What is Web 2.0?
The term "Web 2.0" was coined sometime in 2004 in an effort to identify, classify and describe the current structure of the web. Particularly the developments in Internet structure after the dotcom crash of 2001. The dotcom crash heralded the "end" of one phase of the Internet. Like software improvements or upgrades, there was a new "version" of the Internet, "Web 2.0" which was built on the old version but with new applications and approaches.
Key Elements of Web 2.0
Web 2.0 has the following key elements:
- The web is the platform for all Internet-connected devices
- User participation is essential.
- Ease of data transfer and availability of data-transfer and data-sharing services are apparent.
Although this has been the rallying cry of many companies, especially Netscape, in the pre-dotcom crash, the "old" definition was limited in its view of what constituted a connected 'device'. In "Web 1.0", "connected devices" referred to computers only. Today's web we are seeing the convergence of various devices, including such media staples as radio and television, as well as the movement towards true Internet mobility with mobile phones, PDAs and laptop computers become a single device linked through a network of wireless Internet connections.
To a large extent Web 2.0 is all about Internet users, unlike Web 1.0, where the focus of attention was on the companies and people behind the different websites on the Internet. Note also that "social networking" got a boost from the entry of new software and applications which had user participation at its core; Google, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Friendster, and so on.
Internet users of the 1990s remember a time when the web was all about text and line graphics; uploading and downloading pictures was a slow and cumbersome process. "Sharing" music took several hours to complete all the while tying up your telephone resources for that span of time, and no one would even dream of uploading home videos because of the bandwidth usage, time spent, and resources required to uploading them.
Compare that to today's world-wide web where broadband is the standard, and there are any number of sites where audio, video and graphics files are uploaded, downloaded and exchanged with a minimum of fuss and bother.
The bottom line is: "Web 2.0" is a term which describes the current state of the Internet which has evolved from what it was before; a collection of staid, static websites mostly put up by companies and people wishing to advertise, promote, and market their wares and knowledge on the web into what it is now: a veritable meeting ground of ideas and information not limited by bandwidth and storage restrictions as it was in the past. In fact, most collaboration and sharing now includes audio, video, animation and other formats found to be unusable in the 1990s.
Web 2.0 describes an Internet where people and users from different cultures interact and whose use of the Internet's applications and information add value to such application and content. Web 2.0 is an Internet whose power mainly lies in the hands of its users.
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