If you’ve surfed the internet enough, you’ve probably seen the term WEB 2.0 thrown around pretty carelessly. Most people don’t even know what this means because they are still using the internet the same way for years. WEB 2.0 has made the internet even more popular and useable by the greater population.
Long gone are the days where you had to physically dial the Internet through a BBS, and get UseNet groups or Internet news. When the internet first became available in Internet Explorer, it was pretty bland and basic. The search engines weren’t powerful at all and you had to know the website you wanted ahead of time – furthermore, most were usually institutions or schools. But now everything has changed enabling everyone to have a fun interactive web experience – that is what WEB 2.0 helps provide to a greater number of people (other then the Geeks out there!).
Web 2.0 in simple terms, really refers to a newer or modern way of designing and using the Internet. The way I see it, it enables webpages to act more like smart application programs (like Microsoft Word, etc).
If you compare a typical website from even around 2000 to Facebook you can see an immediate difference. Most WEB 1.0 sites do not easily allow loading of plugins, applications, chat features, file uploads. Facebook for example provides an interactive “software program” that enables you to chat, add friends, add photos /videos, change your status – without reloading or downloading anything special. It’s all integrated.
You may want to take a look at this website that awards sites from being great WEB 2.0 sites – http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0
Related Blog’s on the Topic: Robin Good – What is Web 3.0 – Web 2.0 with a brain! – PBS’ should you care about Web 2.0
there are many sites that are available now that do things that years ago only local applications could do. For example, Google Docs and Zoho allow people access to Microsoft Office type functionality all from within a web page. they are free and no downloads are required. soon we will not have to install anything on our computers – it will all be in the cloud.
I remember college I think they called it – web services? Yes. It was suppose to take over completely in a few years and pretty much make everyones computer a dumb terminal, with all computing power being within the cloud.
Not sure I want to give up that kind of power and privacy yet though! But definately some big changes in the past few years.
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