The Wild Wild Web

Web 2.0 describes websites that are beyond the old ‘static’ web pages of legacy design Web sites.  Two Point 0, coined in 1999 by Darcy DiNucci was popularized by Tim O’Reilly at the Web 2.0 conference in 2004.

Although Web 2.0 suggests a new version of the Web, it’s not about technology as much as ideas, as much as art, marketing and display of information.  It’s not a technical specification, but rather to cumulative changes in the way Web pages are made, used and displayed.  Its an evolution

A 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate in a ‘social media dialogue’.  Yes, its about social media;  as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community.  It’s a contrast to sites where people are limited to  passive viewing of content.

What is web 2.0?  It’s social networking sites, it’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, blogs, and wikis.  It’s ‘folksonomies’, its video sharing sites, the cloud, it’s mashups, conglomerations of new ideas.  It’s hosted services, web apps, mobile apps, open source software and free stuff like WordPress and all the associated bits and pieces, plugins and widgets that make up the ever changing landscape of the internet.

Whether Web 2.0 is substantively different from prior Web technologies has been challenged by the web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who describes the term Web 2.0 as jargon.  His original vision of the Web was “a collaborative medium, a place where we [could] all meet and read and write”.  Isn’t that what the web is?  Information at the speed of light…