A few months back, I took a stab at defining “The Web2.0”. Essentially, I wrote that the Web2.0 was about web applications that played nicely with other web applications, regardless of who “owned” them. I still think I have that part right, but I missed an important half of the equation. The Web2.0 is also about enabling users to play nicely with eachother.

Specifically, it’s about the social network that exists around each application. The simple act of using a particular application creates a common bond among it’s users. If nothing else, they suffer the same indignities as they struggle to get the application to work. More likely, however, they came to that application sharing a common interest.

As the Web2.0 develops, web sites and users alike are discovering the tremendous power of an application’s social network. A perfect example is a company I’ve written about previously, lala.com. While they have yet to get the first part of my definition right (playing nicely with other applications), they have developed a passionate community around their product. Ironically, this seems to be something they have stumbled into, rather then developing intentionally. It came about because they provided a “feedback” feature that, instead of simply allowing the user to communicate with the company, allowed users to communicate with eachother – it was a forum instead of an email form. What initially started as a small arena for users to converse with people at the company about problems with the product, quickly evolved into a free-for-all with users talking about anything and everything. After less than three months, with lala still in beta, their “feedback” forum has over 2,600 unique posts, each of which has on average 6-8 followup comments. That’s ~15,000 messages generated by users! While most of these are relevent to the service, users also discuss other seemingly unrelated interests.

My point is that this social network offers tremendous value. For users the service becomes a social gathering place. A place to share the little gripes and joys of their daily experience with the product. And with the addition of features like tagging, user reviews, and the ability to update the site’s core content (it’s music database), a user will be able to directly and immediately improve the quality of the service for herself and other users.

For Lala, what started as a simple tool for supporting users has become a tremendously valuable asset. It gives them a public arena to make announcements and address commonly discussed problems. It takes much of the support burden off of them because users are (not unsurprisingly) remarkably good at helping eachother work through problems. And, most important of all, they have a tremendously rich and accurate picture of how their service is doing and the value it is (or isn’t offering).

Thus, the Web2.0 is about taking interactivity of both applications and users to the next level. Of harnessing the power that comes from allowing people and applications to leverage the knowledge and capabilities they all offer.

There, now that is my final definition of the Web2.0 (until I discover my next incredibly obvious oversight.)

[Picture from http://swik.net]