If we’re in web 2.0 right now with Gmail, Ajax, Ruby, YouTube, Flickr, and so on, what was before that?
web 0.1 – The first web sites; not much to speak of, and I doubt any still exist.
web 0.5 – Around 1995-1998ish with the annoying proliferation of flaming torches, animated rainbow lines, embedded midi, and terrible design. GeoCities is a household name (albeit in geek households).
web 1.0 – Everyone can be a web designer, and designs actually started to mature and not look quite so “GeoCities.” Embedded midi is out. Animated gif attacks are out. Stylesheets and databases are in.
web 2.0 – Not everyone can be a web designer. Programmers and extra-mile languages are taking over to offer full application-style sites. Objects are in, playing with code is out. The tools are sophisticated enough that web newbies don’t need to code, they can click buttons, sliders, toggles, and otherwise drag-n-drop content.
So, where does MySpace fit in? The answer is, it doesn’t. MySpace resembles web 0.5 with annoying embedded musics, terrible designs, and atrocious layouts. It really is a modern GeoCities (now, there are many people with very nice-looking sites, but random browsing on MySpace is an exercise in ugly).
But so many people and bands and groups are posting there and using them to host their official sites. This means that MySpace either needs a makeover to become Web 2.0 compliant, or someone will take that space over and offer exactly what MySpace offers, only easier, prettier, slicker, sexier, and modern. Considering the “ugly” stigma that MySpace has, getting people onto a new service that is better shouldn’t be much harder than Google toppling Yahoo back when Yahoo went out of style and Google was “it.”