The mobile industry, in particular data services, has been repeatedly hyped. Is Mobile Web 2.0 just more hype?

Recently, Ajit Jaokar has been perhaps the leading voice in promoting the idea of Mobile Web 2.0 and I want to contend with some of the thinking in this area, mostly as a reality check. Those who know me will be assured that this is in the interest of discussion, is not personal and is not carping from the sidelines. Besides, I am not on the sidelines. I actively work with all this stuff and I run a project for Motorola called “The Mashing Room” where mobile “mash-ups” are the order of the day. Sorry for that techno-jargon, but it’s only intended to mean something to Web 2.0 heads in case they think I’m still in the stone age i.e. “1.0″ era. I hope that the discussion can improve our overall thinking around these topics. Let me first say, before questioning his contentions, that Ajit Jaoker is a friend of mine and I consulted for him many moons ago when he made his first foray into mobile with an exciting LBS idea. I have since watched Ajit carve a niche for himself in mobile, particularly publishing and I congratulate and respect him for for his achievements.

There really isn’t a single tangible technology called “Web 2.0″. In fact, it has become an admixture of technological capabilities, namely the ability to enrich the user interface within the browser (e.g. using AJAX), modes of web usage, such as user participation and social networking, and even business methods, such as the perpetual beta (which definitely isn’t a software methodology anymore). I would say that those who want to familiarize themselves with much of what building web apps means within the current thinking should buy 37 Signal’s Getting Real book, which is utterly brilliant. I don’t work for them. I sometimes wish I did. Actually, I wish I had my own company like theirs (if you’re great with Web 2.0 programming, let me know!)

Of course, those who consider themselves to be defining or engaged actively in the Web 2.0 idea simply “get it” and might say that if you have to define it then you don’t “get it”. This usual obfuscation of an idea helps to create the buzz of course, which is great for guru-dom, VC excitement and other tech-culture development where ideas have now become memes.

Because of this collection of ideas (memes?) feeding the Web 2.0 wave, I think that some reductionism is useful. Firstly, Web 1.0 was essentially about using a browser to read stuff. I call this the “click to read” experience. The two most essential elements were the use of the Internet - a completely open network to both publishers and readers - and the use of a browser, which represented a universal client. We don’t need a word-processor “browser”, a library-book “browser”, a newspaper “browser”, a magazine “browser” and so on. We only need a “Web browser”. From a software “platform” perspective, Web 1.0 was mostly limited to the publish/read paradigm, a rather limited subset of general purpose (or desktop) computing capabilities.

Since then, lots of things have developed, although the central browser/net paradigm remains core. Various tech enhancements and usage trends have emerged and many of these get lumped into “Web 2.0″. I would say that there is still a lot of hype in order to talk up another boom. Where is the real money being made in Web today versus yesterday and has there been a sizeable creation of new revenue streams from, say, sites using AJAX technology (because they are using AJAX or open APIs or whatever)? It is important to ask this question in order to put it into context for the mobile world where revenue is everything and always has been and where “eyeballs” and exit-values and other such intangible measures of commercial worth don’t seem to matter at the moment. Stickiness is a useful attribute of a mobile service, but operators have a hard time quantifying it, so mostly they ignore it.

Anyhow, “Web 2.0″ can be summed up as a transition from the previous “click to read” paradigm, or experience, to a more general “click to do” experience, which is also supported by the platform itself in software terms. In other words, it is now far easier to bring various computing applications to the browser than before. The richer Javascript/CSS/XHTML and AJAX programming model makes this possible.

I like very much John Baker’s (Ogilvy) summary of Web 2.0 as simply being “the usable web”.

Within that mode of thinking, something called “Mobile Web 2.0″ is problematic. Do we have a significantly more usable version of the web today on mobile? No. It is the very real device limitation that remains the weakest link. Surely I don’t have to spell this out. A simple examination of the massive amounts (i.e. thousands) of eyeball scans, mouse moves, clicks, back-clicks, page loads, window switches and text entries of a typical web session, massively enhanced by search (which itself is a step-wise process of trial-and-errors) shows that the true “web experience” cannot even be approached on a mobile device. In the time that I can scan 5 websites, check 5 RSS feeds, keep an eye on 5 IM windows and drink a cup of tea, I can’t even type “Mobile Web 2.0″ on my mobile (the one with a regular keypad).

Web 2.0 just makes the gap even greater. I can now do all kinds of amazing stuff in my browser, like all of those wonderful 37 Signals apps that help me to run projects and organise my life, even more quickly thanks to AJAX (over broadband mind you, because we forget that this is an essential enabler).

I hope that my point is clear. Web 2.0 constitutes a massively usable and flexible set of services on the web. This is its essence. Therefore, to claim that we now have Mobile Web 2.0 is a huge exaggeration, which by definition is hype.

Now, do we have new technologies in mobile web, like widgets, AJAX, “web-top” for the phone and so on? Yes we do, although non-existent in the market, except for a few niche devices. But within the “2.0″ frame, I don’t think that we have a significant change. We are still stuck with the same single-task, tiny keyboard, 200×300 pixels interface. It’s like asking me to write my next 600-page book using one of those really tiny (and cute) reporter notepads and a nearly blunt pencil (with a smudgy eraser).

Let’s consider one of Dean Bubley’s earlier posts about “must haves” for the mobile. He said that he didn’t see any on the horizon. Today, an integral and “must have” component of having a PC is the web. This simply ain’t so for mobiles and a lot of the stats for mobile web usage are skewed.

Either we wait for mobiles to catch up and somehow become viable interfaces into the web as we know and enjoy it today, in which case we are really talking about Web 2.0 and there isn’t a “mobile” flavour, or we innovate our way out of the voice/text/ring-tone world in some other way. Or, we do both and create fascinating and uniquely mobile experiences that we haven’t yet realised are “must haves”. The scope for innovation is huge and there are problems in the industry that limit innovation.

Now, is there a different approach that might cause the mobile to become viewed by users as something different or more widely usable other than a device to make calls and send texts? I tend to think that there is if we bring the “address book” to the fore and create “buddy-centric” services; including the personification of services into buddies (e.g. I can ask send a picture to my “blog buddy”). Building an entire communications paradigm around buddies is now possible thanks to the migration from horrible old yucky telco signalling paradigm to the IP-based SIP paradigm. Is this the basis for Mobile 2.0? Perhaps. Can all this be merged with today’s Web 2.0 technologies? I think so, and to great effect. Usability limitations will still apply, but greater utility and reliance on new “must have” services could emerge. Will any of this happen? Well, going back to the question “What is Web 2.0?” one could say that besides the technology, it’s also an attitude, such as adventure, risk, entrepreneurialism, openness and many other frames that we don’t find much in evidence in the telco world.