Web 2.0 – a beginner’s definition

A month an a half ago, when i first thought about setting up a technical blog, i decided to devote it almost exclusively to topics around Web 2.0. Few days later, while socializing with some of my peers, i mentioned my decision to write about Web 2.0 stuff. That started an interesting debate , which then led me to believe that Web 2.0 is a fuzzy concept for many people.

This is the first in a series of posts aimed to scatter the fog around the concept of Web 2.0 and to demonstrate that although Web 2.0 was first used to build applications targeted at tech geeks, its real value is in the Enterprise IT world.

Let’s start by mentioning some of the prominent Web 2.0 applications. From the top of my head i can think of: Wikipedia, Flickr, Google Maps, Blogger, Gmail, Del.ici.us, Digg, MySpace, Facebook and Technorati. Is there any common denominator here? You bet.

1. Web 2.0 is about collective intelligence (sometimes referred as User Content) - it relies on users as content creators or editors (Wikipedia and Blogs are excellent examples). The more people use and update the application the better its content gets.
2. Web 2.0 is about richer user experience - Many Web 2.0 applications feature desktop-like user interfaces (Gmail,Google Apps, Zoho, ThinkFree). AJAX (Asynchronous Java Script and XML) plays a vital role in empowering web developers, by providing them unprecedented abilities as far as User Interface (UI) building.
3. Web 2.0 is about democracy and participation – ‘Web 2.0′ applications rely by nature on user feedback, voting, bookmarking, and discard tight access control mechanisms implemented in Web 1.0 applications.
4. Web 2.0 is about technical openness – Web 2.0 applications (Technorati, Flickr to name a few) offer high level Application Programming Interfaces (API) allowing developers to easily leverage their their services in order to build mashups that combine data from different data sources.

Hope you found this post useful. Stay tuned for next installments of this blog in which we’ll explore more advanced Web 2.0 related concepts.

[tags] Web 2.0, Web 2.0 definition[/tags]