Tim O'Reilly

CEO, O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Publishing in a Web 2.0 World
25 minutes, 11.6mb, recorded 2007-06-19
Tim O'Reilly

One of the dominating trends on the Internet over the last five years has been what Tim O'Reilly helped dub Web 2.0. With distinct differences from earlier web sites, Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, Craigslist, and MySpace, among others, dominate the attention of most Internet users today. While these Web 2.0 companies are not considered publishers, O'Reilly suggests that they might be a new breed of publisher with new lessons for traditional publishers.

In this presentation from the 2007 O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, O'Reilly examines some of the basic trends behind these Web 2.0 web sites and examines how they are evolving the role of publishers within the industry. Drawing upon the experiences of his own company, O'Reilly shares various projects that O'Reilly Media uses to give customers a variety of options, or as Tim calls it "letting the Wookie win".

Furthermore, by examining how the Internet has affected the music industry, O'Reilly asserts that there are lessons available that can help the publishing industry understand the changes being wrought by search and user-generated content. In this presentation, O'Reilly frames the challenges facing publishers by explaining how their traditional roles fit into Web 2.0 technologies.


Tim O'Reilly is founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. In addition to publishing pioneering books like Ed Krol's The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog (selected by the New York Public Library as one of the most significant books of the twentieth century), O'Reilly has also been a pioneer in the popularization of the Internet. O'Reilly's Global Network Navigator site (GNN, which was sold to America Online in September 1995) was the first Web portal and the first true commercial site on the World Wide Web.

Resources

This free podcast is from our Tools of Change Conference series.