Web 2.0 or not Web 2.0. That is the question.

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I participated in three interesting debates over the past 7 days about Web 2.0 – what it is and is it a good thing. The start of the argument is usually ‘it’s the dotcom era all over again’ as if this, by its very nature, is a damnable offense.

Here’s my take on Web 2.0. It comes down to two very simple concepts; 1) User generated content, and 2) User modifiable interface and experience (mashups). In the Web 1.0 world much of the content was mined or served by the web companies – Amazon gave you books and inventory to buy from, Google served you content that they had found, eBay gave you items to sell or buy, but in a format that was specifically developed (and rigidly structured) by them.

In the Web 2.0 world the great content comes from the users themselves and are shared among the community using tools such as Wikipedia, LinkedIn, and Flickr. The user experience is also enhanced by the ability for users to link in tools and HTML from other sites. Myspace is a great example of this since they provide the ability to integrate audio, video, pictures, and other content. This ‘mashup’ experience is a key part of Web 2.0.

At iTaggit we are providing users the ability to post content from their collections into other sites as well. A user can post an individual item, collection, or their profile into any site that accepts HTML code. This means that you can embed your item info in eBay, put a link to your music collection on myspace, or include your full profile in the signature line of your email.

Here’s what the profile looks like when you add a signature line: www.itaggit.com/user/daltounian

As to whether ‘dotcom’ is a four letter word, remember that eBay, Amazon, Google all came out of the dotcom era. Web 2.0 companies that add value to users lives will succeed. Web 2.0 companies that are just plain ‘experiences’ will be challenged.

At least that’s my take.

The Wild Wild West

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We’ve entered a wild new world where users can create their own experiences and web environments. While this sounds strange, it’s true and it’s here. We had an interesting debate this week about a feature that we wanted on our site (I won’t share the feature) and the amount of development effort that it would take to create. In the past, developers would have to build the components, but in the new world of Web 2.0 there are applications that can be incorporated in YOUR application to deliver the functionality for the user that used to have to be home grown. This is the concept of ‘mash-up’ or taking pieces from different applications and ‘mashing’ them together to have a new application.

A great example of a ‘mashable’ application is Jaxter (jaxter.com). Jaxter allows users to add a Contact Me control to any of their social networking sites (or even their email signature line) and allow others to call or txt msg them without exposing their personal phone numbers. It’s a great application!

Another great site that finds interesting Web 2.0 (and mashable) sites is stumbleupon.com.

We’ve done the same thing with our site, iTaggit, in that you can use our database as an ‘electronic folio’ on a collection or an item and generate HTML code to embed the item into other websites. This allows users to share their music, art, antique, or other collections/items through different sites while only needing to maintain it on iTaggit.com

Sharing the craziness….

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Alright, it’s time that I jump in and try this blogging thing out. Friends have told me that my life is just crazy enough to be partially interesting. I’m going to try to update this on a daily basis but since I’m not much of a creature of habit we’ll see how it goes….

A little background. I have a wonderful wife and three great kids. I have to say ‘kids’ carefully because my oldest daughter is 19 years old and away at college.

I am the CEO of a small startup in Austin, Texas called iTaggit. It’s a web-based service company which provides cataloging and asset management tools to people. I’m also a minority owner of the Austin Wranglers, an Arena Football League team and am the acting CMO for the team.

On top of that, I’m one of the founders of a Tablet PC company, Motion Computing and while I’m no longer active in the day to day operations, I am still a board member.

Finally, I’m just finishing up my Executive MBA at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston Illinois. I’ve been flying between Chicago and Austin every two weeks for the past two school years. Graduating in June.

Each of these activities gives me lots of interesting stuff to write about (at least to me). I’m tired from just writing what I do! Tomorrow I’ll pick a topic and start writing.