Web 2.0 Expo 6 - Web Meets World

I just came out of Tim O’Reillys keynote speech at the Web 2.0 Expo.

In a speech that ended up on a rather political note, O’Reilly touched upon two themes that are related through the fact that the web is increasingly meeting the world.

The first theme was the changing interrelationship between people, things and events in real life and the virtual world. People meet in real life because of online social networks; people navigate user interfaces using fingers, bodily movements and sound; and people increasingly sell and produce real life products in the online world.

The web is meeting the world in a very physical sense.

This creates huge opportunities for enterprises and companies to use the web solve real life problems and challenges. But this is exactly where companies are failing today, according to O’Reilly – and this was the second theme of his speech. In an age of environmental crises, financial meltdown and global wars, we are still using social media and web 2.0 applications to poke friends, bite zombies or send virtual birthday cakes!

According to O’Reilly great challenges create great opportunities, and we are really facing great challenges today. And web 2.0 and the fact that the web is meeting the world, means that the opportunities to create change are very much present right there in the universe of web 2.0 applications.

O’Reilly then mentioned a number of companies that are actually using web 2.0 to create change in a challenging world:

- Benetech
- Omidyar network
- Google.org
- Amee
- Energy Camp
- Click Diagnostics
- Prosper
- Patientslikeme
- 23andMe

I, of course, agree with O’reilly that we are living in a challenging age and that much more could be done to meet these challenges. But, as opposed to O’Reilly, I actually think that web 2.0 is already being applied to many serious challenges. Of course web 2.0 is being used for silly and stupid social interactions, but the virtual world would be a boring, Stalinistic world without such social glues, which serves a very real purpose – that of getting people to meet and talk together.

Web 2.0 is not a monolithic entity which should only be used for serous purposes. Web 2.0 is a new social structure, which naturally will contain everything from zombie bites to global warming interest groups.