewhere in the cloud.” You’ll have to pry Coda, Creative Suite, Office, Billings, Shrook, iTunes, iChat, and Skype from my cold, dead hands. My kernel is not written in JavaScript.

Succession

Today, Richard MacManus posted an article at Read/WriteWeb that embodies the ambivalence that I’m feeling. There’s a lot of frustration, but also hope. New technologies are emerging, and there is a lot on the horizon. But there’s a lot of fluff, too. And fluff crowds the air.

As plants and trees die off in a forest, the floor becomes covered with detritus. Eventually, this fuels a fire that clears the floor and infuses the soil with fresh nutrients, providing seedlings the space and breathing room to spring up and flourish.

On the web, this “space” is discursive and not physical or commercial. I’m not talking about a massive dot-com shakeout like the last one that left so many broken dreams and Aeron chairs in its wake. Companies with lackluster business models can and will stick around, and they’ll fight to the death to dominate their niches or wind up in the Deadpool.

I’m talking about our news media. The blogs we love. TechCrunch. Read/Write Web. Mashable. Ars. We must push for the voice of the innovators in these spaces. Michael Arrington and the TC team do a great job of filtering through the countless e-mails from “wantrepreneurs” they receive each day to draw out what’s new and interesting. But the “signal-versus-noise” ratio is plummeting (Pardon that - I still love SVN).

Satireality

In many ways, I’m turning to satire for my news. For better or for worse, many of us have switched from CNN to Keith Olbermann, The Daily Show and Colbert due to our collective frustration with journalists unwilling to “push back” and even poke fun of the sorry news that’s come their way in recent years.

I admit it. I read Fake Steve, Uncov, and ValleyWag. I love them. Dripping with satire so bitter you’d think Voltaire was behind them, they offer not only a compelling account of what’s happening on the web, but also a compelling response.

Uncov delightfully points out the flaccidity of the Web 2.0 dream in practice. Google is about fostering innovation…which as of late, has occurred through acquisition. Facebook is about enabling the “freeflow of information,” but only within their walled garden (you can’t take your friends with you). Apple creates beautiful products that work like they should – so long as you don’t plan on extending their functionality. At least NBC and the RIAA are up front about their regimes.

Tomorrow(s)

I’m not sure what lies ahead. But I’m still coding, playing with new APIs, and new tools that come my way. I’m not excited, but I’m hopeful.

Are you?