Web 2.0 Defined by Yahoo 2.0 with Geoff Ralston Chief Product Officer - Another PodTech Exclusive (part 2 of 3)

14:24 | Admin | Oct 27th, 2005 7:03am |

YAHOO! 2.0 defines Web 2.0 - a PodTech exclusive Yahoo podcast part 2 of 3 . Guest Yahoo’s Geoff Ralston, Chief Product Officer. Host: John Furrier, Founder PodTech

Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Geoff Ralston defines Web 2.0: “”it’s about *us*! - it’s just there all the time. It’s always with you. It’s with you in your car when you’re walking around. It’s everywhere. It’s always on. It’s part of your life, and in much deeper ways. It’s an evolution that will just keep on getting stronger, deeper, and more!”

With the recent podcast announcement around Podcasting I sat down with Geoff Ralston to talk about not only Web 2.0 but Yahoo 2.0

Enjoy the Podcast.

Transcript:

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
Yahoo launches its’ podcast platform. Everyone talks about Web 2.0 but this launch really highlights Yahoo 2.0. Yahoo was all about the Web 1.0. Yahoo is now moving to a new model - same mission providing great results for people. Yahoo has always been doing that, and you have a great loyal base (of users). What is Yahoo 2.0? What’s the main vision behind it? How do you see it? How are you guys looking at this Web 2.0? What is Yahoo 2.0?

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
It’s pretty amazing to me and all of us who have been around since the very beginning have seen how quickly how things have and are changing. Web 2.0 is an evolution. The thing that freaks people out is that how quickly the evolution is happening to the Web. We are in the mist of amazing change, and that change is not so simple to describe. It’s not just one thing. This change is epitomized by podcasting, and by the growth of strong communities. These communities are having a strong impact on services throughout the net. I think web 2.0 is interesting because it much more of a dynamic environment. It’s much more interactive. There is content being created by the ‘cloud’ and more content is being created by people using the ‘cloud’. There is all this real time stuff happening, and the web of information is growing and changing. It seems much more faster, and much more in real time. We’re all consuming much more, much faster, and in more real time. Content is being delivered to us fast with things like RSS, Atom, and other syndication methods. It’s coming in much more quickly. It’s happening in real time. It’s more human because it’s just everyday people doing it. It’s about us! It’s much more about us! It’s about trust. It’s about the content that you can trust. It’s about relationships. Relationships with your communities and relationships with the service providers like Yahoo. Web 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 is going to be about creating those relationships – long term relationships- and bringing them with you as you go anywhere. The last thing that I’ll say about Web 2.0 is that “it’s just there all the time”. It’s always with you. It’s with you in your car when you’re walking around. It’s everywhere. It’s always on. It’s part of your life, and in much deeper ways. It’s an evolution that will just keep on getting stronger, deeper, and more!

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
How do you guys handle the massive surge of content generated by users?

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
We build some really cool technology, and buy lots of equipment. The good news is that there is Moore’s Law. We (Yahoo) were built to scale. The harder part is on the consumer side. How do we take that tidal wave of information and make it consumable usable interesting helpful to people who are trying to wade their way through it? How to navigate to the content that is relevant to them?

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
Everyday users. Not super geeks.

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
Web 0.5 was about super geeks, Web 1.0 was about basic stuff, and Web 2.0 is about connected services to everyone, and that will continue be in the Web 3.0 and 4.0.

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
iPod juiced up the podcasting market. Videoblogging down the road, and people are having connected devices. The notion of community is not a ‘walled garden’. Communities are global. How do you look at that from in an open way? How are you looking at this whole movement toward open source and open services?

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
The conversation about openness is the key aspect of web 2.0. Even though we moved from the walled garden in web1.o where you could get to wherever you wanted, you were still limited to what you could do, and what services you could use. What’s more those services where standalone, and they didn’t let others inside them. What’s happening (now) is a realization that there will be infinite ways to use the content out there that comprises the web. To really make it useful and to connect people, you need to be open in bringing everything in like Yahoo Search and Yahoo Podcast. For example with Yahoo Podcast, we want to allow users to find any podcast out there. You also have the other end of how can we open up Yahoo so that other developers can create value for users of Yahoo. We have done some things like opening APIs across Yahoo so that 3rd party developers can find cool and interesting ways to add value to users.

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
Talk about from a user perspective what are you doing in the (Yahoo) 2.0 model to service users. Talk about users and then talk about developers. What does the developer community look like? Are they software developers or media developers? Is a 15 year old kid a developer? Look at podcasting someone can consume a podcast and they share it and build it into their community.

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
Users in web 2.0 want to make their life simpler and easier, but what they are going to be concerned with is the experience that they are having. How is it that I’m getting what I want to get, how am I creating those relationships, how am I able to leverage the relationships that I have to get what I want done? When you come to Yahoo service, you have a particular task in mind that you are trying to achieve. Our goal is to allow you to achieve it no matter what device that you’re using – mobile phone, mp3 player, or web browser on a PC. Who is a developer? Whether it’s Yahoo or someone else, it could be a 15 year old or a software company. We are actually indifferent as long as that developer abides by the rules, doesn’t abuse user trust, and creates value in the end. That’s what we’re looking for. What we’ve seen is that it could be someone in a garage or it could be a partnership with a company.

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
So you’re looking at it as ‘sand box’. A developer can use your resources?

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
It’s not Yahoo doing the discovery (of the service or content). It’s the community doing the discovery. They are doing the choosing, and it is Yahoo building the technology. Providing the capability to enable that community to filtered content, and allow it to float to the top. It’s a search for simplicity and relevancy. We want the right content, the right service, the right task completion so that what you’re looking for floats to the top so that it’s easy to find.

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
With podcasting and video – where is that going?

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
Eventually you’ll have a chip implanted in your brain and you’ll have braincasting . Really we have a simple philosophy about all sorts of different content – people should be able to consume it how they want, when they want, and where they want. What’s going to happen is that more and more people will be creating podcasts and videocasts. There will be a democratization of content so that we could do things like podcasts very easy. There is going to be an extraordinary explosion of this type of content. This explosion of production values and the value the content creates. It will all be brought up in the “ether” and it will grow and grow. We will build really interesting ways for people to make their choices to navigation through all that “stuff” that really works for them -from mom’s videocast to the newest coolest technology interview in the world.

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
Can you give a final parting comment to users and developers.

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
For users, welcome to the world of knowledge information and choice - it’s a great world for you and I hope that you love it. For developers, listen to what was said because users have choice so create an experience that they can chose.

Web 2.0Yahoo Podcast InfoTalk PodTech.net PodTechInfoTalk Silicon Valley Technology Podcast John Furrier InfoTalk podcast shows PodTech.net

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