Web 2.0 - What is it?
Web 2.0 was coined in 1999 to describe web sites that use technology beyond the static pages of earlier web sites. Although web 2.0 suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specification, but rather to cumulative changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web. [1][2]A Web 2.0 site may allow users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where people are limited to the passive viewing of content. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups and folksonomies.[3]
The term "Web 2.0" was first used in January 1999 by Darcy DiNucci, a consultant on electronic information design (information architecture). In her article, "Fragmented Future", DiNucci writes:[6]
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. It will [...] appear on your computer screen, [...] on your TV set [...] your car dashboard [...] your cell phone [...] hand-held game machines [...] maybe even your microwave oven.
Characteristics
Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. By increasing what was already possible in "Web 1.0", they provide the user with more user-interface, software and storage facilities, all through their browser. This has been called "network as platform" computing.[2] Major features of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, user created web sites, self-publishing platforms, tagging, and social bookmarking. Users can provide the data that is on a Web 2.0 site and exercise some control over that data.[2][14] These sites may have an "architecture of participation" that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it.[1][2] Some scholars have made the case that cloud computing is a form of Web 2.0 because cloud computing is simply an implication of computing on the Internet.[15]
The concept of Web-as-participation-platform captures many of these characteristics. Bart Decrem, a founder and former CEO of Flock, calls Web 2.0 the "participatory Web"[16] and regards the Web-as-information-source as Web 1.0.Web 2.0 offers all users the same freedom to contribute. While this opens the possibility for serious debate and collaboration, it also increases the incidence of "spamming" and "trolling" by unscrupulous or less mature users. The impossibility of excluding group members who don’t contribute to the provision of goods from sharing profits gives rise to the possibility that serious members will prefer to withhold their contribution of effort and free ride on the contribution of others.[17] This requires what is sometimes called radical trust by the management of the website. According to Best,[18] the characteristics of Web 2.0 are: rich user experience, user participation, dynamic content, metadata, web standards and scalability. Further characteristics, such as openness, freedom[19] and collective intelligence[20] by way of user participation, can also be viewed as essential attributes of Web 2.0.
Key features of Web 2.0 [21] include
- Folksonomy : Free Classification of Information
- Rich User Experience
- User as a Contributor
- Long Tail
- User Participation
- Basic Trust
- Dispersion
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