What do you mean by Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 doesn’t have a strict and standard definition – the truth is, there are many elements and moving parts. So let’s start out historically for a second. Tim O’Reilly, the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world, and an activist for open standards, wrote in a October 2005 article, “The bursting of the dot-com bubble in the fall of 2001 marked a turning point for the web. Many people concluded that the web was over hyped, when in fact bubbles and consequent shakeouts (a major change in an organization or system resulting in streamlining) appear to be a common feature of all technological revolutions. Shakeouts typically mark the point at which an ascendant technology is ready to take its place at center stage. The pretenders are given the bum’s rush, the real success stories show their strength, and there begins to be an understanding of what separates one from the other.” Tim continues, “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. Could it be that the dot-com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the web, such that a call to action such as ‘Web 2.0’ might make sense? We agreed that id did, and so the Web 2.0 Conference was born.” According to O’Reilly and many others, they agree there are ten core Web 2.0 design patterns to evaluate if a site is worthy of the Web 2.0 name. But keep in mind that each example they have investigated exhibits one or more of the key principles. So in other words, one site may have six out of eight of the core patterns, or three out of eight, etc. but still is worthy enough to carry the Web 2.0 name. When people talk about Web 2.0 they may think it is a just about social networking while others look at Web 2.0 from a technological aspect. According to Scott Prager, an IBM Engineer - He comments that one of the common mistakes people make, is if they use this technology then it’s Web 2.0, but Scott thinks (and I agree) it’s more about the enabling function of technology rather than the technology itself. Either way you look at it; there is a set core of characteristics build into a Web 2.0 pattern. So in other words, it’s just not about social networking or technology – but a broader paradigm. Technologies important to Web 2.0: Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), XML and HTML, REST (Representational State Transfer), RSS (Really Simple Syndication), Atom, Tagging, also playing a large role in Web 2.0 companies are, API (Application Programming Interface), Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby … etc. Ten Characteristics The Long Tail (first coined by Chris Anderson): Is a niche strategy used to implement a series of new marketing techniques, such as (Wikipedia source examples): 1.) New Media Marketing: a term to describe the building and managing of social networks and online or virtual communities, and extend the reach of marketing to the low-frequency, low-intensity consumer in a cost effective way. 2.) Buzz Marketing: The strategic use of word of mouth, the transmission of commercial information from person to person in an online or real-world environment Facebook employs a combination of Buzz and Viral marketing with their implementation of "Pages" and other social application widgets. 3.) Viral Marketing: The intentional spreading of marketing messages using social networks, with an emphasis of the casual, non-intentional and low cost. 4.) Harnessing Collective Intelligence: Rich “interactive” user experience and Web as a platform rather than one specific aspect. Essentially what this means is that “users” contributions greatly help build and make the foundation stronger and more popular by adding their content, such as links, comments, forum posts, reviews, rating others, an aggregation of the best work of thousands, then millions of web users (example: YouTube – more comments, more “thumbs-up” = the more popularity), and any content contribution really. Without the end “user” the sites popularity goes down – if there is no interactivity for the end user, it’s not collective “anything.” So in short – the site grows organically in response to user activity. 5.) Users Add Value: The architecture of your software development relies on “public” users to add their own data thus adding more value to your application. Some examples of this are Joomla and WordPress (what this blog runs on). 6.) Network Effects by Default: Only a small percentage of the public will go to the trouble to add value to your application and as a result, set a broad scope of defaults formed by the collection of user data as a side-effect of their use of the application. 7.) “Some” Rights Reserved: Expanding the range of creative works accessible for others to legally build upon and share. The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to just that. The organization has released several copyright licenses known as Creative Commons licenses. These licenses, depending on the one selected, restrict only particular rights (or none) of the work instead of customary copyright, which is more restraining. 8.) Beta: Sites like, Frappr, CafePress, Flickr, FeedBurner…etc., don’t package up new features into massive releases, but instead add them on a regular basis as part of the normal user experience. In other words, if you “package” up new features and connect them to the Internet – they are no longer ongoing services, it’s a one time deal. 9.) Rich User Experience: According to O’Reilly’s interpretation, “Cooperate, don’t control.” He wrote that Web 2.0 applications are built of a network of cooperating data services. In a more similar explanation, applets (Small programs that run in Web browsers; usually written in Java) initially used as early as 1992, are programs that you write, and put inside your web page. Examples of a couple of “applets” are a smiley and calculator embedded in a web page. 10.) Software above One Single Device: The application should be designed to integrate with hand-held devices, PCs and Internet services – not just the PC. It's more valuable if your application can be used on both the PC and an iPod for example. As you can see Web 2.0 isn’t as simple as social networking or just about the technical side. It’s a broad range of characteristics spanning multiple disciplines that embody Web 2.0. Here's a link to the Wikipedia version - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 Comments? Let 'em rip. - Story