The term Web 2.0 has been floating around for a couple of years now and until a while ago I had absolutely no idea what it meant. “Could it be another version of the internet?” thought I. Perhaps a parallel internet so we’d have de current internet and then anudder internet because 2 internets is just behher than 1, nach bhfuil? Níl!
WTF is Web 2.0 then? Well, tiz a buzz word, created during an O’Reilly Media (owned by Tim O’Reilly, a Cork man (believe it or not)) brainstorming session. What else is it? In the words of the aforementioned Cork man:
“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.”
In English, and no offence intended to Corkonians, or geeks, or Corkonian geeks even, Web 2.0 essentially refers to the “second generation” of internet applications such as social networking tools, blogging, rss, wikis etc which emphasise online collaboration and sharing. To put it a more direct way Web 2.0 is Myspace, Google maps, Bebo, RSS, eBay, Wikipedia, Skype, Gmail and so on; technologies that more or less exist only online, technologies where the focus is on sharing content rather than boxing content into the boundaries of a simple design focussed web site.
Web 2.0 is also Ajax, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, the stuff wot they make Google Maps, GMail, Flickr & Netvibes with. The old technologies repackaged which have spawned a whole new generation of internet software. These applications can pretty much replace desktop applications … Gmail instead of your email client, Google Docs & Spreadsheets instead of Office etc etc. This is one of the key principles of Web 2.0, the internet can act as a platform!
Web 2.0 is user generated content. Wikipedia, blogging, what do they have in common? Free sources of information created by you the user. You never need to buy a newspaper ever again because all the news on any event is available online. And with sites like Digg (or any of their clones), news & blog aggregators, collaborative bookmarking networks like del.icio.us you can filter the mass of user generated content to get the information you want. And it’s free and often as good as if not better than the garbage you’d read in newspapers.
Web 2.0 might mean different things to different people. To some it might mean “free and easy”. Look at how easy it is to register with sites like Google or netvibes, a username and password and off you go unlike some sites in the past where you’d nearly have to share your family history to register. Some sites even require(d) you to pay to register. Take a quick look at Google’s services and see what you can get for free and just how easy you can sign up for it … search, maps, gmail, docs and spreadsheet, analytics, reader, calender, base, co-op and so much more.
I suppose, in a way, Web 2.0 is the true nature of the web finally emerging! [pause for reflection] But what do I know?!?
This article has been brought to you by the number 7 and the word havntafuckingcluewhatimtalkingabout.
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