HomePage Introduction Characteristics Technology Innovations Criticism Trademark

Introduction

        Alluding to the version-numbers that commonly designate software upgrade, the phrase "Web 2.0" hints at an improved form of the World Wide Web, and some people have used the term for several years.
        In the opening talk of the first Web 2.0 conference, Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle summarized key principles they believed characterized Web 2.0 applications:

the Web as a platform

data as the driving force

network effects created by an architecture of participation

innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers (a kind of "open source" development)

        Earlier users of the phrase "Web 2.0" employed it as a synonym for "Semantic Web," and indeed, the two concepts complement each other. The combination of social-networking systems such as FOAF and XFN with the development of tag-based folksonomies, delivered through blogs and wikis, sets up a basis for a semantic-web environment. Although the technologies and services that make up Web 2.0 lack the effectiveness of an internet in which the machines can understand and extract meaning (as proponents of the Semantic Web envision), Web 2.0 may represent a step in that direction.

As used by its proponents, the phrase "Web 2.0" refers to one or more of the following:

The transition of web-sites from isolated information silos to sources of content and functionality, thus becoming computing platforms serving web applications to end-users

A social phenomenon embracing an approach to generating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and "the market as a conversation"

A more organized and categorized content, with a far more developed deeplinking web architecture than hithertofore

A shift in economic value of the Web, possibly surpassing that of the dot com boom of the late 1990s

        Many find it easiest to define Web 2.0 by associating it with companies or products that embody its principles. Tim O'Reilly gave examples in his description of his "four plus one" levels in the hierarchy of Web 2.0-ness:

Examples of Web 2.0 (other than those cited by O'Reilly) include dig, shout-wire, last fm, and Technorati.

View Chart

Proponents of the Web 2.0 concept say that it differs from early Web development (retrospectively labeled Web 1.0) in that it moves away from static websites, the use of search engines, and surfing from one website to the next, towards a more dynamic and interactive World Wide Web. Others argue that later developments have not actually superseded the original and fundamental concepts of the WWW. Skeptics may see the term "Web 2.0" as little more than a buzzword; or they may suggest that it means whatever its proponents want it to mean in order to convince their customers, investors and the media that they have begun building something fundamentally new, rather than continuing to develop and use well-established technologies.

Designed by: Hisham Derbala (100266401)

Last updated November 29, 2006