Web 2.0 Reading List

The term “Web 2.0″ gained popularity from around 2004 onwards, due in part to the O’Rielly Media Web 2.0 conference. People started to refer to Web 2.0 when they talked about the internet transforming from a communication and publishing machine into a computing platform. Websites like Flickr, MySpace, Youtube and Facebook are the kind of sites that are linked to this shift. With services like Flickr instead of storing and arranging your photos on your desktop PC, you could use the internet as your photo application. The added benefit of using the internet as a computing platform is that social networking is almost built in to the architecture of the web. Flickr allows me to arrange, edit and print my photos (just like iPhoto or Picassa) but because the photos are published on the internet I can also share them with everyone on the internet, like my family, friends or collegues. Most of the technologies that power these Web 2.0 services existed long before the catchphrase was coined but the one thing that was missing was network ubiquity.

If I’m going to start using the internet as a computing platform for all my media, my contacts, my social calendar then I need it to be available at home, at work, the shops and when I’m out. Network ubiquity came about from lots of different places, mobile phones with internet access, cheap broadband and a growth in laptops. Since 2004 there have been even more changes and even more buzzwords. At the moment it’s all about the “Cloud” which is another blog post altogether. There is a special place in the blogosphere that is reserved for these topics but a friend recently asked about a Web 2.0 reading list (yes, actual physical books!) so I asked people on Twitter and some associates and this is the list I came up with (in no particular order):

• The Long Tail - by Chris Anderson
• Wikinomics - by Taps Don
• Here Comes Everybody - by Clay Shirky
• The Wisdom of Crowds - by James Surowiecki
• Groundswell - by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
• Small Is the New Big - by Seth Godin
• The Cluetrain Manifesto - by Christopher Locke
• Everything is Miscellaneous - by David Weinberger
• Small Pieces Loosely Joined - David Weinberger
• The Wealth of Networks - by Yochai Benkler
• The Starfish and the Spider - by Ori Brafman
• Rule the Web - by Mark Frauenfelder

I’ve read some of these titles but not all of them. I’ve included “Rule the Web” to act as somewhat of a glossary for the others. Most of these books would fit into the business category and some of them started from blogs themselves. Although they do try to account for the Web 2.0 phenomenon you might have to read between some of the marketing speak to get to the core ideas.

I don’t think “Web 2.0″ is that usefull a term to describe how the web has been transforming over the last few years and I hate using it but I think it will be around for a while. If you’ve got a blog suggestion or a landmark book that I’ve missed, put it in the comments.