What is Web 2.0? an Introduction
Every one says I need web 2.0 style website… What is web 2.0? Let’s understand the core concept by considering the history and comparing with current updates in the technology
web 2.0 is a web development and web design technique providing facility to develop not only interactive information sharing sites, but also lays down strong foundations for diverse systems to work together in a web environment. It also provides User-Centered Design (UCD) facility in which the end user of an interface is given extensive attention during each stage of the design process of a website. Some examples of Web 2.0 are web-based communities, software systems that support interoperable interaction over a network, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis(sites that allow easy creation and editing of interlinked Web pages, with the help of simplified markup language), blogs( websites, maintained by an individual with regular updates of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video) and mashups(Websites that combine data from two or more external sources and create a new service.
Web 2.0 is basically a concept of integrating and presenting several components of a web based system. As far layout of just the functionality, I don’t see any hard and fast rule that clearly marks a website 2.0 compliant. However, Web 2.0 compliant website permit their users to interact with each other and allow changing website content on the run, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are just restricted to the viewing of information that is provided to them. Although the term Web 2.0 suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, but it is not actually an upgrade to any technical specifications, rather a cumulative change in the ways developers and users use the Web.
Historical Overview of WEB 2.0
The term “Web 2.0″ was introduced by Darcy DiNucci in 1999. When she said
“The World Wide Web that we know now, loads into our browser window as static screenfuls, but it’s actually a rudiment of the Web that follows. It is an indication to get ready for Web technology to begin, and we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop. In future web will be conceived not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether through which interactivity happens. This futuristic shape of this technology will appear on your computer screen, on your TV set, your car dashboard, your cell phone, hand-held game machines and maybe even your microwave.”
This concept of web technology was further enhanced by Idehen, Kingsley (http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen/index.vspx?id=373) on August, 21, 2003 and by Eric on December 15 2003. These authors applied this concept on only currently associated term, whereas Scott Dietzen brought it to the Web and make it universal, standards-based integration platform.
In 2004, this concept was further upgraded and gained popularity when John Batelle and Tim O’Reilly hosted the very first Web 2.0 web conferencing site (O’Reilly Media and MediaLive). In their initial remarks, John Batelle and Tim O’Reilly exemplify their definition of the Web as “Platform”; a platform where software applications are developed on the Web not on the desktop. The distinctive aspect of this conversion is that the customers are building your business for you. That is, the activities performed by the users generate contents like ideas, text, videos, or pictures which could be “harnessed” to create value.
In other words Web 2.0 can be perceived as a business revolution in the computer industry due to the concept of Internet as a platform, and the only thing required is to understand the rules for success on that new platform. From that time onwards Web 2.0 was largely used by bloggers and journalists. And in 2006 TIME magazine Person of The Year was given to the selected users who were participating in content creation on social networks, blogs, wikis, and media sharing sites.
Lev Grossman covered this store and says “It is a story about the collaboration of a community of a large scale as never before. It states the creation and sharing of knowledge and information by Wikipedia and a network of millions of people of YouTube and the citizens of a large online city MySpace. It’s about enormous power generated as a result of collaboration of few who are helping each other for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.”
Some Basic Characteristics of WEB 2.0
Web 2.0 websites do not restrict their users to just retrieval of information, they can also upload and share their Photos and profiles. Even they can build interactive facilities to provide Network as platform computing, which allows the users to run their software-applications directly through a browser. Users can be given the right to own the data on a Web 2.0 site and experience full control over the data available on the site. Some of the Web 2.0 sites may have an infrastructure of participation which encourages the site users to add contents to the site resulting in the addition of value to the applications available on the site. This type of response from the site is completely in contrast to traditional websites, the sites that have limited visitors for viewing available information and whose content could only be modified by the site’s owner himself. Web 2.0 sites often provide rich features like user-friendly interface based on Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax), client-side interactivity frameworks, an open source platforms like OpenLaszlo; for the development and delivery of rich Internet applications and even Flex; for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich Internet applications based on the Adobe Flash.
Another concept of Web as a participation platform provides many of these types of characteristics. Web 2.0 can also be said as “participatory Web” and regards the Web as information source.
Related posts:
- Choosing E-Commerce Shopping Cart Software
- Website Designing
- Link Building
- Social Bookmarking & SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- SEO Process, Search Engine Optimization Process
Wow!…. Its great text. You have done good research to put all this here. It is worthy to bookmark as reference text.
Thank you so much for the awesome article this is exactly the thing I needed to see
Your Article is very useful for me. I learned somen outsourcing knowleges or skills from your articles. I hope I can communicate with your in the web development outsourcing.Tks again.
Hey man I just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to write something worth reading . I am all over the internet and I see so much pointless content that is just created for the sake of putting something fresh on their page. It takes devotion to make good stuff, thanks for caring.