Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 was coined in 1999
Web
2.0 Web 2.0 was first introduced in the market by O’Reilly at the brainstorming discussion at media live International in 1999. The information available through Web 2.0 empowered the new generation to develop new concepts like Wiki, Widgets and Video streaming. It also allowed many users to publish their own content through few basic steps, which was not possible in the Web 1.0 or The Internet. Web 2.0 was responsible for the development of various sites that we commonly use today like Twitter, Flickr and Facebook.
Web
2.0 can be described in three parts:
Social Web
defines how Web 2.0 tends to interact much more with the end
user and make the end-user an integral part.
As such, Web 2.0 draws together the
capabilities of
the use of network protocols.
Standards-oriented web browsers may use plug-ins and software extensions to handle the
content and the user interactions. Key features of Web 2.0 include
- Folksonomy: Free Classification of Information
- Rich User Experience
- User as a Contributor
- Long Tail
- User Participation
- Basic Trust
- Dispersion
Web
2.0 sites provide users with
Creation, and
Dissemination capabilities
that were not possible in the
environment now known as "Web 1.0".
Web 2.0 websites include the following
features and techniques, referred to as the acronym SLATES by Andrew
McAfee:
Search
Finding
information through keyword search.
Links
Connects
information together into a meaningful information ecosystem using the model of
the Web, and provides low-barrier social tools.
Authoring
The ability
to create and update content leads to the collaborative work of many rather
than just a few web authors. In wikis, users may extend, undo and redo each
other's work. In blogs, posts and the comments of individuals build up over
time.
Tags
Categorization
of content by users adding "tags"—short, usually one-word
descriptions—to facilitate searching, without dependence on pre-made
categories. Collections of tags created by many users within a single system
may be referred to as "folksonomies" (i.e., folk taxonomies).
Extensions
Software
that makes the Web an application platform as well as a document server. These
include software like Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash player, Microsoft Silverlight,
ActiveX,
Oracle Java, QuickTime,
Windows Media, etc.
Signals
The use of
syndication technology such as RSS to notify users of content changes.
Marketing
For
marketers, Web 2.0 offers an opportunity to engage consumers.
Web 2.0
marketing strategies to compete with larger companies. As new businesses grow
and develop, new technology is used to decrease the gap between businesses and
customers.
Web 2.0 offers Networks
such as
Yelp and
are now
becoming common elements of multichannel and customer loyalty strategies, and
banks are beginning to use these sites proactively to spread their messages.
Web 2.0
technologies provide teachers with new ways to engage students, and even allow
student participation on a global level. Will Richardson stated in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts
and other Powerful Web tools for the Classrooms.
Web 2.0 and
philanthropy
Web 2.0 in social
work
Web-based
applications and desktops
According to Best, the
characteristics of Web 2.0
are:
1.
Rich user experience,
2.
User participation,
3.
Dynamic content,
4.
metadata,
5.
Web standards and
6.
scalability.
Web 2.0
applications tend to interact much more with the end user. As such, the end user
is not only a user of the application but also a participant by:
1.
Podcasting
2.
Blogging
3.
Tagging
4.
Curating with RSS
Web
2.0, The popularity of the term, along with the increasing use of
1.
blogs,
2.
wikis, and
3.
social networking technologies,
has led many in academia and
business to append a flurry of 2.0's
To existing Web 2.0 concepts and fields of study,
including
1.
Library 2.0,
2.
Social Work 2.0,
3.
Enterprise 2.0,
4.
PR 2.0,
5.
Classroom 2.0,
6.
Publishing 2.0,
7.
Medicine 2.0,
8.
Telco 2.0,
9.
Travel 2.0,
10. Government
2.0, and even
The term Web 2.0 was never clearly defined and even today if
one asks ten people what it means one will likely get ten different
definitions.
Critics of the term claim that "Web 2.0" does not represent a new
version of the World Wide Web at all, but merely continues to use
so-called "Web 1.0" technologies and concepts. First, techniques such as AJAX do not replace underlying protocols like HTTP, but add an additional layer of abstraction on top of them.
Second, many of the ideas of Web 2.0 were already featured in implementations on networked systems well before the term "Web 2.0" emerged.
Amazon.com, for instance, has allowed users to write reviews and consumer guides since its launch in 1995, in a form of self-publishing.
Amazon also opened its API to outside developers in 2002.
Previous developments also came from research in computer-supported collaborative learning and computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) and from established products like Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino, all phenomena that preceded Web 2.0.
"Nobody really knows what it means...If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along... Web 2.0, for some people, it means moving some of the thinking [to the] client side, so making it more immediate, but the idea of the Web as interaction between people is really what the Web is. That was what it was designed to be... a collaborative space where people can interact."
Other critics labeled Web 2.0 "a second bubble" (referring to the Dot-com bubble of circa 1995–2001), suggesting that too many Web 2.0 companies attempt to develop the same product with a lack of business models.
In terms of Web 2.0's social impact, critics such as Andrew Keen argue that Web 2.0 has created a cult of digital narcissism and amateurism, which undermines the notion of expertise by allowing anybody, anywhere to share and place undue value upon their own opinions about any subject and post any kind of content, regardless of their particular talents, knowledge, credentials, biases or possible hidden agendas.
Keen's 2007 book, Cult of the Amateur, argues that the core assumption of Web 2.0, that all opinions and user-generated content are equally valuable and relevant, is misguided.
Additionally, Sunday Times reviewer John Flintoff has characterized Web 2.0 as "creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity: uninformed political commentary, unseemly home videos, embarrassingly amateurish music, unreadable poems, essays and novels... [and that Wikipedia is full of] mistakes, half truths and misunderstandings".
Michael Gorman, former president of the American Library Association has been vocal about his opposition to Web 2.0 due to the lack of expertise that it outwardly claims, though he believes that there is hope for the future.
There is also a growing body of critique of Web 2.0 from the perspective of political economy.
As Tim O'Reilly and John Batelle put it, Web 2.0 is based on the "customers... building your business for you," critics have argued that sites such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are exploiting the "free labor" of user-created content.
Web 2.0 sites use Terms of Service agreements to claim perpetual licenses to user-generated content, and they use that content to create profiles of users to sell to marketers. This is part of increased surveillance of user activity happening within Web 2.0 sites.
Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society argue that such data can be used by governments who want to monitor dissident citizens.
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