Web 2.0 hints at an improved form of the World Wide Web. It is an attitude and not precisely a technology. Everything started when Dale Dougherty from O’Reilly Media used the term in a conference in which he shared a brianstorming session with Craig Cline from MediaLive while talking about the renaissance and the evolution of the Net. According to Tim O’Reilly,
| ‘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.’ |
Stephen Fry (actor, author and broadcaster) describes Web 2.0 as:
| ‘An idea in people’s heads rather than a reality. It’s actually an idea that the reciprocity between the user and the provider is what’s emphasised. In other words, genuine interacivity if you like, simply because people can upload as well as download.’ |
Given the lack of set standards as to what Web 2.0 actually means, implies or requires, the term can mean radically different things to different people. Web 2.0 websites allow the user to do more than just retrieve information. They can provide ‘Network as platform’ computing, allowing users to run software applications entirely through a browser. In the year and a half since, the term Web 2.0 has clearly taken hold, with more than 9.5 million citations in Google. The future way of considering the Net has arrived.
Sources:
