Web 2.0 is not really a software upgrade of the internet, as we normally think of version numbers representing. Rather, Web 2.0 represents changes in the way software developers create web pages and the way end-users use them. Web 2.0 transforms websites from just information providers to being interactive and more under the control of the user. There is also a very social aspect to Web 2.0 websites. These changes can result in an increase in the economic value of a website.
After much investigation, it is still unclear as to exactly what constitutes a site being a Web 2.0 website. Part of the problem is that there are no controls currently in place to govern this. However, there is some consensus as to what type of things may be found on a website that claims to be a Web 2.0 site. According to Wikipedia, these are some of those features/techniques:
- Rich Internet application techniques, often Ajax-based
- Semantically valid XHTML and HTML markup
- Microformats extending pages with additional semantics
- Folksonomies (in the form of tags or tagclouds)
- Cascading Style Sheets to aid in the separation of presentation and content
- TEST and/or XML and/or JSON-based APIs
- Syndication, aggregation and notification of data in RSS or Atom feeds
- Mashups, merging content from different sources, client and server-side
- Weblog-publishing tools
- Wiki or forum software, etc. to support user-generated content
I must confess that not being much of an internet savvy user myself, I don’t really understand what many of these things mean. So, I did further investigation into this thing called Web 2.0. My investigation led me to YouTube, where I watched a fascinating video called “Web 2.0... The Machine is Us/ingUs”. Here is link to that video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE. This video shows examples of what Web 2.0 really means to users and the websites themselves. It shows how the separation of content and style means you can extract data from one website and import into another to create a different page. It goes on to demonstrate blogs and how easy it is with Web 2.0 for a user to upload content, such as in YouTube. It explains a little about how a Website learns from the actions its visitors take.
Another important feature of Web 2.0 is tagging. Tagging allows users to create groupings of their own within a Website, and then other users can also view what they have tagged. This is another piece of the social aspect of Web 2.0. It can be beneficial for a company to view the tags that their visitors have created, to get an idea of what they are thinking. It could also be damaging if the groupings include such things as “products you don’t want to buy,” or things of that nature. By giving your users that type of freedom, there does come some risk. It may also be disheartening to some Web Programmers to see sites that they have developed, oh so carefully, being rearranged by a user in some way that does not meet their standards. But again, that is the downside of the freedom given to users.
The question is “what choice does a company have but to join the revolution?” Not much, if they want to keep the users they have and attract new ones. Once users experience sites that use the Web 2.0 technology, they are no longer satisfied with the plain old internet sites. The problem companies face is finding the programmers to create the Websites and having the software and hardware to support it. Experienced Web developers are more in demand than ever, due to this explosion of Web 2.0, and those companies that are unable to move forward, will most likely be left in the dust. I read several articles that referred to their being another “bubble” much like the one that happened with the collapse of the .com era. This is an exiting time in Web development. It will be interesting to watch it play out over the next few years.
