New Internet Paradigm - Web 2.0!

Web 2.0

This movement started few years ago, at the beginning of this millennium, and in 2004 with O'Reilly Media and MediaLive International have used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences. Since then some developers and marketers have adopted the term.

Tim O'Reilly provided a compact definition of Web 2.0 in 2006: "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them."

Tim outlines a set of 8 themes that he thinks are crucial for Web 2.0:

1. Web as Platform,
2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence,
3. Data as the Intel Inside,
4. End of the Software Release Cycle,
5. Lightweight Programming Models,
6. Software Above the Level of a Single Device,
7. Rich User Experiences.

The Wikipedia Entry for Web 2.0 calls it the 2nd phase of development of the Web, comprised of technical, social, and economic changes.

MacManus and Porter characterize Web 2.0 for Designers as the movement to a read/write web, observing 6 trends that signal a change in how web sites are designed:

1. A Move to Semantic Markup,
2. Providing Web Services,
3. Remixing Content,
4. Emergent Navigation and Relevance,
5. Adding Metadata over Time, and
6. A Continuing Separation of Structure and Style.

Adam Bosworth characterizes Web 2.0 as rich intelligent clients who share information across the web and deal with richer media (photos, sound, video). He points to information overload as a primary characteristic of the new Web, and suggests that the tools we'll create to rate, review, and discuss are the real innovation in Web 2.0.

Danah Boyd uses the term "glocalization" to describe Web 2.0 as making global information available to local social contexts and giving people the flexibility to find, organize, share and create information in a locally meaningful fashion that is globally accessible.

Jared Spool points to 4 major characteristics of Web 2.0: The Power of APIs, RSS, Folksonomies, and Social Networks. He says that though these have been around for some time, our new understanding of them and new tools to work with them allow designers to create fast, cheap iterations of innovative software.

Brandon Shauer breaks up attributes of Web 2.0 into two groups:

1. Foundation attributes include User-Contributed Value, The Long Tail, and Network Effects.
2. Experience attributes are Decentralization, Co-creation, Remixability, and Emergent Systems.

Nicholas Carr talks about the amorality of Web 2.0 as the "cult of the amateur", suggesting that the promoters of Web 2.0 venerate the amateur and distrust the professional.

Paul Graham sees Web 2.0 as comprised of three main themes: Ajax, Democracy, and Don't Maltreat Users; Paul summarizes these themes by saying that they all point to one idea: Using the Web the way it's meant to be used.

Web 2.0 Workgroup is a collection of blogs talking about Web 2.0 paradigm, including news, technology, design, analysis, and PR blogs.

Dave Rogers in his article “Web 2.0: Mistaking the Forest for the Trees?” writes about  how Web 2.0 is empowering users, and suggests that users actually drive the success of Web 2.0.

During my exhaustive research on Web 2.0 topic, more news and content will be added here every time I find it on the net.

To your online business (ad)venture success,

Teodor M Muntean
CEO

Ecostar Design
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