Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.
Origin of Web 2.0
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
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 it did, and so the Web 2.0 Conference was born.
In the year and a half since, the term "Web 2.0" has clearly taken hold, with more than 9.5 million citations in Google. But there's still a huge amount of disagreement about just what Web 2.0 means, with some people decrying it as a meaningless marketing buzzword, and others accepting it as the new
Why Web 2.0 is needed
Business aspect
Behind the hype and confusion, there are truly revolutionary changes afoot. There are over a billion internet users worldwide sent over 1.4 Trillion SMS messages in 2005, generating over $50B in revenue. And, new services with just the right value proposition for the time, like Skype and MySpace, can attract over 50M users in their first 18 months of operation
In the early ‘90s Due to Bridges, routers, LANs, etc. of the networking era comes. They were about connecting computers to other computers
In the late ‘90s, “Web 1.0” took the next logical step of connecting people to businesses and data on other computers around the world. Search engines, online commerce, etc. were all both contributors to and outcomes of this new way of connecting
We’re really entering an era where the primary emphasis is on connecting people to other people. Whether it’s social networks, community generated content, VoIP, or new mobile technology, the truly revolutionary and business-worthy ideas that are being born now are the ones that bring together technology and people and let creative combinations and business models flourish
Basic Elements of Web 2.0
- AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML )
One ingredient of Web 2.0s meaning is certainly Ajax, which I can still only just bear to use without scare quotes. Basically, what "Ajax" means is "Javascript now works." And that in turn means that web-based applications can now be made to work much more like desktop ones - Democracy
The second big element of Web 2.0 is democracy. We now have several examples to prove that amateurs can surpass professionals, when they have the right kind of system to channel their efforts. Wikipedia may be the most famous. Experts have given Wikipedia middling reviews, but they miss the critical point: it's good enough. And it's free, which means people actually read it. On the web, articles you have to pay for might as well not exist. Even if you were willing to pay to read them yourself, you can't link to them. They're not part of the conversation - Don't Maltreat Users
I think everyone would agree that democracy and Ajax are elements of "Web 2.0." I also see a third: not to maltreat users. During the Bubble a lot of popular sites were quite high-handed with users. And not just in obvious ways, like making them register, or subjecting them to annoying ads. The very design of the average site in the late 90s was an abuse. Many of the most popular sites were loaded with obtrusive branding that made them slow to load and sent the user the message: this is our site, not yours. (There's a physical analog in the Intel and Microsoft stickers that come on some laptops.)
- The fact that Google is a "Web 2.0" company shows that, while meaningful, the term is also rather bogus. It's like the word "allopathic." It just means doing
Six Trends That Characterize Web 2.0
- Writing Semantic Markup: Transition to XML
One of the biggest steps in realizing Web 2.0 is the transition to semantic markup, or markup that accurately describes the content it’s applied to. The most popular markup languages, HTML and XHTML, are used primarily for display purposes, with tags to which designers can apply styles via CSS.
RSS is an XML format for syndicating content. It is an easy way for sites to tell people when there is content available. So, instead of browsing to your favorite site over and over again to see if something is new, you can simply subscribe to its RSS feed by typing the RSS URI into a feed . The aggregator will periodically poll the site, notify you if something is new, and deliver that content. It’s a real timesaver - Providing Web Services: Moving Away From Place
During the early years of the Web, before content had semantic meaning, sites were developed as a collection of “pages.” Sites in the 1990s were usually either brochure-ware (static HTML pages with insipid content) or they were interactive in a flashy, animated, JavaScript kind of way. In that era, a common method of promoting sites was to market them as “places”—the Web as a virtual world complete with online shopping malls and portals.
In the late 90s and especially the first few years of the 21st century, the advent of XML technologies and Web services began to change how sites were designed.
This is truly powerful. Anyone can build an interface to content on any domain if the developers there provide a Web services API
Amazon.com and eBay, both of which provide an immense amount of commercial data in the form of Web services, accessible to any developer who wants it. An interesting interface built using eBay’s Web services is Andale. - Remixing Content: About When and What, not Who or Why
Web design in Web 2.0 is about building event-driven experiences, rather than sites. And it’s no coincidence that RSS is one of the key building blocks. RSS feeds enable people to subscribe to your content and read it in an aggregator any time, sans extraneous design
Associated Press CEO Tom Curley made an important and far-reaching keynote speech to the Online News Association Conference on Nov. 12, 2004. In it he said, “… content will be more important than its container in this next phase [of the Web]… Killer apps, such as search, RSS and video-capture software such as TiVo—to name just a few—have begun to unlock content from any vessel we try to put it in.” - Emergent Navigation and Relevance: Users are in Control
As a result of the remixing aspects of Web 2.0, most content will be first encountered away from the domain in which it lies. Thus, much of the navigation that is used to reach a specific item might be far removed from the navigation specifically designed for it. This “distributed” navigation might come in the form of a feed reader, a link on a blog, a search engine, or some other content aggregator.
aggregators can use past user behavior to predict what users will find most relevant in the future. This is very apparent in Daypop, Del.icio.us, and Blogdex feeds. What people have found relevant in the past is likely to be useful in the future - Adding Metadata Over Time: Communities Building Social Information
One feature of Web 1.0 that seemed to change everything about publishing was the ability to make changes to the primary publication at any time. There are no “editions” or “printings” on the Web like there are in the print world. There is simply the site and its current state. We are used to this paradigm now, and an optimist can hope that Web content will only get better with time: metadata will be added, descriptions will get deeper, topics more clear, and references more comprehensive.
Web 2.0 is a step beyond this, to where users are adding their own metadata. On Flickr and Del.icio.us, any user can attach tags to digital media items (files, bookmarks, images).
For example, that we tag a bookmark “Web2.0” in Del.icio.us. We can then access del.icio.us/tag/Web2.0 to see what items others have tagged similarly, and discover valuable content that we may not have known existed - Shift to Programming: Separation of Structure and Style
In Web 1.0, there were two stages to visual Web design. In the early years, designers used tricks like animated GIFs and table hacks in clever, interesting and horrible ways. In the last few years, CSS came into fashion to help separate style from structure, with styling information defined in an external CSS file. Even so, the focus was still on visual design—it was the primary way to distinguish content and garner attention.
XML is the currency of choice in Web 2.0, so words and semantics are more important than presentation and layout. Content moves around and is accessible by programmatic means.
In the words of Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, “Web 2.0… is about making the Internet useful for computers.”
- A clean interface with focus on usability
- Social functions like tagging, groups, commenting, evaluations and friends
- RSS feeds for everything
- An open API
- Web 2.0 isn’t about technology. It’s about understanding fundamental changes and innovations in interaction models, work models and business models that, in many cases, are only possible on the Web. - Web 2.0 is about making things simpler.
- It is a step away from a thick client world to a thin client world.
- It is a step away from being techy & geeky to being more universally accessible.
- Its about using the web to do things that you used to use your computer to do.
- ( Gmail, flikr, blogger)
- Its key enabler is widespread availability of broadband.
- The proximate driver of web2.0 is companies trying (still) to figure out how to make money from the web
- The strategic driver is to deliver services via the web to make it more attractive to non-technical people. This means providing services that are
Gmail, Delicious, digg, blogger, flikr, are all steps in these directions.
Google provides many characteristic Web 2.0 services: Blogger, Adsense, Maps, Search, Base, Gmail, GTalk, Reader, Statistics. Each of these services either exploit the read/write Web or the Web as Platform.
eBay provides many buyer and seller services that aim for greater participation. Their API is one of the most successful, and the network effects they enjoy from their large user base are unrivaled. New Exemplars of Web 2.0
Flickr is a fast-growing photosharing service that provides an collaborative user interface as well as a powerful API to it's content. (Recently acquired by Yahoo!)
Del.icio.us is a popular social bookmarking service. Joshua Schacter, the founder, characterizes his service as a way to remember things. (Recently acquired by Yahoo!)
This blog is output of some reference material from internet. Content from some reference site may appear as it is in this blog. Author of this blog may not take responsibility of correctness for such content .
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