What is Web 2.0?

Recently while surfing and visiting social bookmarking sites like del.icious.us, I have seen a lot of tags like “web2.0”, “web 2”. I am curious why there is so much talks and expert opinion about this topic so I went to make a quick research. I got many links related to web 2.0 and I browsed through many of them and finally got to understand what this is about. Well, you really can’t catch up with the web developments. You may be latest in this subject but outdated in other topics.

There is a detailed explanation and origin of this term at this URL from oreilly.net about the definition of web 2.0. From my own understanding, web 2.0 is a broad concept with no clearly defined boundary between the different ideas under its umbrella. However, there are a few important definitions:

1. Web is the central platform.
2. More user control of the data.
3. More web services rather than software package.
4. Ownership of the data.
5. Scalability and intelligence in manipulation of the data
6. Easy user involvement and participation.

Based on these definitions, blogging is of course one of the most prominent examples of web 2.0. In fact, blogging is not new but now that with the developments of many user involvement services like del.icious, digg, furl, technorati and more coming out, the whole blogging experience is going to be more seamless. Your blogs will be more easily exposed by using these services.

Wiki is another prime example under web 2.0 concept. Wikis allow users to easily input or edit their views and knowledge on their topic of expertise. This is some sort of new content management system and is based on collaborative effort of the like-minded community. This is some sort of new content management system and is based on collaborative effort of the like-minded community. Other examples include tagging, pay per click, SEO, and content syndication.