Web 2.0 - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing

Information sharing

The term "information sharing" gained popularity as a result of the 9/11 Commission Hearings and its report of the United States government's lack of response to information known about the planned terrorist attack on the New York City World Trade Center prior to the event...

, interoperability

Interoperability

Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together . The term is often used in a technical systems engineering sense, or alternatively in a broad sense, taking into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system to...

, user-centered design

User-centered design

In broad terms, user-centered design or pervasive usability is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process...

, and collaboration

Collaboration

Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...

on the World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media

Social media

The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...

dialogue as creators (prosumer

Prosumer

Prosumer is a portmanteau formed by contracting either the word professional or less often, producer with the word consumer. For example, a prosumer grade digital camera is a "cross" between consumer grade and professional grade...

s) of user-generated content

User-generated content

User generated content covers a range of media content available in a range of modern communications technologies. It entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles...

in a virtual community

Virtual community

A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals...

, in contrast to websites where users (consumer

Consumer

Consumer is a broad label for any individuals or households that use goods generated within the economy. The concept of a consumer occurs in different contexts, so that the usage and significance of the term may vary.-Economics and marketing:...

s) are limited to the passive viewing of content

Content (media and publishing)

In media production and publishing, content is information and experiences that may provide value for an end-user/audience in specific contexts. Content may be delivered via any medium such as the internet, television, and audio CDs, as well as live events such as conferences and stage performances...

that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blog

Blog

A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

s, wiki

Wiki

A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...

s, video sharing

Video sharing

Video hosting services refers to websites or software where users can distribute their video clips. Other sites such as file hosting services image hosting services and social network services might support video sharing as an enhancement to their primary mission, but in general, they are not...

sites, hosted services

Web service

A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...

, web application

Web application

A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. The term may also mean a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.Web applications are...

s, mashups

Mashup (web application hybrid)

In Web development, a mashup is a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services...

and folksonomies

Folksonomy

A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content; this practice is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging...

.

The term is closely associated with Tim O'Reilly

Tim O'Reilly

Tim O'Reilly is the founder of O'Reilly Media and a supporter of the free software and open source movements.-Life and career:...

because of the O'Reilly Media

O'Reilly Media

O'Reilly Media is an American media company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books and Web sites and produces conferences on computer technology topics...

Web 2.0 conference in late 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

, it does not refer to an update to any technical specification, but rather to cumulative changes in the ways software developer

Software developer

A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...

s and end-users use the Web. Whether Web 2.0 is qualitatively different from prior web technologies has been challenged by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee

Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, , also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web...

, who called the term a "piece of jargon", precisely because he intended the Web in his vision as "a collaborative medium, a place where we [could] all meet and read and write". He called it the "Read/Write Web".

History

The term "Web 2.0" was coined in January 1999 by Darcy DiNucci, a consultant on electronic information design (information architecture

Information Architecture

Information architecture is the art of expressing a model or concept of information used in activities that require explicit details of complex systems. Among these activities are library systems, Content Management Systems, web development, user interactions, database development, programming,...

). In her article, "Fragmented Future", DiNucci writes:
Her use of the term deals mainly with Web design, aesthetics, and the interconnection of everyday objects with the Internet; she argues that the Web is "fragmenting" due to the widespread use of portable Web-ready devices. Her article is aimed at designers, reminding them to code for an ever-increasing variety of hardware. As such, her use of the term hints at, but does not directly relate to, the current uses of the term.

The term Web 2.0 did not resurface until 2002. These authors focus on the concepts currently associated with the term where, as Scott Dietzen puts it, "the Web becomes a universal, standards-based integration platform". John Robb wrote: "What is Web 2.0? It is a system that breaks with the old model of centralized Web sites and moves the power of the Web/Internet to the desktop."

In 2003, the term began its rise in popularity when O'Reilly Media and MediaLive hosted the first Web 2.0 conference. In their opening remarks, John Battelle

John Battelle

John Linwood Battelle is a journalist as well as founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing. He is a visiting professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley and also maintains Searchblog, a weblog covering search, technology, and media.Battelle is one of the original...

and Tim O'Reilly outlined their definition of the "Web as Platform", where software applications are built upon the Web as opposed to upon the desktop. The unique aspect of this migration, they argued, is that "customers are building your business for you". They argued that the activities of users generating content (in the form of ideas, text, videos, or pictures) could be "harnessed" to create value.
O'Reilly and Battelle contrasted Web 2.0 with what they called "Web 1.0

Web 1.0

Web 1.0, or web, refers to the first stage of the World Wide Web linking webpages with hyperlinks.- History :Hyperlinks between webpages began with the release of the WWW to the public in 1993, and describe the Web before the "bursting of the Dot-com bubble" in 2001.Since 2004, Web 2.0 has been the...

". They associated Web 1.0 with the business models of Netscape

Netscape

Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...

and the Encyclopædia Britannica Online. For example,
In short, Netscape focused on creating software, updating it on occasion, and distributing it to the end users. O'Reilly contrasted this with Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

, a company that did not at the time focus on producing software, such as a browser, but instead on providing a service based on data such as the links Web page authors make between sites. Google exploits this user-generated content to offer Web search based on reputation through its "PageRank

PageRank

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page and used by the Google Internet search engine, that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set...

" algorithm. Unlike software, which undergoes scheduled releases, such services are constantly updated, a process called "the perpetual beta

Perpetual beta

Perpetual beta is the keeping of software or a system at the beta development stage for an extended or indefinite period of time. It is often used by developers when they continue to release new features that might not be fully tested. As a result, perpetual beta software is not recommended for...

". A similar difference can be seen between the Encyclopædia Britannica Online and Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

: while the Britannica relies upon experts to create articles and releases them periodically in publications, Wikipedia relies on trust in anonymous users to constantly and quickly build content. Wikipedia is not based on expertise but rather an adaptation of the open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

software adage "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow", and it produces and updates articles constantly. O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conferences have been held every year since 2003, attracting entrepreneurs, large companies, and technology reporters.

In terms of the lay public, the term Web 2.0 was largely championed by bloggers and by technology journalists, culminating in the 2006 TIME magazine Person of The Year

You (Time Person of the Year)

"You" were chosen in 2006, as Time magazine's Person of the Year. It recognized you and the millions of people who anonymously contribute user-generated content to Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, the GNU/Linux operating system and the multitudes of other websites featuring user...

(You). That is, TIME selected the masses of users who were participating in content creation on social network

Social network

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...

s, blogs, wikis, and media sharing sites.
In the cover story, Lev Grossman explains:
Since that time, Web 2.0 has found a place in the lexicon; in 2009 Global Language Monitor

Global Language Monitor

The Global Language Monitor is an Austin, Texas-based company that collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language...

declared it to be the one-millionth English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

word.

Characteristics

Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. By increasing what was already possible in "Web 1.0

Web 1.0

", they provide the user with more user-interface, software and storage facilities, all through their browser. This has been called "Network as platform"

Web operating system

In metacomputing, WebOS and Web operating system are terms that describe network services for Internet scale distributed computing, as in the WebOS Project at UC Berkeley, and the WOS Project...

computing. Users can provide the data that is on a Web 2.0 site and exercise some control over that data. These sites may have an "Architecture of participation" that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it. Some scholars have made the case that cloud computing

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....

is a form of Web 2.0 because cloud computing is simply an implication of computing on the Internet.

The concept of Web-as-participation

Participatory culture

Participatory culture is a neologism in reference of, but opposite to a Consumer culture — in other words a culture in which private persons do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers . The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published...

-platform captures many of these characteristics. Bart Decrem, a founder and former CEO of Flock

Flock (web browser)

Flock was a web browser that specialized in providing social networking and Web 2.0 facilities built into its user interface.Earlier versions of Flock used the Gecko HTML rendering engine by Mozilla....

, calls Web 2.0 the "participatory Web" and regards the Web-as-information-source as Web 1.0.

The Web 2.0 offers all users the same freedom to contribute. While this opens the possibility for rational debate and collaboration, it also opens the possibility for "spamming"

Spam (electronic)

Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately...

and "trolling"

Troll (Internet)

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response...

by less rational users. The impossibility of excluding group members who don’t contribute to the provision of goods from sharing profits gives rise to the possibility that rational members will prefer to withhold their contribution of effort and free ride

Free rider problem

In economics, collective bargaining, psychology, and political science, a free rider is someone who consumes a resource without paying for it, or pays less than the full cost. The free rider problem is the question of how to limit free riding...

on the contribution of others. This requires what is sometimes called radical trust

Radical trust

Radical trust is a term used to describe the confidence that any structured organization, including government, library, business, religion and museum, has in collaboration and empowerment within online communities...

by the management of the website.
According to Best, the characteristics of Web 2.0 are: rich user experience, user participation, dynamic content, metadata

Metadata

The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...

, web standards and scalability

Scalability

In electronics scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process, to handle growing amount of work in a graceful manner or its ability to be enlarged to accommodate that growth...

. Further characteristics, such as openness, freedom and collective intelligence

Collective intelligence

Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....

by way of user participation, can also be viewed as essential attributes of Web 2.0.

Technologies

The client-side

Client-side

Client-side refers to operations that are performed by the client in a client–server relationship in a computer network.Typically, a client is a computer application, such as a web browser, that runs on a user's local computer or workstation and connects to a server as necessary...

/web browser technologies used in Web 2.0 development are Asynchronous JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

and XML (Ajax

Ajax (programming)

Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...

), Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

and the Adobe Flex

Adobe Flex

Adobe Flex is a software development kit released by Adobe Systems for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich Internet applications based on the Adobe Flash platform...

framework, and JavaScript

JavaScript

/Ajax frameworks such as YUI Library, Dojo Toolkit

Dojo Toolkit

Dojo Toolkit is an open source modular JavaScript library designed to ease the rapid development of cross-platform, JavaScript/Ajax-based applications and web sites. It was started by Alex Russell, Dylan Schiemann, David Schontzler, and others in 2004 and is dual-licensed under the modified BSD...

, MooTools

MooTools

MooTools is a lightweight, object-oriented, web-application framework for JavaScript, written in JavaScript. It is released under the free, open-source MIT License...

, and jQuery

JQuery

jQuery is a cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML. It was released in January 2006 at BarCamp NYC by John Resig...

. Ajax programming uses JavaScript to upload and download new data from the web server without undergoing a full page reload.

To allow users to continue to interact with the page, communications such as data requests going to the server are separated from data coming back to the page (asynchronously). Otherwise, the user would have to routinely wait for the data to come back before they can do anything else on that page, just as a user has to wait for a page to complete the reload. This also increases overall performance of the site, as the sending of requests can complete quicker independent of blocking and queueing required to send data back to the client....

The data fetched by an Ajax request is typically formatted in XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

or JSON

JSON

JSON , or JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight text-based open standard designed for human-readable data interchange. It is derived from the JavaScript scripting language for representing simple data structures and associative arrays, called objects...

(JavaScript Object Notation) format, two widely used structured data formats. Since both of these formats are natively understood by JavaScript, a programmer can easily use them to transmit structured data in their web application. When this data is received via Ajax, the JavaScript program then uses the Document Object Model

Document Object Model

The Document Object Model is a cross-platform and language-independent convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and XML documents. Aspects of the DOM may be addressed and manipulated within the syntax of the programming language in use...

(DOM) to dynamically update the web page based on the new data, allowing for a rapid and interactive user experience. In short, using these techniques, Web designers can make their pages function like desktop applications. For example, Google Docs uses this technique to create a Web based word processor.

Adobe Flex

Adobe Flex

Adobe Flex is a software development kit released by Adobe Systems for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich Internet applications based on the Adobe Flash platform...

is another technology often used in Web 2.0 applications. Compared to JavaScript libraries like jQuery

JQuery

jQuery is a cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML. It was released in January 2006 at BarCamp NYC by John Resig...

, Flex makes it easier for programmers to populate large data grids, charts, and other heavy user interactions. Applications programmed in Flex, are compiled and displayed as Flash

Adobe Flash Player

The Adobe Flash Player is software for viewing multimedia, Rich Internet Applications and streaming video and audio, on a computer web browser or on supported mobile devices. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Flash authoring tool, by Adobe Flex or by a number of other...

within the browser. As a widely available plugin independent of W3C (World Wide Web Consortium, the governing body of web standards and protocols) standards, Flash is capable of doing many things that were not possible pre-HTML5, the language used to construct web pages. Of Flash's many capabilities, the most commonly used in Web 2.0 is its ability to play audio and video files. This has allowed for the creation of Web 2.0 sites where video media is seamlessly integrated with standard HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

.

In addition to Flash and Ajax, JavaScript/Ajax frameworks have recently become a very popular means of creating Web 2.0 sites. At their core, these frameworks do not use technology any different from JavaScript, Ajax, and the DOM. What frameworks do is smooth over inconsistencies between web browsers and extend the functionality available to developers. Many of them also come with customizable, prefabricated 'widget

Software widget

A software widget is a generic type of software application comprising portable code intended for one or more different software platforms. The term often implies that either the application, user interface, or both, are light, meaning relatively simple and easy to use, as exemplified by a desk...

s' that accomplish such common tasks as picking a date from a calendar, displaying a data chart, or making a tabbed panel.

On the server side, Web 2.0 uses many of the same technologies as Web 1.0. New languages such as PHP

PHP

PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...

, Ruby

Ruby (programming language)

Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto...

, Perl

Perl

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...

, Python

Python (programming language)

Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...

and JSP are used by developers to output data dynamically using information from files and databases. What has begun to change in Web 2.0 is the way this data is formatted. In the early days of the Internet, there was little need for different websites to communicate with each other and share data. In the new "participatory web", however, sharing data between sites has become an essential capability. To share its data with other sites, a website must be able to generate output in machine-readable formats such as XML

XML

(Atom

Atom (standard)

The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a...

, RSS

RSS

-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...

, etc.) and JSON

JSON

. When a site's data is available in one of these formats, another website can use it to integrate a portion of that site's functionality into itself, linking the two together. When this design pattern is implemented, it ultimately leads to data that is both easier to find and more thoroughly categorized, a hallmark of the philosophy behind the Web 2.0 movement.

In brief, Ajax is a key technology used to build Web 2.0 because it provides rich user experience and works with any browser whether it is Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer or another popular browser. Then, a language with very good web services support should be used to build Web 2.0 applications. In addition, the language used should be iterative meaning that the addition and deployment of features can be easily and quickly achieved.

Concepts

Web 2.0 can be described in 3 parts, which are as follows:

Rich Internet application
Rich Internet application
A Rich Internet Application is a Web application that has many of the characteristics of desktop application software, typically delivered either by way of a site-specific browser, via a browser plug-in, independent sandboxes, extensive use of JavaScript, or virtual machines...

(RIA) — defines the experience brought from desktop to browser whether it is from a graphical point of view or usability point of view. Some buzzwords related to RIA are Ajax and Flash.
Web-oriented architecture (WOA) — is a key piece in Web 2.0, which defines how Web 2.0 applications expose their functionality so that other applications can leverage and integrate the functionality providing a set of much richer applications (Examples are: Feeds, RSS, Web Services, Mash-ups)
Social Web — defines how Web 2.0 tends to interact much more with the end user and make the end-user an integral part.

As such, Web 2.0 draws together the capabilities of client

Client (computing)

A client is an application or system that accesses a service made available by a server. The server is often on another computer system, in which case the client accesses the service by way of a network....

- and server

Server (computing)

In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...

-side software, content syndication and the use of network protocols. Standards-oriented web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

s may use plug-ins and software extensions to handle the content and the user interactions. Web 2.0 sites provide users with information storage, creation, and dissemination capabilities that were not possible in the environment now known as "Web 1.0".

Web 2.0 websites include the following features and techniques: Andrew McAfee used the acronym SLATES

SLATES

SLATES is an initialism that describes the business impacting capabilities, derived from the effective use of Web 2.0 technologies in and across enterprises...

to refer to them:

Search

Finding information through keyword search.

Links

Connects information together into a meaningful information ecosystem using the model of the Web, and provides low-barrier social tools.

Authoring

The ability to create and update content leads to the collaborative work of many rather than just a few web authors. In wikis, users may extend, undo and redo each other's work. In blogs, posts and the comments of individuals build up over time.

Usage

A third important part of Web 2.0 is the social Web, which is a fundamental shift in the way people communicate. The social web consists of a number of online tools and platforms where people share their perspectives, opinions, thoughts and experiences. Web 2.0 applications tend to interact much more with the end user. As such, the end user is not only a user of the application but also a participant by:

Podcasting
Podcasting
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
Blogging
Tagging
Tag (metadata)
In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
Contributing to RSS
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them....
Social networking

The popularity of the term Web 2.0, along with the increasing use of blogs, wikis, and social networking technologies, has led many in academia and business to coin a flurry of 2.0s, including Library 2.0

Library 2.0

Library 2.0 is a loosely defined model for a modernized form of library service that reflects a transition within the library world in the way that services are delivered to users....

, Social Work 2.0, Enterprise 2.0

Enterprise social software

Enterprise social software , comprises social software as used in "enterprise" contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to corporate intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication...

, PR 2.0, Classroom 2.0, Publishing 2.0, Medicine 2.0, Telco 2.0, Travel 2.0

Travel 2.0

Travel 2.0, was used as early as December 2003 on a posting on the Planeta Web 2.0 Discussion Forum and is an offshoot of the Web 2.0 phenomenon...

, Government 2.0, and even Porn 2.0

Porn 2.0

Porn 2.0, named after the Web 2.0 is a concept of internet-based websites featuring user-generated content. These ideas are sometimes described as intermediate social networking mediums using dynamics contents such as user-based categorizing, webcam hosting in ?tube as opposed to static contents in...

. Many of these 2.0s refer to Web 2.0 technologies as the source of the new version in their respective disciplines and areas. For example, in the Talis white paper "Library 2.0: The Challenge of Disruptive Innovation", Paul Miller argues

Blogs, wikis and RSS are often held up as exemplary manifestations of Web 2.0. A reader of a blog or a wiki is provided with tools to add a comment or even, in the case of the wiki, to edit the content. This is what we call the Read/Write web. Talis believes that Library 2.0
Library 2.0
Library 2.0 is a loosely defined model for a modernized form of library service that reflects a transition within the library world in the way that services are delivered to users....

means harnessing this type of participation so that libraries can benefit from increasingly rich collaborative cataloging efforts, such as including contributions from partner libraries as well as adding rich enhancements, such as book jackets or movie files, to records from publishers and others.

Here, Miller links Web 2.0 technologies and the culture of participation that they engender to the field of library science, supporting his claim that there is now a "Library 2.0". Many of the other proponents of new 2.0s mentioned here use similar methods.

The meaning of web 2.0 is role dependent, as Dennis D. McDonalds noted. For example, some use Web 2.0 to establish and maintain relationships through social networks, while some marketing managers might use this promising technology to "end-run traditionally unresponsive I.T. department[s]."

There is a debate over the use of Web 2.0 technologies in mainstream education. Issues under consideration include the understanding of students' different learning modes; the conflicts between ideas entrenched in informal on-line communities and educational establishments' views on the production and authentication of 'formal' knowledge; and questions about privacy, plagiarism, shared authorship and the ownership of knowledge and information produced and/or published on line.

Marketing

For marketers, Web 2.0 offers an opportunity to engage consumers. A growing number of marketers are using Web 2.0 tools to collaborate with consumers on product development, service enhancement and promotion. Companies can use Web 2.0 tools to improve collaboration with both its business partners and consumers. Among other things, company employees have created wikis—Web sites that allow users to add, delete, and edit content — to list answers to frequently asked questions about each product, and consumers have added significant contributions. Another marketing Web 2.0 lure is to make sure consumers can use the online community to network among themselves on topics of their own choosing.

Mainstream media usage of web 2.0 is increasing. Saturating media hubs—like The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, PC Magazine
PC Magazine
PC Magazine is a computer magazine published by Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009...

and Business Week — with links to popular new web sites and services, is critical to achieving the threshold for mass adoption of those services.

Web 2.0 offers financial institutions abundant opportunities to engage with customers. Networks such as Twitter

Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

, Yelp and Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

are now becoming common elements of multichannel and customer loyalty strategies, and banks are beginning to use these sites proactively to spread their messages. In a recent article for Bank Technology News

Bank Technology News

Bank Technology News is a technology publication published monthly, with a circulation of 30,000. Bank Technology News also publishes a weekly newsletter...

, Shane Kite describes how Citigroup's Global Transaction Services unit monitors social media

Social media

outlets to address customer issues and improve products. Furthermore, the FI uses Twitter

Twitter

to release "breaking news" and upcoming events, and YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

to disseminate videos that feature executives speaking about market news.

Small businesses have become more competitive by using Web 2.0 marketing strategies to compete with larger companies. As new businesses grow and develop, new technology is used to decrease the gap between businesses and customers. Social networks have become more intuitive and user friendly to provide information that is easily reached by the end user. For example, companies use Twitter

Twitter

to offer customers coupons and discounts for products and services.

According to Google Timeline, the term Web 2.0 was discussed and indexed most frequently in 2005, 2007 and 2008. Its average use is continuously declining by 2–4% per quarter since April 2008.

Web 2.0 in education

Web 2.0 technologies provide teachers with new ways to engage students in a meaningful way. "Children raised on new media technologies are less patient with filling out worksheets and listening to lectures" because students already participate on a global level. The lack of participation in a traditional classroom stems more from the fact that students receive better feedback online. Traditional classrooms have students do assignments and when they are completed, they are just that, finished. However, Web 2.0 shows students that education is a constantly evolving entity. Whether it is participating in a class discussion, or participating in a forum discussion, the technologies available to students in a Web 2.0 classroom does increase the amount they participate.

Will Richardson stated in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web tools for the Classrooms, 3rd Edition that, "The Web has the potential to radically change what we assume about teaching and learning, and it presents us with important questions to ponder: What needs to change about our curriculum when our students have the ability to reach audiences far beyond our classroom walls?" Web 2.0 tools are needed in the classroom to prepare both students and teachers for the shift in learning that Collins and Halverson describe. According to Collins and Halverson, the self-publishing aspects as well as the speed with which their work becomes available for consumption allows teachers to give students the control they need over their learning. This control is the preparation students will need to be successful as learning expands beyond the classroom."

Some may think that these technologies could hinder the personal interaction of students, however all of the research points to the contrary. "Social networking sites have worried many educators (and parents) because they often bring with them outcomes that are not positive: narcissism

Narcissism

Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...

, gossip, wasted time, 'friending', hurt feelings, ruined reputations, and sometimes unsavory, even dangerous activities, [on the contrary,] social networking sites promote conversations and interaction that is encouraged by educators." By allowing students to use the technology tools of Web 2.0, teachers are actually giving students the opportunity to learn for themselves and share that learning with their peers. One of the many implications of Web 2.0 technologies on class discussions is the idea that teachers are no longer in control of the discussions. Instead, Russell and Sorge (1999) conclude that integrating technology into instruction tends to move classrooms from teacher-dominated environments to ones that are more student-centered. While it is still important for them to monitor what students are discussing, the actual topics of learning are being guided by the students themselves.

Web 2.0 calls for major shifts in the way education is provided for students. One of the biggest shifts that Will Richardson points out in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms is the fact that education must be not only socially but collaboratively constructed. This means that students, in a Web 2.0 classroom, are expected to collaborate with their peers. By making the shift to a Web 2.0 classroom, teachers are creating a more open atmosphere where students are expected to stay engaged and participate in the discussions and learning that is taking place around them. In fact, there are many ways for educators to use Web 2.0 technologies in their classrooms.

"Weblogs are not built on static chunks of content. Instead they are reflections and conversations that in many cases are updated every day [...] They demand interaction." Will Richardson's observation of the essence of weblogs speaks directly to why blogs are so well suited to discussion based classrooms. Weblogs give students a public space to interact with one another and the content of the class. As long as the students are invested in the project, the need to see the blog progress acts as motivation as the blog itself becomes an entity that can demand interaction.

For example, Laura Rochette implemented the use of blogs in her American History class and noted that in addition to an overall improvement in quality, the use of the blogs as an assignment demonstrated synthesis level activity from her students. In her experience, asking students to conduct their learning in the digital world meant asking students "to write, upload images, and articulate the relationship between these images and the broader concepts of the course, [in turn] demonstrating that they can be thoughtful about the world around them." Jennifer Hunt, an 8th grade language arts teacher of pre-Advanced Placement students shares a similar story. She used the WANDA

Wanda

-Derivation:It is derived from Wandalus or Wandalarius , the name of several Amali Gothic rulers. The first Polish historian Kadlubek wrote the Princess Wanda story. He describes her as live amongst the Wandali and claims that a river in the land of the Vandals is named Wandalus after Wanda...

project and asked students to make personal connections to the texts they read and to describe and discuss the issues raised in literature selections through social discourse. They engaged in the discussion via wikis and other Web 2.0 tools, which they used to organize, discuss, and present their responses to the texts and to collaborate with others in their classroom and beyond.

The research shows that students are already using these technological tools, but they still are expected to go to a school where using these tools is frowned upon or even punished. If educators are able to harness the power of the Web 2.0 technologies students are using, it could be expected that the amount of participation and classroom discussion would increase. It may be that how participation and discussion is produced is very different from the traditional classroom, but nevertheless it does increase.

Web-based applications and desktops

Ajax

Ajax (programming)

Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...

has prompted the development of websites that mimic desktop applications, such as word processing

Word processor

A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....

, the spreadsheet

Spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...

, and slide-show presentation

Presentation program

A presentation program is a computer software package used to display information, normally in the form of a slide show...

. In 2006 Google, Inc.

Google

acquired one of the best-known sites of this broad class, Writely. WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...

wiki

Wiki

and blog

Blog

ging sites replicate many features of PC authoring applications.

Several browser-based "operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s" have emerged, including EyeOS

EyeOS

eyeOS is an open source web desktop following the cloud computing concept that seeks to enable collaboration and communication among users. It is mainly written in PHP, XML, and JavaScript. It acts as a platform for web applications written using the eyeOS Toolkit. It includes a Desktop environment...

and YouOS

YouOS

YouOS was a web desktop and web integrated development environment, developed by WebShaka until June 2008.YouOS replicated the desktop environment of a modern operating system on a webpage, using JavaScript to communicate with the remote server...

.(No longer active.) Although coined as such, many of these services function less like a traditional operating system and more as an application platform. They mimic the user experience of desktop operating-systems, offering features and applications similar to a PC environment, and are able to run within any modern browser. However, these so-called "operating systems" do not directly control the hardware on the client's computer.

Numerous web-based application services appeared during the dot-com bubble

Dot-com bubble

The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...

of 1997–2001 and then vanished, having failed to gain a critical mass of customers. In 2005, WebEx

WebEx

WebEx Communications Inc. is a Cisco company that provides on-demand collaboration, online meeting, web conferencing and videoconferencing applications...

acquired one of the better-known of these, Intranets.com, for $45 million.

XML and RSS

Many regard syndication of site content as a Web 2.0 feature. Syndication uses standardized protocols to permit end-users to make use of a site's data in another context (such as another website, a browser plugin, or a separate desktop application). Protocols permitting syndication include RSS

RSS (file format)

RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...

(really simple syndication, also known as web syndication), RDF

Resource Description Framework

The Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...

(as in RSS 1.1), and Atom

Atom (standard)

, all of them XML

XML

-based formats. Observers have started to refer to these technologies as web feed

Web feed

A web feed is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by an aggregator...

s.

Specialized protocols such as FOAF

FOAF (software)

FOAF is a machine-readable ontology describing persons, their activities and their relations to other people and objects. Anyone can use FOAF to describe him or herself...

and XFN

XHTML Friends Network

XHTML Friends Network is an HTML microformat developed by Global Multimedia Protocols Group that provides a simple way to represent human relationships using links. XFN enables web authors to indicate relationships to the people in their blogrolls by adding one or more keywords as the rel...

(both for social networking) extend the functionality of sites or permit end-users to interact without centralized websites.

Web APIs

Web 2.0 often uses machine-based interactions such as REST

Representational State Transfer

Representational state transfer is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web. The term representational state transfer was introduced and defined in 2000 by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation...

and SOAP

SOAP

SOAP, originally defined as Simple Object Access Protocol, is a protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of Web Services in computer networks...

. Servers often expose proprietary Application programming interface

Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...

s (API), but standard APIs (for example, for posting to a blog or notifying a blog update) have also come into use. Most communications through APIs involve XML or JSON

JSON

payloads.

REST APIs, through their use of self-descriptive messages and hypermedia as the engine of application state

HATEOAS

HATEOAS, an abbreviation for Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State, is a constraint of the REST application architecture that distinguishes it from most other network application architectures. The principle is that a client interacts with a network application entirely through hypermedia...

, should be self-describing once an entry URI

Uniform Resource Identifier

In computing, a uniform resource identifier is a string of characters used to identify a name or a resource on the Internet. Such identification enables interaction with representations of the resource over a network using specific protocols...

is known. Web Services Description Language

Web Services Description Language

The Web Services Description Language is an XML-based language that is used for describing the functionality offered by a Web service. A WSDL description of a web service provides a machine-readable description of how the service can be called, what parameters it expects and what data structures...

(WSDL) is the standard way of publishing a SOAP API and there are a range of web service specifications. EMML

EMML

EMML, or Enterprise Mashup Markup Language, is an XML markup language for creating enterprise mashups, which are software applications that consume and mash data from variety of sources, often performing logical or mathematical operations as well as presenting data. Mashed data produced by...

, or Enterprise Mashup Markup Language by the Open Mashup Alliance

Open Mashup Alliance

The Open Mashup Alliance is a non-profit consortium that promotes the adoption of mashup solutions in the enterprise through the evolution of enterprise mashup standards like EMML. Enterprise mashup usage is expected to grow tenfold in the next five years...

, is an XML markup language for creating enterprise mashups.

Criticism

Critics of the term claim that "Web 2.0" does not represent a new version of the World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

at all, but merely continues to use so-called "Web 1.0" technologies and concepts. First, techniques such as AJAX

Ajax (programming)

Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...

do not replace underlying protocols like HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....

, but add an additional layer of abstraction on top of them. Second, many of the ideas of Web 2.0 had already been featured in implementations on networked systems well before the term "Web 2.0" emerged. Amazon.com

Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

, for instance, has allowed users to write reviews and consumer guides since its launch in 1995, in a form of self-publishing. Amazon also opened its API to outside developers in 2002. Previous developments also came from research in computer-supported collaborative learning and computer supported cooperative work

Computer supported cooperative work

The term computer-supported cooperative work was first coined by Irene Greif and Paul M. Cashman in 1984, at a workshop attended by individuals interested in using technology to support people in their work. At about this same time, in 1987 Dr...

(CSCW) and from established products like Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes is the client of a collaborative platform originally created by Lotus Development Corp. in 1989. In 1995 Lotus was acquired by IBM and became known as the Lotus Development division of IBM and is now part of the IBM Software Group...

and Lotus Domino, all phenomena that preceded Web 2.0.

But perhaps the most common criticism is that the term is unclear or simply a buzzword

Buzzword

A buzzword is a term of art, salesmanship, politics, or technical jargon that is used in the media and wider society outside of its originally narrow technical context....

. For example, in a podcast interview, Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee

Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, , also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web...

described the term "Web 2.0" as a "piece of jargon":

"Nobody really knows what it means...If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along."

Other critics labeled Web 2.0 "a second bubble" (referring to the Dot-com bubble

Dot-com bubble

The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...

of circa 1995–2001), suggesting that too many Web 2.0 companies attempt to develop the same product with a lack of business models. For example, The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...

has dubbed the mid- to late-2000s focus on Web companies "Bubble 2.0". Venture capital

Venture capital

Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...

ist Josh Kopelman

Josh Kopelman

Joshua Kopelman is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philanthropist.Kopelman is best known as the founder of Half.com, a fixed price marketplace connecting buyers and sellers of used books, movies and music products. In 2000, Kopelman sold Half.com to EBay for US $350...

noted that Web 2.0 had excited only 53,651 people (the number of subscribers at that time to TechCrunch

TechCrunch

TechCrunch is a web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling of startup companies, products, and websites. It was founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, and was first published on June 11, 2005....

, a Weblog covering Web 2.0 startups and technology news), too few users to make them an economically viable target for consumer applications. Although Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling

Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...

reports he's a fan of Web 2.0, he thinks it is now dead as a rallying concept.

Critics have cited the language used to describe the hype cycle of Web 2.0 as an example of Techno-utopianist

Techno-utopianism

Technological utopianism refers to any ideology based on the belief that advances in science and technology will eventually bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal...

rhetoric., whilst online news site The Register

The Register

The Register is a British technology news and opinion website. It was founded by John Lettice, Mike Magee and Ross Alderson in 1994 as a newsletter called "Chip Connection", initially as an email service...

terms the outbreak of Web 2.0 style websites as Web2.0rhea

In terms of Web 2.0's social impact, critics such as Andrew Keen

Andrew Keen

Andrew Keen is a British-American entrepreneur and author. He is particularly known for his view that the current Internet culture and the Web 2.0 trend may be debasing culture, an opinion he shares with Jaron Lanier and Nicholas G. Carr among others...

argue that Web 2.0 has created a cult of digital narcissism

Narcissism

and amateurism, which undermines the notion of expertise by allowing anybody, anywhere to share and place undue value upon their own opinions about any subject and post any kind of content, regardless of their particular talents, knowledge, credentials, biases or possible hidden agendas. Keen's 2007 book, Cult of the Amateur, argues that the core assumption of Web 2.0, that all opinions and user-generated content are equally valuable and relevant, is misguided. Additionally, Sunday Times reviewer John Flintoff has characterized Web 2.0 as "creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity: uninformed political commentary, unseemly home videos, embarrassingly amateurish music, unreadable poems, essays and novels", and also asserted that Wikipedia

Wikipedia

is full of "mistakes, half truths and misunderstandings". Michael Gorman, former president of the American Library Association has been vocal about his opposition to Web 2.0 due to the lack of expertise that it outwardly claims though he believes that there is some hope for the future as "The task before us is to extend into the digital world the virtues of authenticity, expertise, and scholarly apparatus that have evolved over the 500 years of print, virtues often absent in the manuscript age that preceded print".

Trademark

In November 2004, CMP Media applied to the USPTO

United States Patent and Trademark Office

The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...

for a service mark

Service mark

A service mark or servicemark is a trademark used in some countries, notably the United States, to identify a service rather than a product. When a service mark is federally registered, the standard registration symbol ® or "Reg U.S. Pat & TM Off" may be used...

on the use of the term "WEB 2.0" for live events. On the basis of this application, CMP Media sent a cease-and-desist

Cease and desist

A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity and not to take it up again later or else face legal action. The recipient of the cease-and-desist may be an individual or an organization....

demand to the Irish non-profit organization IT@Cork on May 24, 2006, but retracted it two days later. The "WEB 2.0" service mark registration passed final PTO Examining Attorney review on May 10, 2006, and was registered on June 27, 2006. The European Union

European Union

The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

application (application number 004972212, which would confer unambiguous status in Ireland) was http://oami.europa.eu/CTMOnline/RequestManager/en_Result?transition=ResultsDetailed&ntmark=&application=CTMOnline&bAdvanced=0&language=en&deno=&source=search_basic.jsp&idappli=004972212# refused on May 23, 2007.

Web 3.0

Definitions of Web 3.0 vary greatly. Some believe its most important features are the Semantic Web

Semantic Web

The Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by the World Wide Web Consortium that promotes common formats for data on the World Wide Web. By encouraging the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, the Semantic Web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a "web of...

and personalization

Personalization

Personalization involves using technology to accommodate the differences between individuals. Once confined mainly to the Web, it is increasingly becoming a factor in education, health care Personalization involves using technology to accommodate the differences between individuals. Once confined...

. Focusing on the computer elements, Conrad Wolfram

Conrad Wolfram

Conrad Wolfram is a British technologist and businessman known for his work in information technology and its application.- Work :Conrad Wolfram founded Wolfram Research Europe Ltd. in 1991 and remains its managing director...

has argued that Web 3.0 is where "the computer is generating new information", rather than humans.

Andrew Keen

Andrew Keen

, author of The Cult of the Amateur
The Cult of the Amateur
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture is a 2007 book written by entrepreneur and Internet critic Andrew Keen...

, considers the Semantic Web an "unrealisable abstraction" and sees Web 3.0 as the return of experts and authorities to the Web. For example, he points to Bertelsmann's deal with the German Wikipedia

German Wikipedia

The German Wikipedia is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and mostly publicly editable online encyclopedia.Founded in March 2001, it is the second-oldest and, with over articles, the second-largest edition of Wikipedia, behind the English Wikipedia...

to produce an edited print version of that encyclopedia. CNN Money's Jessi Hempel expects Web 3.0 to emerge from new and innovative Web 2.0 services with a profitable business model.

Futurist John Smart

John Smart (futurist)

John Smart is a futurist and scholar of accelerating change. He is founder and president of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, an organization that does “outreach, education, research, and advocacy with respect to issues of accelerating change.”. Smart has an MS in futures studies from the...

, lead author of the Metaverse Roadmap defines Web 3.0 as the first-generation Metaverse

Metaverse

The Metaverse is our collective online shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the internet...

(convergence of the virtual and physical world), a web development layer that includes TV-quality open video, 3D simulations, augmented reality, human-constructed semantic standards, and pervasive broadband, wireless, and sensors. Web 3.0's early geosocial (Foursquare, etc.) and augmented reality (Layar, etc.) webs are an extension of Web 2.0's participatory technologies and social networks (Facebook, etc.) into 3D space. Of all its metaverse-like developments, Smart suggests Web 3.0's most defining characteristic will be the mass diffusion of NTSC-or-better quality open video to TVs, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices, a time when "the internet swallows the television." Smart considers Web 4.0 to be the Semantic Web

Semantic Web

and in particular, the rise of statistical, machine-constructed semantic tags and algorithms, driven by broad collective use of conversational interfaces, perhaps circa 2020. David Siegel's perspective in Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web, 2009, is consonant with this, proposing that the growth of human-constructed semantic standards and data will be a slow, industry-specific incremental process for years to come, perhaps unlikely to tip into broad social utility until after 2020.

According to some Internet experts Web 3.0 will allow the user to sit back and let the Internet do all of the work for them. Rather than having search engines gear towards your keywords, the search engines will gear towards the user. Keywords will be searched based on your culture, region, and jargon.

External links

McKinsey & Company
McKinsey & Company
McKinsey & Company, Inc. is a global management consulting firm that focuses on solving issues of concern to senior management. McKinsey serves as an adviser to many businesses, governments, and institutions...

- Global Survey - McKinseyQuarterly.com, How businesses are using Web 2.0, June 2008
UIC.edu , "Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0", Special issue of First Monday
First Monday (journal)
First Monday is an open-access electronic peer-reviewed scientific journal for articles about the Internet.-Publication:First Monday is sponsored and hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago...

, 13(3), 2008.
MacManus, Richard. Porter, Joshua. Digital-Web.com, "Web 2.0 for Designers", Digital Web Magazine, May 4, 2005.
Graham Vickery, Sacha Wunsch-Vincent: OECD.org , "Participative Web and User-Created Content: Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking; OECD, 2007

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Characteristics

Technologies

Concepts

Usage

Web 2.0 in education

Web-based applications and desktops

XML and RSS

Web APIs

Criticism

Trademark

Web 3.0

See also

External links