What is Web 2.0?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a number of people ask me what Web 2.0 is. That doesn’t really surprise me as it seems that as the term has gone mainstream, it’s lost much of its meaning.

The term was coined back in 2004 by O’Reilly Media to refer to the startups that were doing innovative things after the dotcom bubble burst in 2001. It’s easy to think that the “2.0″ means a version number, as if “Web 2.0″ is an upgrade to “Web 1.0″ technologies, but this isn’t the case. Instead, the term describes how people use and interact with the web – and how that is different from earlier years.

How is Web 2.0 different from Web 1.0?

• From a programming standpoint, Web 2.0 uses the web as a platform rather than your personal computer. That means that software runs on a web server, and you and others connect over the internet to this application (via your computer, Blackberry, cell phone, or other device) to use it, rather than using a program that only runs on your computer.
• From a user standpoint, it’s about being able to contribute text, audio, and video to websites and maintain control over that information. For instance, you can log into Flickr.com and upload pictures or log into YouTube.com and upload video. Then, anyone can view and comment on your content. These types of sites thrive because people are willing to upload content (aka “user generated content”).
• The sites use specific technologies that “upgrade” basic html capabilities to syndicate content (RSS), program features (Ruby on Rails), combine technologies (APIs) and use less server resources (AJAX). All of these technologies still use traditional HTML, but they allow programmers to make software applications faster/better/cheaper.
• Web 2.0 deals with shared communities like blogging (and commenting on blogs), adding content to wikis, tagging posts with keywords so others can find them, and sharing files over the web. All of this has a social component to it – you provide information so that others can use it, comment on it, and even edit it.

Yes, it’s technical, but what do you expect from a term that came from the technology community?

Now that I’ve given you the long answer, the short answer is that Web 2.0 encompasses all the trendy sites you’ve probably heard of – Flickr for photo sharing, YouTube for video sharing, Del.icio.us for social bookmarking and tagging, Twitter for real time “keeping in touch”, Wikipedia for the online community encyclopedia anyone can edit, LinkedIn for professional networking, and Technorati to find blogs.

Of course, there are far more examples than this – check out SEOMoz’s 2007 Web 2.0 Awards for a list of over 200 sites – but these will give you a starting point to explore the bleeding edge of Web 2.0 sites.

After you visit a few of them, try them out, and become familiar with them, you’ll start to see trends emerge. They’re all easy to use, are built around a community, and allow you to add your own content. That’s Web 2.0 in a nutshell.

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