What is web 2.0?

The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International. Dale Dougherty, web pioneer and O'Reilly VP, noted that far from having "crashed", the web was more important than ever, with exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity. What's more, the companies that had survived the collapse seemed to have some things in common. It was almost as though the dot-com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the web.





Like many important concepts, Web 2.0 doesn't have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core. It is defined by a number of key principles including:





1. The Web as a Platform


2. Harnassing Collective Intelligence


3. Data Over Processing Power


4. Software That is Delivered as a Service, Not As a Product.


5. Lightweight Programming (RSS, AJAX)


6. Software Above the Level of a Single Device


7. Rich User Experiences





Taken a step further, it meant a transformation...





Web 1.0 Web 2.0


DoubleClick --%26gt; Google AdSense


Ofoto --%26gt; Flickr


Akamai --%26gt; BitTorrent


mp3.com --%26gt; Napster


Britannica Online --%26gt; Wikipedia


personal websites --%26gt; blogging


evite --%26gt; upcoming.org and EVDB


domain name speculation --%26gt; search engine optimization


page views --%26gt; cost per click


screen scraping --%26gt; web services


publishing --%26gt; participation


content management systems --%26gt; wikis


directories (taxonomy) --%26gt; tagging ("folksonomy")


stickiness --%26gt; syndication


Source(s):


http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228...

What is web 2.0?
Web 2.0 generally refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that let people collaborate, and share information online. In contrast to the first generation, Web 2.0 gives users an experience closer to desktop applications than the traditional static Web pages. The term was popularized by O'Reilly Media and MediaLive International as the name for a series of web development conferences that started in October 2004. Web 2.0 applications often use a combination of techniques devised in the late 1990s, including public web service APIs (dating from 1998), Ajax (1998), and web syndication (1997). They often allow for mass publishing (web-based social software). The term may include blogs and wikis. To some extent Web 2.0 is a buzzword, incorporating whatever is newly popular on the Web (such as tags and podcasts), and its meaning is still in flux.