Web 2.5 Entrepreneurs

Web 1.0 was the ability to left click and hyperlink somewhere new and exciting on the web. The ability to watch amazingly looooong flash intros on websites.

Web 2.0 allowed users to interact and make decisions on how things would look and now have the freedom to publish words, images, sound and video to the web.

Web 2.5 is a term I use because I don't believe we have reached Web 3.o (or the semantic web) potential yet. Web 2.5 allows users to manipulate and publish their data all within a web portal. Many companies are experimenting with this and there are free (or should I say Beta) web applications all over the web right now that give you free storage, communication tools, publishing tools, etc....

The Web 2.5 Entrepreneur takes advantage of all of these web tools to develop, advertise and market their services/products.

Leo Bridle embraces Web 2.0 with his winning video for TheFirstPost. This talented young film maker/animator combines an old technology (stop motion animation) to describe a new technology (Web 2.0). Within many of his short films he uses a combination of cut-out animation, stop motion, simple green screen techniques along with digital video techniques. This Web 2.0 is probably one of my favourite short films....each time I watched it I picked up something new....great piece (great audio as well).



Bridle is an example of the "Web 2.5 entrepreneur", using the Web 2.0/2.5 tools that are openly available to say "hey this is what I am doing."

What has YouTube done for his career?

Added to YouTube 10 months ago, as of this moment, this particular short film has had:
Views: 933,938

Comments: 1884

Favorited: 4366 times

His other short films that he has posted on YouTube have had similar success....that is a lot of free marketing and exposure for this young film maker. Even though some of the comments left are "cool printer dude...wish my printer would print pizza!" or " wow! thatz the pimpest thing i've seen! itz amazin how u did it! great job u guyz really!?" Of the almost 2000 comments that had been posted for this short video only about a quarter could be used for constructive feedback. That is what social commenting is all about, you take the good with the bad.

The Web 2.5 entrepreneur is a person who goes to the Internet for free marketing and exposure....this is exactly what Bridle along with thousands of others do as 2nd nature everyday. Their digital business cards probably lists their:

• website
• MySpace URL
• IM
• Skype
• blogging URL
• and possibly SecondLife name

Classrooms....
Are we preparing students in the classroom to be Web 2.5 or 3.0 entrepreneurs in schools today?

Showing this short film to anyone that you need to teach the concept of Web 2.0 to is a great springboard. Have your group watch this short film and then break into small groups to discuss all the things they observed from the film that they thought represented Web 2.0. Moving into having the groups discuss where Web 3.0 will take us? How can entrepreneurs use these web technologies?