The Web 2.0 Miller Lite Battle: Great Utility! Useful Data!

by Micah on April 21st

In the early 80s Miller Lite launched their “Tastes Great/Less Filling” campaign. The concept of people fighting over two very positive aspects of beer caught on, and “Tastes Great/Less Filling” has entered our lexicon.

Miller Lite Ad from 1982

Miller Lite Commerical in 2006

In today’s startup world, the battle is not about tasting great or less filling, but utility and data.

Most companies today that are considered to be web 2.0 companies are either great utilities (Twitter is a great example), or produce useful data (FriendFeed is a great example). I suppose before we go much farther, I should clarify what I mean by data and utility.

A DATA application is an application where the interface and functionality are secondary to the data produced or is able to be mined. Again, take FriendFeed as the example. The interface is clunky, hard to use and non-intuitive in many ways, but the data is pure gold. Users seem to use RSS or other tools or procedures to parse through the data.

A UTILITY application is an application that allows for the completion of a task more quickly or easily. For example, Twitter is a great example of an application where the data is secondary to the utility. The ability to communicate short bursts to multiple friends quickly and easily is a hallmark of Twitter. But the data? Twitter doesnt seem to care (see its lack of search) about the data, just that its a dead simple, intuitive application. With Twitter utility trumps data.

So what is the hallmark of a “web 2.0″ application? Is it data? Or is it utility?

What about the next wave? Is Web 3.0 really just a mashup of the data/utility paradigm?

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Stu Andrews 7 months ago 1 point
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Seriously cool post Micah. Been thinking about this, but you have coalesced this idea very nicely.

My gut feeling says the Hallmark is Utility. The data is always there, in some form. It's our tools to better utilise or form or manipulate that data which, to me, mark the new wave of web development.

Although, saying that, I think about the fact that smart people throughout the ages are always able to build good utilities for retrieving/manipulating data.

Taking this into account, the Hallmark of Web 2.0 is both. Twitter and Friendfeed are both Hallmarks.

Man, too much thinking. Need to clarify more. Cool post Micah.

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Gruen 7 months ago 1 point
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Alright-- let's find a new moniker for web technologies. This iterative "Web 3.0" crap has got to go.

Let's coin a new term or something.

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http://michaelgruen.com/

Micah 7 months ago 1 point
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its just easier to use the terminology that is currently being thrown around. Plus its shorter than "Michael Gruen is an Ass point oh."

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http://learntoduck.com