The term "Web 2.0" describes the
changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design
that aim to enhance creativity, communication, secure information
sharing, collaboration and web functionality. Web 2.0 concepts have led
to the development and evolution of web culture communities and hosted
services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis,
blogs, and folksonomies.
Tim O'Reilly is generally credited for
coining the term and the first Web. 2.0 conference was held in San
Francisco in November 2004. In the conference, he defined the concept as
"the web as the platform," emphasizing the participatory aspect of the
web as opposed to the web-as-information-source model. In the early
stages of the development of the World Wide Web, information flowed from
the creator to the receiver (web users) and the web was conceived as an
information source. After the decline of the dotcom economy around
2001, users began to generate and share information to affect the flow
of information.
Origin of the term
The
term first became notable after the O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference
in 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web,
it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but
rather to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the
Web. According to Tim O'Reilly:
O'Reilly has said that the "2.0" refers to the historical context of
web businesses "coming back" after the 2001 collapse of the dot-com
bubble, in addition to the distinguishing characteristics of the
projects that survived the bust or thrived thereafter.
Tim
Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, has questioned whether one
can use the term in any meaningful way, since many of the technological
components of Web 2.0 have existed since the early days of the Web.
Definition
Web
2.0 encapsulates the idea of the proliferation of interconnectivity and
interactivity of web-delivered content. Tim O'Reilly regards Web 2.0 as
the way that business embraces the strengths of the web and uses it as a
platform. O'Reilly considers that Eric Schmidt's abridged slogan, don't fight the Internet, encompasses the essence of Web 2.0—building applications and services that use the unique features of the Internet.
In
the opening talk of the first Web 2.0 conference, O'Reilly and John
Battelle summarized what they saw as the themes of Web 2.0. They argued
that the web had become a platform with software above the level of a
single device, leveraging the power of "The Long Tail," and data that
acted as a driving force. According to O'Reilly and Battelle, an
architecture of participation where users can contribute website content
creates network effects. Web 2.0 technologies tend to foster innovation
in the assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together
features from distributed, independent developers. (This could be seen
as a kind of "open source" or possible "Agile" development process,
consistent with an end to the traditional software adoption cycle,
typified by the so-called "perpetual beta".)
Web 2.0 technology
encourages lightweight business models enabled by syndication of content
and of service and by ease of picking-up by early adopters.
O'Reilly
provided examples of companies or products that embody these principles
in his description of his four levels in the hierarchy of Web 2.0
sites:
- Level-3 applications, the most "Web 2.0"-oriented, exist only on the Internet, deriving their effectiveness from the inter-human connections and from the network effects that Web 2.0 makes possible, and growing in effectiveness in proportion as people make more use of them. O'Reilly gave eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype, dodgeball, and AdSense as examples.
- Level-2 applications can operate offline but gain advantages from going online. O'Reilly cited Flickr, which benefits from its shared photo-database and from its community-generated tag database.
- Level-1 applications operate offline but gain features online. O'Reilly pointed to Writely (now Google Docs & Spreadsheets) and iTunes (because of its music-store portion).
- Level-0 applications work as well offline as online. O'Reilly gave the examples of MapQuest, Yahoo! Local, and Google Maps (mapping-applications using contributions from users to advantage could rank as "level 2," like Google Earth).
Non-web applications like email, instant-messaging clients, and the telephone fall outside the above hierarchy.
Characteristics
Web
2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information.
They can build on the interactive facilities of "Web 1.0" to provide
"Network as platform" computing, allowing users to run
software-applications entirely through a browser. Users can own the data
on a Web 2.0 site and exercise control over that data. These sites may
have an "Architecture of participation" that encourages users to add
value to the application as they use it. This stands in contrast to very
old traditional websites, the sort which limited visitors to viewing
and whose content only the site's owner could modify. Web 2.0 sites
often feature a rich, user friendly interface based on Ajax, OpenLaszlo,
Flex or similar rich media.
The concept of
Web-as-participation-platform captures many of these characteristics.
Bart Decrem, a founder and former CEO of Flock, calls Web 2.0 the
"participatory Web" and regards the Web-as-information-source as Web
1.0.
The impossibility of excluding group-members who don’t
contribute to the provision of goods from sharing profits gives rise to
the possibility that rational members will prefer to withhold their
contribution of effort and free-ride on the contribution of others.
According
to Best, the characteristics of Web 2.0 are: rich user experience, user
participation, dynamic content, metadata, web standards and
scalability. Further characteristics, such as openness, freedom and
collective intelligence by way of user participation, can also be viewed
as essential attributes of Web 2.0.
Technology overview
The
sometimes complex and continually evolving technology infrastructure of
Web 2.0 includes server-software, content-syndication,
messaging-protocols, standards-oriented browsers with plugins and
extensions, and various client-applications. The differing, yet
complementary approaches of such elements provide Web 2.0 sites with
information-storage, creation, and dissemination challenges and
capabilities that go beyond what the public formerly expected in the
environment of the so-called "Web 1.0."
Web 2.0 websites
typically include some of the following features/techniques that Andrew
McAfee used the acronym SLATES to refer to them:
1. “Search: the ease of finding information through keyword search which makes the platform valuable.
2. Links: guides to important pieces of information. The best pages are the most frequently linked to.
3. Authoring:
the ability to create constantly updating content over a platform that
is shifted from being the creation of a few to being the constantly
updated, interlinked work. In wikis, the content is iterative in the
sense that the people undo and redo each other's work. In blogs, content
is cumulative in that posts and comments of individuals are accumulated
over time.
4. Tags: categorization of content by creating
tags that are simple, one-word descriptions to facilitate searching and
avoid rigid, pre-made categories.
5. Extensions: automation of some of the work and pattern matching by using algorithms e.g. amazon.com recommendations.
6. Signals:
the use of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) technology to notify users
with any changes of the content by sending e-mails to them.”
Usage
Higher Education
Universities
are using Web 2.0 in order to reach out and engage with new generation
and other prospective students according to recent reports. Examples of
this are: social networking websites – YouTube, MySpace, Facebook,
Youmeo, Twitter and Flickr; upgrading institutions’ websites in their
ways – stand-alone micro-websites with minimal navigation; placing
current students in cyberspace or student blogs; and virtual learning
environments such as Moodle enable prospective students to log on and
ask questions.
In addition to free social networking websites,
schools have contracted with companies that provide many of the same
services as MySpace and Facebook, but can integrate with their existing
database. Companies such as Harris Connect, iModules and Publishing
Concepts have developed alumni online community software packages that
provide schools with a way to communicate to their alumni and allow
alumni to communicate with each other in a safe, secure environment.
Government 2.0
Web
2.0 initiatives are being used within the public sector, giving more
currency to the term Government 2.0. Government 2.0 is an attempt to
integrate the social networking and interactive advantages of Web 2.0
approaches into the practice of government. Government 2.0 can provide
more effective processes for service delivery for individuals and
businesses. Integration of tools like wikis, development of government
specific social networking sites, use of blogs, multimedia sharing,
podcasts, RSS feeds and data mashups are all helping governments provide
information to citizens in a manner that is most useful to them.
Public diplomacy
Web
2.0 initiatives have been used in public diplomacy for the Israeli
government. The country is believed to be the first to have its own
official blog, MySpace page, YouTube channel, Facebook page and a
political blog. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs started the
country's video blog as well as its political blog. The Foreign Ministry
also held a microblogging press conference via Twitter about its war
with Hamas, with Consul David Saranga answering live questions from a
worldwide public in common text-messaging abbreviations. The questions
and answers were later posted on Israelpolitik.org, the country's
official political blog.
Web-based applications and desktops
Ajax
has prompted the development of websites that mimic desktop
applications, such as word processing, the spreadsheet, and slide-show
presentation. WYSIWYG wiki sites replicate many features of PC authoring
applications. Still other sites perform collaboration and project
management functions. In 2006 Google, Inc. acquired one of the
best-known sites of this broad class, Writely.
Several
browser-based "operating systems" have emerged, including EyeOS and
YouOS. Although coined as such, many of these services function less
like a traditional operating system and more as an application platform.
They mimic the user experience of desktop operating-systems, offering
features and applications similar to a PC environment, as well as the
added ability of being able to run within any modern browser.
Internet applications
XML and RSS
Advocates
of "Web 2.0" may regard syndication of site content as a Web 2.0
feature, involving as it does standardized protocols, which permit
end-users to make use of a site's data in another context (such as
another website, a browser plugin, or a separate desktop application).
Protocols which permit syndication include RSS (Really Simple
Syndication—also known as "web syndication"), RDF (as in RSS 1.1), and
Atom, all of them XML-based formats. Observers have started to refer to
these technologies as "Web feed" as the usability of Web 2.0 evolves and
the more user-friendly Feeds icon supplants the RSS icon.
Specialized protocols
Specialized
protocols such as FOAF and XFN (both for social networking) extend the
functionality of sites or permit end-users to interact without
centralized websites.
Web APIs
Machine-based
interaction, a common feature of Web 2.0 sites, uses two main
approaches to Web APIs, which allow web-based access to data and
functions: REST and SOAP.
- REST (Representational State Transfer) Web APIs use HTTP alone to interact, with XML (eXtensible Markup Language) or JSON payloads;
- SOAP involves POSTing more elaborate XML messages and requests to a server that may contain quite complex, but pre-defined, instructions for the server to follow.
Often servers use proprietary APIs, but standard APIs (for example,
for posting to a blog or notifying a blog update) have also come into
wide use. Most communications through APIs involve XML or JSON payloads.
Economics
The
analysis of the economic implications of "Web 2.0" applications and
loosely-associated technologies such as wikis, blogs, social-networking,
open-source, open-content, file-sharing, peer-production, etc. has also
gained scientific attention. This area of research investigates the
implications Web 2.0 has for an economy and the principles underlying
the economy of Web 2.0.
Cass Sunstein's book "Infotopia"
discussed the Hayekian nature of collaborative production, characterized
by decentralized decision-making, directed by (often non-monetary)
prices rather than central planners in business or government.
Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams argue in their book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
(2006) that the economy of "the new web" depends on mass collaboration.
Tapscott and Williams regard it as important for new media companies to
find ways of how to make profit with the help of Web 2.0. The
prospective Internet-based economy that they term "Wikinomics" would
depend on the principles of openness, peering, sharing, and acting
globally. They identify seven Web 2.0 business-models (peer pioneers,
ideagoras, prosumers, new Alexandrians, platforms for participation,
global plantfloor, wiki workplace).
Organizations could make use
of these principles and models in order to prosper with the help of Web
2.0-like applications: "Companies can design and assemble products with
their customers, and in some cases customers can do the majority of the
value creation".
Tapscott and Williams suggest business strategies as "models where
masses of consumers, employees, suppliers, business partners, and even
competitors cocreate value in the absence of direct managerial control".
Tapscott and Williams see the outcome as an economic democracy.
Some
other views in the scientific debate agree with Tapscott and Williams
that value-creation increasingly depends on harnessing open
source/content, networking, sharing, and peering, but disagree that this
will result in an economic democracy, predicting a subtle form and
deepening of exploitation, in which Internet-based global outsourcing
reduces labor-costs by transferring jobs from workers in wealthy nations
to workers in poor nations. In such a view, the economic implications
of a new web might include on the one hand the emergence of new
business-models based on global outsourcing, whereas on the other hand
non-commercial online platforms could undermine profit-making and
anticipate a co-operative economy. For example, Tiziana Terranova speaks
of "free labor" (performed without payment) in the case where prosumers
produce surplus value in the circulation-sphere of the cultural
industries.
Some examples of Web 2.0 business models that attempt
to generate revenues in online shopping and online marketplaces are
referred to as social commerce and social shopping. Social commerce
involves user-generated marketplaces where individuals can set up online
shops and link their shops in a networked marketplace, drawing on
concepts of electronic commerce and social networking. Social shopping
involves customers interacting with each other while shopping, typically
online, and often in a social network environment. Academic research on
the economic value implications of social commerce and having sellers
in online marketplaces link to each others' shops has been conducted by
researchers in the business school at Columbia University.
Criticism
The
argument exists that "Web 2.0" does not represent a new version of the
World Wide Web at all, but merely continues to use so-called "Web 1.0"
technologies and concepts. Techniques such as AJAX do not replace
underlying protocols like HTTP, but add an additional layer of
abstraction on top of them. Many of the ideas of Web 2.0 had already
been featured in implementations on networked systems well before the
term "Web 2.0" emerged. Amazon.com, for instance, has allowed users to
write reviews and consumer guides since its launch in 1995, in a form of
self-publishing. Amazon also opened its API to outside developers in
2002. Previous developments also came from research in
computer-supported collaborative learning and computer-supported
cooperative work and from established products like Lotus Notes and
Lotus Domino.
In a podcast interview Tim Berners-Lee described
the term "Web 2.0" as a "piece of jargon." "Nobody really knows what it
means," he said, and went on to say that "if Web 2.0 for you is blogs
and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was
supposed to be all along."
Other criticism has included the term
“a second bubble” (referring to the Dot-com bubble of circa 1995–2001),
suggesting that too many Web 2.0 companies attempt to develop the same
product with a lack of business models. The Economist has written
of "Bubble 2.0." Venture capitalist Josh Kopelman noted that Web 2.0
had excited only 530,651 people (the number of subscribers at that time
to TechCrunch, a Weblog covering Web 2.0 matters), too few users to make
them an economically viable target for consumer applications. Although
Bruce Sterling reports he's a fan of Web 2.0, he thinks it is now dead
as a rallying concept.
Critics have cited the language used to
describe the hype cycle of Web 2.0 as an example of Techno-utopianist
rhetoric. Web 2.0 is not the first example of communication creating a
false, hyper-inflated sense of the value of technology and its impact on
culture. The dot com boom and subsequent bust in 2000 was a culmination
of rhetoric of the technological sublime in terms that would later make
their way into Web 2.0 jargon. Communication as culture: essays on media and society
(1989) and the technologies worth as represented in the stock market.
Indeed, several years before the dot com stock market crash the
then-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan equated the run up of stock
values as irrational exuberance. Shortly before the crash of 2000 a
book by Robert J. Shiller, Irrational Exuberance. (2000) was released detailing the overly optimistic euphoria of the dot com industry. The book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
(2006) even goes as far as to quote critics of the value of Web 2.0 in
an attempt to acknowledge that hyper inflated expectations exist but
that Web 2.0 is really different.
Trademark
In
November 2004, CMP Media applied to the USPTO for a service mark on the
use of the term "WEB 2.0" for live events. On the basis of this
application, CMP Media sent a cease-and-desist demand to the Irish
non-profit organization IT@Cork on May 24, 2006, but retracted it two
days later. The "WEB 2.0" service mark registration passed final PTO
Examining Attorney review on May 10, 2006, and was registered on June
27, 2006. The European Union application (application number 004972212,
which would confer unambiguous status in Ireland) remains currently
pending after its filing on March 23, 2006.
Open Source Movement
Traditionally,
an author of information or knowledge maintained an authoritative
position, while the general audience were recipients of knowledge.
Traditional proprietary information architecture well fitted this
sociological structure of knowledge. Web 2.0 is a radical challenge to
this traditional model of knowledge; in the Web 2.0 model, numerous
individuals, rather than a single author, collaborate to produce
content. Furthermore, a shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 suggests a shift
from a proprietary information architectural model to an open source
model. The open source movement and Wikipedia are some early examples of
Web 2.0.