Web 2.0 Heroes: Interviews with 20 Web 2.0 Influencers

by Bradley L. Jones

Web 2.0 may be an elusive concept, but one thing is certain: using the Web as merely a means of retrieving and displaying information is history. Today's Web is immediate, interactive, innovative. It is user-controlled and community-driven. Organizations, marketers, application developers, and communicators must be ready to respond and to innovate or be left behind, and the experts featured on these pages are leading the charge. Their ideas are fresh, sometimes experimental, necessarily flexible, and always on the leading edge to prepare you for a Web where users rule.

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Denis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great points of views. There are opnions to make you think deeply about the Web 2.0.

[Senthil Kumaran · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a quick read consisting of interviews of 30 important influencing people in the Web. The interviews of designers and founders of LinkedIn, Twitter, Zoho, Skype, StumbleUpon, De.li.cious and other important tech companies. The book was published in 2008 and the interviews focused mostly on what existed then and what people saw the tech world will shape up to be. Things have changed a lot now. We do not see Google Gears being talked about, so is Adobe Air. They predicted then that Social networking was on rise and mobile was on rise too and talked about importance of customer engagement.

It is not a technical book, but consists most of views of these pioneers. They are posed the same question, which is kind of boring, but it is good to listen to variants of their answer. Postively, this book is a quick read to get an idea of web company and also while reading you can reflect how the internet world has changed and the pace at which the changes have happened.

Surprisingly, I did not see a mention of HTML5 in this book, written in 2008 and could not see emphasis of Javascript, except for the mention of Ajax at some places. One interview by internet.com founder was striking as he started his company in early 90s and leads us through the changes which has happened since then. Things like it costed him 50,000 dollars to setup a server for one of his company in 1995.

I thought, if the questions were little more tailored to the individual, then the book could have been even more better. But it is definitely a worth read for anyone who cares about web companies.

[Janet Tokerud · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who is currently exploring the web 2.0 services of various kinds, this is an enjoyable read. It is not very deep on the subject of web 2.0, but does give you breadth from the 30 people involved in web 2. Overall will bring you up to speed with the general concepts and thinking around Web 2.0.

A book teaching Web 2.0, not sure there is one, would probably teach you 4x as much. Interviews are well-done and it is an enjoyable way to catch the flavor. I do plan to read the book cover to cover and am about half way through now.

[Vera · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book revolves around the themes of interactivity, innovation, accountability, collaboration and other “business-friendly” terms. The interviews are mostly “safe” as they avoid controversial topics such as the role of web 2.0 in social (in)justice, surveillance, privacy, civic unrest, political activism etc. The Internet is framed as reshaping society in fundamentally good ways and members of technological elites are framed as its “heroes”.