Institutions

NFX: Weinberger interviews O'Reilly

Lorcan 1 min read

David Weinberger has a nice hotel lobby interview with Tim O’Reilly on the FastForward Blog (which is devoted to Enterprise 2.0 discussions).

Tim O’Reilly, creator of the Web 2.0 meme, says that organizations have been slow to understand how “network effects” can benefit their business if applied internally as well as externally. As customers add to what the company knows, should that added-value information be made accessible outside of the company? [The FASTForward Blog » Blog Archive » Interview with Tim O’Reilly]

It is a compact discussion of what Web 2.0 means, and what it might mean to the enterprise (it is about 15 minutes long).
I was particular interested in a couple of the points Tim O’Reilly made early on. First, that there is a tendency to think that Web 2.0 is about blogs, wikis and social software, but that this is to miss the point to some extent. And second, the distinguishing feature of what is happening in the network environment is the generation of network effects (NFX?), and in particular around data assets.
He goes on to talk about the emergence of large gravitational hubs on the network, which build value by collaboratively sourcing the creation of powerful data assets with their users. This is variously played out with Google, eBay, Amazon, MySpace, and so on. The collaboratively sourced value they create grows with the reinforcing property of network effects. The more people who participate, the more valuable they become, the more people who participate.
Opening up these platforms through web services creates more network effects, although he is careful to point out that the platform is controlled by Google, or by Amazon, and so on. And there is an interesting balance of interests between openness and control, evidenced in the recent actions by Google over its search API (which I discuss here).
Related entries:

Share
Comments
More from LorcanDempsey.net
So-called soft skills are hard
Institutions

So-called soft skills are hard

So-called soft skills are important across a range of library activities. Existing trends will further amplify this importance. Describing these skills as soft may be misleading, or even damaging. They should be recognized as learnable and teachable, and should be explicitly supported and rewarded.
Lorcan 12 min read
The technology career ladder
Institutions

The technology career ladder

Library leaders should be drawn from across the organization. Any idea that technology leaders are overly specialised or too distant from general library work is outmoded and counter-productive.
Lorcan 7 min read
icon

Lorcan Dempsey dot Net

The social, cultural and technological contexts of libraries, services and networks

Great! You’ve successfully signed up.

Welcome back! You've successfully signed in.

You've successfully subscribed to LorcanDempsey.net.

Success! Check your email for magic link to sign-in.

Success! Your billing info has been updated.

Your billing was not updated.