I suppose to begin with the question is what is Web 2.0? There are plenty of technical definitions and some will say there is even a stylistic definition. As explained by Tim O'Rielly, Dale Dougherty originally coined the term in 2004 as part of a conference brainstorming session. Now as a concept, Web 2.0 has been with us for somewhere near 4 years, personally I like O'Rielly's compact definition of Web 2.0, it's concise and sums up all the aspects of Web 2.0.
For me the web is like a Swiss army knife, it has so many practical uses from social media to knowledge retrieval, self publishing but above all communication. But the internet has always allowed that I hear you say, what is it then that differentiates the early days of the internet to that of now?
Blogs, micro blogging, social media, web apps, cloud computing, crowd sourcing, mashups, Ajax, wiki's.
For one it's the concept of user contributed content and the ease of contribution. The web has gone from a place where to have website takes special knowledge and content is presented in a single direction manner primarily to hock a product, to a place where we communicate and share ideas. Many websites and web applications now allow us to contribute and add to the content they provide. Not only that they can also allow us to take their output or data, to integrate into our own sites or even create entirely new concepts and applications.
No more is this difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 highlighted than in this task of comparing the social book marking site Delicious and a static HTML page of links. The latter of these two fits well into the concept of Web 1.0: Static information presented on a page with no further interaction or contribution from the user. Delicious on the other hand is a dynamic database driven, user contributed, social bookmarking site. Here users can bookmark sites, adding comments and tags (folksonony) to their bookmarks, then share their lists of sites with other users.
This user contribution and communication. This creation and sharing of knowledge epitomises what is Web 2.0 to me. The more I explore these avenues the more I find how the web is changing the worlds we live in.
So I suppose now the question is not what is Web 2.0, but what will Web 3.0 bring us?
What do you think?
Friday, January 9, 2009
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Wow Simon, you are obviously VERY 'clever' when it comes to the internet. Your reflection on what the internet has been was very informative, being a newbie to the net I don't have anything to compare the net to. As to what will it bring us???????? ONE CAN ONLY IMAGINE!
ReplyDeleteHey Belinda, thanks for the comments and I'm glad you have found it informative. I think one of the beauty's of the net is that it does allow us to imagine.
ReplyDeleteSo don't be afraid to let your imagination run wild with what the future could be. Who knows, what you see in your mind may be something you can bring to the net in the future :)