What is Web 2.0?

Snazzy logos, glassy icons, creative sites with equally creative names, amazing flexibility, rich web experience, ... It's all over the Internet now - and everyone wants more!

This is the power that Web 2.0 has brought to unleash the "Power of You".


'Web 2.0' sounds new - and in many ways, is the next version of the web. In a sense, it is a next, but is hardly a [higher] version in the conventional sense of things. Rather, it is more about the next generation of the Web (or Internet), and it manifests itself in different ways.

Web 2.0 is undoubtedly an exciting trend - and has since, given rise to a plethora of "2.0" terms! - that is slated to change the way businesses and the folks who belong to those businesses, no matter who or where they are, perform their routine set of tasks.

The term "Web 2.0" is widely accepted to be associated with Tim O'Reilly, during the O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. To quote a more formal definition, according to O'Reilly and Battelle:

"[Web 2.0 is] an architecture of participation where users can contribute website content to create 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 (a kind of "open source" development and an end to the software adoption cycle, 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 early adopters..."

By this time, it's probably unlikely that you have not heard or come across at least one of the following:
and are already socializing with your buddies on Facebook, using Wikipedia as a reference (encyclopedia), tagging stuff on del.icio.us, watching videos that users upload onto YouTube, and of course, writing, reading or commenting on someone's blog somewhere.

All this is what's "Web 2.0" is made of (aka, the core principles of Web 2.0):

• Web as a Platform
• User-generated content
• Content syndication
• Social Networking / Tagging
• Collective Intelligence
• Rich User Experience / Collaboration
• New Business Models / The Long Tail

Web 2.0 is an amazing phenomenon - and is here to stay. Surely, I won't be able to do justice to this business revolution in a single post, and I sure am glad that I am fortunate to experience it in this age.

Keep watching this space!