Web 2.0 (also known as participative, participatory, web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and devices) for end users.
The term was coined by Darcy DiNucci in 1999 and later popularized by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty at the first Web 2.0 Conference in 2004. Although the term mimics the numbering of software versions, it does not denote a formal change in the nature of the World Wide Web; the term merely describes a general change that occurred during this period as interactive websites proliferated and came to overshadow the older, more static websites of the original Web.
A Web 2.0 website allows users to interact and collaborate through social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community. This contrasts the first generation of Web 1.0-era websites where people were limited to passively viewing content. Examples of Web 2.0 features include social networking sites or social media sites (e.g., Facebook), blogs, wikis, folksonomies ("tagging" keywords on websites and links), video sharing sites (e.g., YouTube), image sharing sites (e.g., Flickr), hosted services, Web applications ("apps"), collaborative consumption platforms, and mashup applications.
Whether Web 2.0 is substantially different from prior Web technologies has been challenged by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, who describes the term as jargon. His original vision of the Web was "a collaborative medium, a place where we [could] all meet and read and write". On the other hand, the term Semantic Web (sometimes referred to as Web 3.0) was coined by Berners-Lee to refer to a web of content where the meaning can be processed by machines.
History
Web 1.0 Web 1.0 is a retronym referring to the first stage of the World Wide Web's evolution, from roughly 1989 to 2004. According to Graham Cormode and Balachander Krishnamurthy, "content creators were few in Web 1.0 with the vast majority of users simply acting as consumers of content". Personal web pages were common, consisting mainly of static pages hosted on Internet service provider-run web servers, or on free web hosting services such as the now-defunct Tripod and GeoCities. With Web 2.0, it became common for average web users to have social-networking profiles (on sites such as Myspace and Facebook) and personal blogs (sites like Blogger, Tumblr and LiveJournal) through either a low-cost web hosting service or through a dedicated host. In general, content was generated dynamically, allowing readers to comment directly on pages in a way that was not common previously.
Some Web 2.0 capabilities were present in the days of Web 1.0, but were implemented differently. For example, a Web 1.0 site may have had a guestbook page for visitor comments, instead of a comment section at the end of each page (typical of Web 2.0). During Web 1.0, server performance and bandwidth had to be considered—lengthy comment threads on multiple pages could potentially slow down an entire site. Terry Flew, in his third edition of New Media, described the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 as a
Flew believed these factors formed the trends that resulted in the onset of the Web 2.0 "craze".
Characteristics Some common design elements of a Web 1.0 site include: Static pages rather than dynamic HTML. Content provided from the server's filesystem rather than a relational database management system (RDBMS). Pages built using Server Side Includes or Common Gateway Interface (CGI) instead of a web application written in a dynamic programming language such as Perl, PHP, Python or Ruby. The use of HTML 3.2-era elements such as frames and tables to position and align elements on a page. These were often used in combination with spacer GIFs. Proprietary HTML extensions, such as the <blink> and <marquee> tags, introduced during the first browser war. Online guestbooks. GIF buttons, graphics (typically 88×31 pixels in size) promoting web browsers, operating systems, text editors and various other products. HTML forms sent via email. Support for server side scripting was rare on shared servers during this period. To provide a feedback mechanism for web site visitors, mailto forms were used. A user would fill in a form, and upon clicking the form's submit button, their email client would launch and attempt to send an email containing the form's details. The popularity and complications of the mailto protocol led browser developers to incorporate email clients into their browsers.
Web 2.0 The term "Web 2.0" was coined by Darcy DiNucci, an information architecture consultant, in her January 1999 article "Fragmented Future":Aced, Cristina. (2013). Web 2.0: the origin of the word that has changed the way we understand public relations.
Writing when Palm Inc. introduced its first web-capable personal digital assistant (supporting Web access with WAP), DiNucci saw the Web "fragmenting" into a future that extended beyond the browser/PC combination it was identified with. She focused on how the basic information structure and hyper-linking mechanism introduced by HTTP would be used by a variety of devices and platforms. As such, her "2.0" designation refers to the next version of the Web that does not directly relate to the term's current use.
The term Web 2.0 did not resurface until 2002.Idehen, Kingsley. 2003. RSS: INJAN (It's not just about news). Blog. Blog Data Space. August 21 OpenLinkSW.comIdehen, Kingsley. 2003. Jeff Bezos Comments about Web Services. Blog. Blog Data Space. September 25. OpenLinkSW.com Knorr, Eric. 2003. The year of Web services. CIO, December 15. Companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Google, made it easy to connect and engage in online transactions. Web 2.0 introduced new features, such as multimedia content and interactive web applications, which mainly consisted of two-dimensional screens. Kinsley and Eric focus on the concepts currently associated with the term where, as Scott Dietzen puts it, "the Web becomes a universal, standards-based integration platform". In 2004, the term began to popularize when O'Reilly Media and MediaLive hosted the first Web 2.0 conference. In their opening remarks, John Battelle 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".O'Reilly, Tim, and John Battelle. 2004. Opening Welcome: State of the Internet Industry. In San Francisco, California, October 5. 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". They associated this term with the business models of Netscape and the Encyclopædia Britannica Online. For example,
In short, Netscape focused on creating software, releasing updates and bug fixes, and distributing it to the end users. O'Reilly contrasted this with Google, a company that did not, at the time, focus on producing end-user software, but instead on providing a service based on data, such as the links that Web page authors make between sites. Google exploits this user-generated content to offer Web searches based on reputation through its "PageRank" algorithm. Unlike software, which undergoes scheduled releases, such services are constantly updated, a process called "the perpetual beta". A similar difference can be seen between the Encyclopædia Britannica Online and Wikipediawhile the Britannica relies upon experts to write articles and release them periodically in publications, Wikipedia relies on trust in (sometimes anonymous) community members to constantly write and edit content. Wikipedia editors are not required to have educational credentials, such as degrees, in the subjects in which they are editing. Wikipedia is not based on subject-matter expertise, but rather on an adaptation of the open source software adage "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". This maxim asserts that if enough users are able to look at a software product's code (or a website), then these users will be able to fix any "bugs" or other problems. The Wikipedia volunteer editor community produces, edits, and updates articles constantly. Web 2.0 conferences have been held every year since 2004, attracting entrepreneurs, representatives from large companies, tech experts and technology reporters.
The popularity of Web 2.0 was acknowledged by 2006 TIME magazine Person of The Year (You).Grossman, Lev. 2006. Person of the Year: You. December 25. Time.com That is, TIME recognized the masses of users who were participating in content creation on social networks, blogs, wikis, and media sharing sites.
In the cover story, Lev Grossman explains:
Characteristics Instead of merely reading a Web 2.0 site, a user is invited to contribute to the site's content by commenting on published articles, or creating a user account or profile on the site, which may enable increased participation. By increasing emphasis on these already-extant capabilities, they encourage users to rely more on their browser for user interface, application software ("apps") and file storage facilities. This has been called "network as platform" computing. Major features of Web 2.0 include social networking websites, self-publishing platforms (e.g., WordPress' easy-to-use blog and website creation tools), "tagging" (which enables users to label websites, videos or photos in some fashion), "like" buttons (which enable a user to indicate that they are pleased by online content), and social bookmarking.
Users can provide the data and exercise some control over what they share on a Web 2.0 site. These sites may have an "architecture of participation" that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it. Users can add value in many ways, such as uploading their own content on blogs, consumer-evaluation platforms (e.g. Amazon and eBay), news websites (e.g. responding in the comment section), social networking services, media-sharing websites (e.g. YouTube and Instagram) and collaborative-writing projects. Some scholars argue that cloud computing is an example of Web 2.0 because it is simply an implication of computing on the Internet.[SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=732483 Wireless Communications and Computing at a Crossroads: New Paradigms and Their Impact on Theories Governing the Public's Right to Spectrum Access], Patrick S. Ryan, Journal on Telecommunications & High Technology Law, Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 239, 2005.
Web 2.0 offers almost all users the same freedom to contribute, which can lead to effects that are varyingly perceived as productive by members of a given community or not, which can lead to emotional distress and disagreement. The impossibility of excluding group members who do not contribute to the provision of goods (i.e., to the creation of a user-generated website) from sharing the benefits (of using the website) gives rise to the possibility that serious members will prefer to withhold their contribution of effort and "free ride" on the contributions of others.Gerald Marwell and Ruth E. Ames: "Experiments on the Provision of Public Goods. I. Resources, Interest, Group Size, and the Free-Rider Problem". The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 84, No. 6 (May, 1979), pp. 1335–1360 This requires what is sometimes called radical trust by the management of the Web site.
Encyclopaedia Britannica calls Wikipedia "the epitome of the so-called Web 2.0" and describes what many view as the ideal of a Web 2.0 platform: "an egalitarian environment where the web of social software enmeshes users in both their real and virtual-reality workplaces."