Web 2.0 is the current state of online technology as it compares to the early days of the Web, characterized by greater user interactivity and collaboration, more pervasive network connectivity and enhanced communication channels.
One of the most significant differences between Web 2.0 and the traditional World Wide Web, retroactively referred to as Web 1.0) is greater collaboration among providers. Originally, data was posted on Web sites, and users simply viewed or downloaded the content. Increasingly, users have more input into the nature and scope of Web content and in some cases exert real-time control over it.
The social nature of Web 2.0 is another major difference between it and the original, static Web. Increasingly, websites enable community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration.
Some elements of Web 2.0
- Wikis: Websites that enable users to contribute, collaborate and edit site content. Wikipedia is one of the oldest and best-known wiki-based sites.
- The increasing prevalence of Software as a Service (SaaS), web apps and cloud computing rather than locally-installed programs and services.
- Mobile computing, also known as nomadicity, the trend toward users connecting from wherever they may be. That trend is enabled by the proliferation of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices in conjunction with readily accessible Wi-Fi networks.
- Mash-ups: Web pages or applications that integrate complementary elements from two or more sources.
- Social networking: The practice of expanding the number of one's business and/or social contacts by making connections through individuals. Social networking sites include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.
- Collaborative efforts based on the ability to reach large numbers of participants and their collective resources, such as crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and crowdsource testing.
- User-generated content (UGC): Writing, images, audio and video content -- among other possibilities -- made freely available online by the individuals who create it.
- Unified communications (UC): The integration of multiple forms of call and multimedia/cross-media message-management functions controlled by an individual user for both business and social purposes.
- Social curation: The collaborative sharing of content organized around one or more particular themes or topics. Social content curation sites include Reddit, Digg, Pinterest and Instagram.
The History of Web 2.0The foundational components of Web 2.0 are the advances enabled by
Ajax and other applications such as
RSS and
Eclipse and the user empowerment that they support.
Darcy DiNucci, an information architecture consultant, coined the term “Web 2.0 In her 1999 article, "Fragmented Future”:
“The Web we know now, which loads into a browser window in essentially static screenfuls, is only an embryo of the Web to come. The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, and we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop. The Web will be understood not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether through which interactivity happens.”
A lot of this content has been provided by other sources around the web.
Lots more coming very soon.
