http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=1
The above site, O’Reilly gave a comparison of two internet eras. The current one being called web 2.0, our internet era, the internet of today.
| Web 1.0 | Web 2.0 | |
|---|---|---|
| DoubleClick | –> | Google AdSense |
| Ofoto | –> | Flickr |
| Akamai | –> | BitTorrent |
| mp3.com | –> | Napster |
| Britannica Online | –> | Wikipedia |
| personal websites | –> | blogging |
| evite | –> | upcoming.org and EVDB |
| domain name speculation | –> | search engine optimization |
| page views | –> | cost per click |
| screen scraping | –> | web services |
| publishing | –> | participation |
| content management systems | –> | wikis |
| directories (taxonomy) | –> | tagging (”folksonomy”) |
| stickiness | –> | syndication |
There is no specific definition to web 2.0. Many people have many different views on it. Some beliefs are very similar while others are extremely different. Having never heard the term “web 2.0″ before, I truly don’t know what my view is, so I’m going to try to break down this article very briefly to get a general idea.
- Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
- Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
- Trusting users as co-developers
- Harnessing collective intelligence
- Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
- Software above the level of a single device
- Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models
According to O’Reilly net, these are some of, if not THE, main components of web 2.0. So what does it mean? It means that web 2.0 is based almost entirely around the users. The users are what basically make up the internet, or internet based services. The internet is the community as opposed to being a series of pages. Blogs, file sharing, forums, and wikis are the essence of web 2.0. It’s as simple as that. The source is not entirely dependent on itself to grow. Less servers are needed for growing sources. That’s because each of the computers in a network can serve as a server now. Look at limewire and bittorrent, every time a new user joins, the network grows. The internet is no longer restricted to web browsers.
What about web browsers though? Where do they fit in all of this? Web browsers are still the central point of the internet, but websites have changed in nature. If that weren’t the case, then there would be no point in coining the term “web 2.0″. Notice how any popular site nowadays has some type of upload feature. Those sites also require you to register to be able to access all of their content. Why? So you can be apart of their database. It’s a type of security to make sure that anything doesn’t just pop up at the users of the site. If you upload offensive material, it can be gotten rid of, and if you become a problem, you can be gotten rid of. Web 2.0 grants the users power in ways that the internet didn’t a few years back and that’s one of the reasons that it’s called web 2.0. Websites have a more personal touch now than they use to.
So in conclusion, web 2.0 is user based, not developer based. It is interactive, not informative. It is service based, not product based. It’s a network that is constantly growing with the more people that access it. It’s comparable to a living breathing thing now, for it will never stop changing. It will always have too many components to be labeled as one thing and one thing only.
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