The hype, with its high stock market ratings and even higher gains, as well as the shakeout, with only a couple of bureaus surviving and high unemployment rates amongst designers, are behind us. Within its short existence the world of web design has become known as  the ‘enfant terrible’ of new technologies. Recent, sometimes mind-boggling situations have left most people involved speechless when it comes to making a prediction about the internet’s future.  Is this the requiem of the credibility of a once promising innovation? Or is it the mark of a reinvention?

The word requiem might be used by pessimists, but some serious rethinking is in order. What’s the use in saying the internet has lost its credibility? Its high time managers, designers and programmers start thinking about the reason why the net has lost its credibility and how they can restore its promising future in a realistic way.  

One reason for this loss of credibility are the unrealistic promises the three categories of people involved in information technology make their clients. After only a few years a lot of clients are fed up by the bad structures, the non-working gadgets, multimedia and the ever delayed extra cash flow of their website. The main reason for this frustration is the different language clients and bureaus speak. The failure of bureaus to ‘translate the jargon’ into understandable human language is the most important reason clients and bureaus have got completely different expectations of what a website is and what it can do. A lot of hard-sales initiatives have exploded in the face of unknowing clients, which now results in the general disbelief towards anything web-related. Optimal communication in an understandable language is highly needed if the IT sector wants to narrow the gap with their clients and potential clients.

A second reason are the high prices of websites in the past.  The absence of a decent price-quality indication has caused major frustration with clients. The price difference for the same solution between various bureaus has made a lot of people feel sold out. Nowadays it is hard to convince clients that the price estimate is right and realistic. There’s a general need for good information about prices for different solutions regarding design, development and hosting formulas.

A third reason is the absence or non-optimal integration of back and front office systems.  Clients often got pushed in using systems that were not optimal for the technology they already used. Problems regarding conversion, maintenance of the site and keeping the information up-to-date have left clients clueless about what web applications can really do for their company. A lot of people are now convinced that web related technology is inherent to the internet and can’t be linked to regular back office applications.

A fourth reason, and probably the most important one, is the lack of interactivity between the owners and users of the website. All this was true after the shakeout at the end of 2001, early 2002. The following years were characterized by only a couple of bureaus surviving and high unemployment rates amongst designers, developers, … After having a clear indication of what went wrong, it was time to start implementing these findings: Web 2.0, the second edition of the internet as we know it. A second edition?

In short the internet started as a number of static pages. Later a lot of dynamic database driven websites were built. Most of them didn’t allow interaction and therein lays the difference with Web 2.0: interactivity.

Surfers can add content to sites and exchange thoughts on different matters: from a marketing point of view we talk of consumer generated content. Different studies have proven that a lot of people use the internet to gather objective information: news, product information, … The keyword in this process is openness: everyone can participate for free.

All this free content followed by comments may end up in chaos, but if one thing is of importance in the creation of Web 2.0 it is structure. Consumer generated content, well structured and in the spirit of openness? The reinvention of the internet seems to grow towards its own original goals: the free gathering of information. The novelty is the interacting: the generation of content.

After the burst of the dotcom bubble a lot of the internet possibilities were put on hold. After a time of infinite possibilities, there came a time of infinite status quo. Web designers, internet companies, … were forced to sit and wait for better times to come. Some of them took the time to set up initiatives.

The common factor in these new initiatives was the consumer focus: online customers decided how and when online shops should interact with their clients. Consumer comments and the on-demand principle were born. Online shops took the time to create individual profiles, based on user comments, personal search queries and product linking.

Well structured and open consumer generated content, delivered on demand and checked with the personal profile. This makes a good description of Web 2.0.