Web 2.0

According to Tim O’Reilly, web 2.0 is the transformed version of the World Wide Web characterized by “exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity” as well as features that enable variously spread communities “to have some things in common” and therefore promote social networking. According to Professor Ronkowitz (serendipity35), “(I)t is what the web is becoming and (unlike Web 1.2 or whatever might have been the next version) it will be significantly different from the web we know and use today”.

Web 2.0 has remained consistent to those two definitions, especially as more interaction, collaboration, security functions, sharing, stealing, and economic models have evolved and increased in usage. In my words, web 2.0 is “the evolution of the World Wide Web comprised of user-interactive applications”.

One aspect of web 2.0 that most interests me is the way these new applications enable the audience to have a greater say on what kind of information and features should be available online. Wikipedia, for example, allows users to create content on any subject as long as they are able to support all the information from credible sources. Blogs and networking profiles (such as facebook.com) also enable people to post up their own multimedia via animation, video, music, and/or podcasts, in addition to voicing out their personal opinions via text.

The web is still in the evolving stages of fully becoming Web 2.0, as there is room for further growth in terms of interaction amongst users and communities. I think the best way to make that growth possible is by having major search engines and e-mail providers give users an overview of 2.0 applications, as seen on the following website: http://www.go2web20.net/about/. Popular search engines and e-mail providers (such as google and yahoo) would make a tremendous impact on that growth, as these are very commonly used websites that millions of people log onto multiple times daily. These sites would naturally attract viewers, and inevitably increase the demand for the entire web to be in what I’d like to call “2.0 mode”.