The internet has set remarkable precedents for change
within the past decade. Since the late 1990’s, when
Netscape revolutionized the internet by making it possible
for people to publish their own web pages and use it for
more than just email, the world wide web (WWW) has brought
startling innovations to the ways we conduct business, to
our social interactions and to the ways in which we find,
store and retrieve information.
“
The web started as a glorified word processor, its genius residing
in the fact that it could link multiple files together in an
easy and accessible way,” says Graham Nelson-Zutter,
CEO and Founder of Vancouver-based VOIP phone service, Fugu
Phone. “Web 2.0 – the next phase of the internet
- is an example of your data being taken, merged with a completely
different data source, and then incorporated into something
else, thereby becoming more important – think Google
Maps and iTunes.”
Essentially, the internet is changing from a “web of
documents” to a “web of data,” where we’re
using new tools to aggregate (pull) content from other websites
to remix and use content in new ways. These tools, the interfaces
of Web 2.0, have become the frontier of design innovation and,
arguably, social innovation.
Some websites with Web 2.0 capabilities have already built
new online social networks amongst the general public, changing
the nature of online communities at an unprecedented speed.
Some of these sites run social software that enable people
to work together, whereas other sites reproduce data from
multiple sources through RSS feed on one page. RSS feeds
allow a person to link not just to a page, but to subscribe
to it, with notification every time that page changes. Computer
programmer Rich Skrenta called this the “incremental
web.” Others call it the “live web.” RSS
feeds are being used to push news releases, notifications
of new blog entries, and all kinds of data entries, including
stock quotes, weather data and photos updates.
According to Wikipedia, the phrase Web 2.0 was coined in
2004 by the globally-based company, O’Reilly Media,
and refers to a proposed second generation of Internet-based
services that emphasize collaboration and sharing among users.
Since 2004, many members of certain technical and marketing
communities have adopted the phrase, and, as a buzzword,
it has already becoming popularized in the media. Tim O’Reilly,
the founder of O’Reilly Media, defines Web 2.0 as “An
attitude, not a technology.”
In an article to explain the subject, O’Reilly writes: “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 conventional
wisdom.”
Skeptics argue that developments have not actually surpassed
the original and fundamental concepts of the WWW. Viewing
the term “Web 2.0” as little more than a catchy
buzzword, critics argue that Web 2.0 means whatever its proponents
want it to mean in order to convince their customers, investors
and media that they have begun building something fundamentally
new. Among the critics is Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of
the World Wide Web, who regards the term as being rather
needless. In a recent podcast interview for IBM, Berners-Lee
was asked to comment on the statement that “Web 1.0
is about connecting computers, while Web 2.0 is about connecting
people." "Totally not,” Berners-Lee replied. “Web
1.0 was all about connecting people. It was interactive.
I think Web 2.0 is a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what
it means.”
Yet proponents argue that Web 2.0 differs from early Web
development in that it is moves away from static websites
(ie. using search engines and surfing from one website to
the next) towards a more dynamic and interactive World Wide
Web with the inclusion of social networking sites, wikis
(websites that allow visitors to easily add, remove and edit
all available content), and communication tools.
“
In the beginning, the web was a world of interconnected
static, text files,” says Nelson-Zutter. “They
were considered static because they couldn’t update
themselves. Web 2.0 has the desire for an open network.
The original web (Web 1.0) may have created dynamic web
pages, yet it doesn’t have a dynamic way for these
pages to communicate with each other.”
As Nelson-Zutter puts it, the web becomes ‘push and
pull’ instead of ‘point and click.’ This
is called aggregating, which means one website grabs information
from other websites and then places it on its own. Some people
create sites just to aggregate the best mix of websites.
iTunes is an example of this – with the merging of
music files, videos, label websites, online shopping options
and personal artist websites all into one “package,” that
is constantly updating itself. Google Maps is another example
of interconnected data being put to use, as Google will aggregate
data from a website’s database and use it to make a
map – a particularly useful feature for businesses
to be able direct clients or consumers to their locations. “Mashups” are
a new breed of websites within this domain that link two
different data sources together. Housingmaps.com, for example,
combines Google Maps with Craigslist apartment rental and
home purchase data to create a new breed of search tool.
While the term Web 2.0 may be an issue of contention, it
is undeniable that the world wide web is changing. Call it
Web 1.0 or Web 2.0, the technology we are creating is opening
up new realms of possibilities – possibilities that
we are already seeing now in this explosion of new social
media practices (ie. blogs and podcasts), social networking
communities, and in the evolving design of our websites – stuff
that could hardly be considered boring! Yet, as writer Kevin
Kelly pointed out in Wired Magazine: “Before the Netscape
browser illuminated the Web, the Internet did not exist for
most people. If it was acknowledged at all, it was mischaracterized
as either corporate email (as exciting as a necktie) or a
clubhouse for adolescent males (re: pimply nerds). It was
hard to use. On the Internet, even dogs had to type. Who
wanted to waster time on something so boring?”
Strange to think now that Kelly was talking about a period
of web history that occurred in 1995 - only 12 years ago.
The so-called Web 2.0 applications are built of a network
of cooperating data services, placing us in a world of what
Dan Gillmor, noted American technology writer, calls “We,
the media.”
For more information, please refer to the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
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