Web 2.5 - the web that catches stuff

I thought I was going to write a pithy original post about inventing web 2.5 but I'm late to the party. Sigh.

My Web 2.5 was dubbed so because it's one step forward (Web 3.0) and one half step back. The step forward is the portable, always available Internet. The half step back is the compromises we make to code to make 2.5 work. The trade is way more than fair.

I'm basing the trade-offs on designing pages for the Apple iPhone. You can read the official guidelines here.  Some more interesting comments are here. The upshot is you no longer design for mice but for the human touch (which also makes a nice metaphor). The phone also doesn't support Flash, so you are looking at taking your pages back a bit but not all the way back.

Perhaps the best summary of the experience is here. I know many of you will grouse at the iPhone being a pivotal piece of hardware since there are already so many web connected phones out there. To that I only have one word to say: Macintosh.

If you aren't having intense Deja Vu over the iPhone then you weren't a geek in 1984 (yeah I was). It's the same thing all over. It's SO expensive, it's only Black and White, there are hundreds of CPM and MS-DOS machines out there. Okay right. But how many computers are there out there now that weren't influenced by the Mac interface? Virtually zero.

So Web 2.5 naysayers will be plentiful. In fact they are a vital part of the viral process. But the reality is, if you haven't retooled to design for Web 2.5 - you will.

Also, Web 2.5 will connect us in ways that will make commerce not just simple but intelligent. Consensus marketing will become a norm with the savvy marketer able to attract a "flash" mob (or a "hit" crowd) in minutes.

There are a few barriers to entry at this point:

1) SMS is too #@#@#% expensive. $40 a month for unlimited text seems like gouging. Carriers need to consider the economic impact of dropping this to $20 a month. The new signups alone would offset the price drop.

2) Hardware is pricey too. Even at $399, the iPhone is out of reach for a lot of folks that have money to spend. The value is there honestly but there are too many phones that claim to do the same thing at the $199 and less price point. Just the same God bless the early adopters for they shall change the world.

3) Designers won't want to go back. It's not about learning new tricks as much as it is re-learning old tricks. Blow the dust off that copy of Fireworks and put the Flash back on the shelf.

Web 2.5 won't be about scalability - it will be about sustainability. It will not be about having 7 million "friends" as much as it will be about having 7 (or 70) IRL friends with genuine interests and viable ways to asynchronously communicate "what's up?" It will be about team building more than stardom.

It's going to be very very cool.