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Web 2.0

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A tag cloud (a typical Web 2.0 phenomenon in itself) presenting Web 2.0 themes

Web 2.0 is a loosely defined intersection of web application features that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design,[1] and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumers) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups and folksonomies.

The term is closely associated with Tim O'Reilly because of the O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in late 2004.[2][3] Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specification, but rather to cumulative changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web. Whether Web 2.0 is qualitatively different from prior web technologies has been challenged by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, who called the term a "piece of jargon",[4] precisely because he intended the Web in his vision as "a collaborative medium, a place where we [could] all meet and read and write". He called it the "Read/Write Web".[5]

History

The term "Web 2.0" was first used in January 1999 by Darcy DiNucci, a consultant on electronic information design (information architecture). In her article, "Fragmented Future", DiNucci writes:[6]

The Web we know now, which loads into a browser window in essentially static screenfuls, is only an embryo of the Web to come. The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, and we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop. The Web will be understood not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether through which interactivity happens. It will [...] appear on your computer screen, [...] on your TV set [...] your car dashboard [...] your cell phone [...] hand-held game machines [...] maybe even your microwave oven.

Writing when Palm Inc. was introducing its first Web-capable personal digital assistant, supporting the web via the WAP markup language, DiNucci saw the web "fragmenting" into a future that extended far beyond the browser/PC combination it was identified with. Her vision of the web's future focused on how the basic information structure and hyperlinking mechanism introduced by HTTP would be used by a variety of devices and platforms. As such, her use of the "2.0" designation refers to a next version of the web that does not directly relate to the term's current use.

The term Web 2.0 did not resurface until 2002.[7][8][9][10] These authors focus on the concepts currently associated with the term where, as Scott Dietzen puts it, "the Web becomes a universal, standards-based integration platform".[9] John Robb wrote: "What is Web 2.0? It is a system that breaks with the old model of centralized Web sites and moves the power of the Web/Internet to the desktop."[10]

In 2003, the term began its rise in popularity when O'Reilly Media and MediaLive hosted the first Web 2.0 conference. In their opening remarks, John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly outlined their definition of the "Web as Platform", where software applications are built upon the Web as opposed to upon the desktop. The unique aspect of this migration, they argued, is that "customers are building your business for you".[11] They argued that the activities of users generating content (in the form of ideas, text, videos, or pictures) could be "harnessed" to create value. O'Reilly and Battelle contrasted Web 2.0 with what they called "Web 1.0". They associated Web 1.0 with the business models of Netscape and the Encyclopædia Britannica Online. For example,

Netscape framed "the web as platform" in terms of the old software paradigm: their flagship product was the web browser, a desktop application, and their strategy was to use their dominance in the browser market to establish a market for high-priced server products. Control over standards for displaying content and applications in the browser would, in theory, give Netscape the kind of market power enjoyed by Microsoft in the PC market. Much like the "horseless carriage" framed the automobile as an extension of the familiar, Netscape promoted a "webtop" to replace the desktop, and planned to populate that webtop with information updates and applets pushed to the webtop by information providers who would purchase Netscape servers.[12]

In short, Netscape focused on creating software, updating it on occasion, and distributing it to the end users. O'Reilly contrasted this with Google, a company that did not at the time focus on producing software, such as a browser, but instead on providing a service based on data such as the links Web page authors make between sites. Google exploits this user-generated content to offer Web search based on reputation through its "PageRank" algorithm. Unlike software, which undergoes scheduled releases, such services are constantly updated, a process called "the perpetual beta". A similar difference can be seen between the Encyclopædia Britannica Online and Wikipedia: while the Britannica relies upon experts to create articles and releases them periodically in publications, Wikipedia relies on trust in anonymous users to constantly and quickly build content. Wikipedia is not based on expertise but rather an adaptation of the open source software adage "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow", and it produces and updates articles constantly. O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conferences have been held every year since 2003, attracting entrepreneurs, large companies, and technology reporters.

In terms of the lay public, the term Web 2.0 was largely championed by bloggers and by technology journalists, culminating in the 2006 TIME magazine Person of The Year (You).[13] That is, TIME selected the masses of users who were participating in content creation on social networks, blogs, wikis, and media sharing sites. In the cover story, Lev Grossman explains:

It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world but also change the way the world changes.

Since that time, Web 2.0 has found a place in the lexicon; in 2009 Global Language Monitor declared it to be the one-millionth English word.[14]

Characteristics

A list of ways that people can volunteer to improve Mass Effect Wiki, on the main page of that site. Mass Effect Wiki is an example of content generated by users working collaboratively.
Edit box interface through which anyone could edit a Wikipedia article.

Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. By increasing what was already possible in "Web 1.0", they provide the user with more user-interface, software and storage facilities, all through their browser. This has been called "Network as platform" computing.[3] Major features of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, user contributed sites, self-publishing platforms, tagging, and social bookmarking.[15] Users can provide the data that is on a Web 2.0 site and exercise some control over that data.[3][16] These sites may have an "Architecture of participation" that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it.[2][3] Some scholars have made the case that cloud computing is a form of Web 2.0 because cloud computing is simply an implication of computing on the Internet. [17]

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"[18] and regards the Web-as-information-source as Web 1.0.

The Web 2.0 offers all users the same freedom to contribute. While this opens the possibility for serious debate and collaboration, it also opens the possibility for "spamming" and "trolling" by less mature users. The impossibility of excluding group members who don’t contribute to the provision of goods from sharing profits gives rise to the possibility that serious members will prefer to withhold their contribution of effort and free ride on the contribution of others.[19] This requires what is sometimes called radical trust by the management of the website. According to Best,[20] 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[21] and collective intelligence[22] by way of user participation, can also be viewed as essential attributes of Web 2.0.

Technologies

The client-side/web browser technologies used in Web 2.0 development are Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax), Adobe Flash and the Adobe Flex framework, and JavaScript/Ajax frameworks such as YUI Library, Dojo Toolkit, MooTools, jQuery and Prototype JavaScript Framework. Ajax programming uses JavaScript to upload and download new data from the web server without undergoing a full page reload.

To allow users to continue to interact with the page, communications such as data requests going to the server are separated from data coming back to the page (asynchronously). Otherwise, the user would have to routinely wait for the data to come back before they can do anything else on that page, just as a user has to wait for a page to complete the reload. This also increases overall performance of the site, as the sending of requests can complete quicker independent of blocking and queueing required to send data back to the client.

The data fetched by an Ajax request is typically formatted in XML or JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format, two widely used structured data formats. Since both of these formats are natively understood by JavaScript, a programmer can easily use them to transmit structured data in their web application. When this data is received via Ajax, the JavaScript program then uses the Document Object Model (DOM) to dynamically update the web page based on the new data, allowing for a rapid and interactive user experience. In short, using these techniques, Web designers can make their pages function like desktop applications. For example, Google Docs uses this technique to create a Web based word processor.

Adobe Flex is another technology often used in Web 2.0 applications. Compared to JavaScript libraries like jQuery, Flex makes it easier for programmers to populate large data grids, charts, and other heavy user interactions.[23] Applications programmed in Flex, are compiled and displayed as Flash within the browser. As a widely available plugin independent of W3C (World Wide Web Consortium, the governing body of web standards and protocols) standards, Flash is capable of doing many things that were not possible pre-HTML5, the language used to construct web pages. Of Flash's many capabilities, the most commonly used in Web 2.0 is its ability to play audio and video files. This has allowed for the creation of Web 2.0 sites where video media is seamlessly integrated with standard HTML. HTML5 has also been proven to decrease the amount of computer resources required compared to Adobe’s Flash. Specifically, Apple Inc. has demonstrated the use of Flash on mobile devices decreases the battery’s lifespan significantly. Adobe has then announced that they will no longer publish future public versions of the mobile Flash plugin.[24].

In addition to Flash and Ajax, JavaScript/Ajax frameworks have recently become a very popular means of creating Web 2.0 sites. At their core, these frameworks do not use technology any different from JavaScript, Ajax, and the DOM. What frameworks do is smooth over inconsistencies between web browsers and extend the functionality available to developers. Many of them also come with customizable, prefabricated 'widgets' that accomplish such common tasks as picking a date from a calendar, displaying a data chart, or making a tabbed panel.

On the server side, Web 2.0 uses many of the same technologies as Web 1.0. Languages such as PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, JSP, and ASP.NET are used by developers to output data dynamically using information from files and databases. What has begun to change in Web 2.0 is the way this data is formatted. In the early days of the Internet, there was little need for different websites to communicate with each other and share data. In the new "participatory web", however, sharing data between sites has become an essential capability. To share its data with other sites, a website must be able to generate output in machine-readable formats such as XML (Atom, RSS, etc.) and JSON. When a site's data is available in one of these formats, another website can use it to integrate a portion of that site's functionality into itself, linking the two together. When this design pattern is implemented, it ultimately leads to data that is both easier to find and more thoroughly categorized, a hallmark of the philosophy behind the Web 2.0 movement.

In brief, Ajax is a key technology used to build Web 2.0 because it provides rich user experience and works with any popular browser whether, including: Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc. Then, a language with very good web services support should be used to build Web 2.0 applications. In addition, the language used should be iterative meaning that the addition and deployment of features can be easily and quickly achieved.

Concepts

Web 2.0 can be described in 3 parts, which are as follows:

  • Rich Internet application (RIA) — defines the experience brought from desktop to browser whether it is from a graphical point of view or usability point of view. Some buzzwords related to RIA are Ajax and Flash.
  • Web-oriented architecture (WOA) — is a key piece in Web 2.0, which defines how Web 2.0 applications expose their functionality so that other applications can leverage and integrate the functionality providing a set of much richer applications (Examples are: Feeds, RSS, Web Services, Mash-ups)
  • Social Web — defines how Web 2.0 tends to interact much more with the end user and make the end-user an integral part.

As such, Web 2.0 draws together the capabilities of client- and server-side software, content syndication and the use of network protocols. Standards-oriented web browsers may use plug-ins and software extensions to handle the content and the user interactions. Web 2.0 sites provide users with information storage, creation, and dissemination capabilities that were not possible in the environment now known as "Web 1.0".

Web 2.0 websites include the following features and techniques: Andrew McAfee used the acronym SLATES to refer to them:[25]

Search
Finding information through keyword search.
Links
Connects information together into a meaningful information ecosystem using the model of the Web, and provides low-barrier social tools.
Authoring
The ability to create and update content leads to the collaborative work of many rather than just a few web authors. In wikis, users may extend, undo and redo each other's work. In blogs, posts and the comments of individuals build up over time.
Tags
Categorization of content by users adding "tags"—short, usually one-word descriptions—to facilitate searching, without dependence on pre-made categories. Collections of tags created by many users within a single system may be referred to as "folksonomies" (i.e., folk taxonomies).
Extensions
Software that makes the Web an application platform as well as a document server. These include software like Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash player, Microsoft Silverlight, ActiveX, Oracle Java, Quicktime, Windows Media, etc.
Signals
The use of syndication technology such as RSS to notify users of content changes.

While SLATES forms the basic framework of Enterprise 2.0, it does not contradict all of the higher level Web 2.0 design patterns and business models. In this way, a new Web 2.0 report from O'Reilly is quite effective and diligent in interweaving the story of Web 2.0 with the specific aspects of Enterprise 2.0. It includes discussions of self-service IT, the long tail of enterprise IT demand, and many other consequences of the Web 2.0 era in the enterprise. The report also makes many sensible recommendations around starting small with pilot projects and measuring results, among a fairly long list.[26]

Usage

A third important part of Web 2.0 is the social Web, which is a fundamental shift in the way people communicate. The social web consists of a number of online tools and platforms where people share their perspectives, opinions, thoughts and experiences. Web 2.0 applications tend to interact much more with the end user. As such, the end user is not only a user of the application but also a participant by:

The popularity of the term Web 2.0, along with the increasing use of blogs, wikis, and social networking technologies, has led many in academia and business to coin a flurry of 2.0s,[27] including Library 2.0,[28] Social Work 2.0,[29] Enterprise 2.0, PR 2.0,[30] Classroom 2.0,[31] Publishing 2.0,[32] Medicine 2.0,[33] Telco 2.0, Travel 2.0, Government 2.0,[34] and even Porn 2.0.[35] Many of these 2.0s refer to Web 2.0 technologies as the source of the new version in their respective disciplines and areas. For example, in the Talis white paper "Library 2.0: The Challenge of Disruptive Innovation", Paul Miller argues

Blogs, wikis and RSS are often held up as exemplary manifestations of Web 2.0. A reader of a blog or a wiki is provided with tools to add a comment or even, in the case of the wiki, to edit the content. This is what we call the Read/Write web. Talis believes that Library 2.0 means harnessing this type of participation so that libraries can benefit from increasingly rich collaborative cataloging efforts, such as including contributions from partner libraries as well as adding rich enhancements, such as book jackets or movie files, to records from publishers and others.[36]

Here, Miller links Web 2.0 technologies and the culture of participation that they engender to the field of library science, supporting his claim that there is now a "Library 2.0". Many of the other proponents of new 2.0s mentioned here use similar methods.

The meaning of web 2.0 is role dependent, as Dennis D. McDonalds noted. For example, some use Web 2.0 to establish and maintain relationships through social networks, while some marketing managers might use this promising technology to "end-run traditionally unresponsive I.T. department[s]."[37]

There is a debate over the use of Web 2.0 technologies in mainstream education. Issues under consideration include the understanding of students' different learning modes; the conflicts between ideas entrenched in informal on-line communities and educational establishments' views on the production and authentication of 'formal' knowledge; and questions about privacy, plagiarism, shared authorship and the ownership of knowledge and information produced and/or published on line.[38]

Marketing
For marketers, Web 2.0 offers an opportunity to engage consumers. A growing number of marketers are using Web 2.0 tools to collaborate with consumers on product development, service enhancement and promotion. Companies can use Web 2.0 tools to improve collaboration with both its business partners and consumers. Among other things, company employees have created wikis—Web sites that allow users to add, delete, and edit content — to list answers to frequently asked questions about each product, and consumers have added significant contributions. Another marketing Web 2.0 lure is to make sure consumers can use the online community to network among themselves on topics of their own choosing.[39]
Mainstream media usage of web 2.0 is increasing. Saturating media hubs—like The New York Times, PC Magazine and Business Week — with links to popular new web sites and services, is critical to achieving the threshold for mass adoption of those services.[40]
Web 2.0 offers financial institutions abundant opportunities to engage with customers. Networks such as Twitter, Yelp and Facebook are now becoming common elements of multichannel and customer loyalty strategies, and banks are beginning to use these sites proactively to spread their messages. In a recent article for Bank Technology News, Shane Kite describes how Citigroup's Global Transaction Services unit monitors social media outlets to address customer issues and improve products. Furthermore, the FI uses Twitter to release "breaking news" and upcoming events, and YouTube to disseminate videos that feature executives speaking about market news.[41]
Small businesses have become more competitive by using Web 2.0 marketing strategies to compete with larger companies. As new businesses grow and develop, new technology is used to decrease the gap between businesses and customers. Social networks have become more intuitive and user friendly to provide information that is easily reached by the end user. For example, companies use Twitter to offer customers coupons and discounts for products and services.[42]

According to Google Timeline, the term Web 2.0 was discussed and indexed most frequently in 2005, 2007 and 2008. Its average use is continuously declining by 2–4% per quarter since April 2008.

Web 2.0 in education

Web 2.0 technologies provide teachers with new ways to engage students in a meaningful way. "Children raised on new media technologies are less patient with filling out worksheets and listening to lectures"[43] because students already participate on a global level. The lack of participation in a traditional classroom stems more from the fact that students receive better feedback online. Traditional classrooms have students do assignments and when they are completed, they are just that, finished. However, Web 2.0 shows students that education is a constantly evolving entity. Whether it is participating in a class discussion, or participating in a forum discussion, the technologies available to students in a Web 2.0 classroom does increase the amount they participate.

Will Richardson stated in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web tools for the Classrooms, 3rd Edition that, "The Web has the potential to radically change what we assume about teaching and learning, and it presents us with important questions to ponder: What needs to change about our curriculum when our students have the ability to reach audiences far beyond our classroom walls?"[44] Web 2.0 tools are needed in the classroom to prepare both students and teachers for the shift in learning that Collins and Halverson describe. According to Collins and Halverson, the self-publishing aspects as well as the speed with which their work becomes available for consumption allows teachers to give students the control they need over their learning. This control is the preparation students will need to be successful as learning expands beyond the classroom."[43]

Some may think that these technologies could hinder the personal interaction of students, however all of the research points to the contrary. "Social networking sites have worried many educators (and parents) because they often bring with them outcomes that are not positive: narcissism, gossip, wasted time, 'friending', hurt feelings, ruined reputations, and sometimes unsavory, even dangerous activities, [on the contrary,] social networking sites promote conversations and interaction that is encouraged by educators."[45] By allowing students to use the technology tools of Web 2.0, teachers are actually giving students the opportunity to learn for themselves and share that learning with their peers. One of the many implications of Web 2.0 technologies on class discussions is the idea that teachers are no longer in control of the discussions. Instead, Russell and Sorge (1999) conclude that integrating technology into instruction tends to move classrooms from teacher-dominated environments to ones that are more student-centered. While it is still important for them to monitor what students are discussing, the actual topics of learning are being guided by the students themselves.

Web 2.0 calls for major shifts in the way education is provided for students. One of the biggest shifts that Will Richardson points out in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms[44] is the fact that education must be not only socially but collaboratively constructed. This means that students, in a Web 2.0 classroom, are expected to collaborate with their peers. By making the shift to a Web 2.0 classroom, teachers are creating a more open atmosphere where students are expected to stay engaged and participate in the discussions and learning that is taking place around them. In fact, there are many ways for educators to use Web 2.0 technologies in their classrooms.

"Weblogs are not built on static chunks of content. Instead they are comprised of reflections and conversations that in many cases are updated every day [...] They demand interaction."[44] Will Richardson's observation of the essence of weblogs speaks directly to why blogs are so well suited to discussion based classrooms. Weblogs give students a public space to interact with one another and the content of the class. As long as the students are invested in the project, the need to see the blog progress acts as motivation as the blog itself becomes an entity that can demand interaction.

For example, Laura Rochette implemented the use of blogs in her American History class and noted that in addition to an overall improvement in quality, the use of the blogs as an assignment demonstrated synthesis level activity from her students. In her experience, asking students to conduct their learning in the digital world meant asking students "to write, upload images, and articulate the relationship between these images and the broader concepts of the course, [in turn] demonstrating that they can be thoughtful about the world around them."[46] Jennifer Hunt, an 8th grade language arts teacher of pre-Advanced Placement students shares a similar story. She used the WANDA project and asked students to make personal connections to the texts they read and to describe and discuss the issues raised in literature selections through social discourse. They engaged in the discussion via wikis and other Web 2.0 tools, which they used to organize, discuss, and present their responses to the texts and to collaborate with others in their classroom and beyond.

The research shows that students are already using these technological tools, but they still are expected to go to a school where using these tools is frowned upon or even punished. If educators are able to harness the power of the Web 2.0 technologies students are using, it could be expected that the amount of participation and classroom discussion would increase. It may be that how participation and discussion is produced is very different from the traditional classroom, but nevertheless it does increase.

Web 2.0 and philanthropy

The spread of participatory information-sharing over the internet, combined with recent improvements in low-cost internet access in developing countries, has opened up new possibilities for peer-to-peer charities, which allow individuals to contribute small amounts to charitable projects for other individuals. Websites such as Donors Choose and Global Giving now allow small-scale donors to direct funds to individual projects of their choice.

A popular twist on internet-based philanthropy is the use of peer-to-peer lending for charitable purposes. Kiva pioneered this concept in 2005, offering the first web-based service to publish individual loan profiles for funding. Kiva raises funds for local intermediary microfinance organizations which post stories and updates on behalf of the borrowers. Lenders can contribute as little as $25 to loans of their choice, and receive their money back as borrowers repay. Kiva falls short of being a pure peer-to-peer charity, in that loans are disbursed before being funded by lenders and borrowers do not communicate with lenders themselves.[47][48] However, the recent spread of cheap internet access in developing countries has made genuine peer-to-peer connections increasingly feasible. In 2009 the US-based nonprofit Zidisha tapped into this trend to offer the first peer-to-peer microlending platform to link lenders and borrowers across international borders without local intermediaries. Inspired by interactive websites such as Facebook and eBay, Zidisha's microlending platform facilitates direct dialogue between lenders and borrowers and a performance rating system for borrowers. Web users worldwide can fund loans for as little as a dollar.[49]

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. In 2006 Google, Inc. acquired one of the best-known sites of this broad class, Writely.[50] WYSIWYG wiki and blogging sites replicate many features of PC authoring applications.

Several browser-based "operating systems" have emerged, including EyeOS[51] and YouOS.(No longer active.)[52] 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, and are able to run within any modern browser. However, these so-called "operating systems" do not directly control the hardware on the client's computer.

Numerous web-based application services appeared during the dot-com bubble of 1997–2001 and then vanished, having failed to gain a critical mass of customers. In 2005, WebEx acquired one of the better-known of these, Intranets.com, for $45 million.[53]

Distribution of media

XML and RSS

Many regard syndication of site content as a Web 2.0 feature. Syndication uses standardized protocols to 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 permitting 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 feeds.

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

Web 2.0 often uses machine-based interactions such as REST and SOAP. Servers often expose proprietary Application programming interfaces (API), but standard APIs (for example, for posting to a blog or notifying a blog update) have also come into use. Most communications through APIs involve XML or JSON payloads.

REST APIs, through their use of self-descriptive messages and hypermedia as the engine of application state, should be self-describing once an entry URI is known. Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is the standard way of publishing a SOAP API and there are a range of web service specifications. EMML, or Enterprise Mashup Markup Language by the Open Mashup Alliance, is an XML markup language for creating enterprise mashups.

Criticism

Critics of the term claim 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. First, techniques such as AJAX do not replace underlying protocols like HTTP, but add an additional layer of abstraction on top of them. Second, 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.[54] Previous developments also came from research in computer-supported collaborative learning and computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) and from established products like Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino, all phenomena that preceded Web 2.0.

But perhaps the most common criticism is that the term is unclear or simply a buzzword. For example, in a podcast interview,[4] Tim Berners-Lee described the term "Web 2.0" as a "piece of jargon":

"Nobody really knows what it means...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."[4]

Other critics labeled Web 2.0 "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. For example, The Economist has dubbed the mid- to late-2000s focus on Web companies "Bubble 2.0".[55] Venture capitalist Josh Kopelman noted that Web 2.0 had excited only 53,651 people (the number of subscribers at that time to TechCrunch, a Weblog covering Web 2.0 startups and technology news), too few users to make them an economically viable target for consumer applications.[56] Although Bruce Sterling reports he's a fan of Web 2.0, he thinks it is now dead as a rallying concept.[clarification needed][57]

Critics have cited the language used to describe the hype cycle of Web 2.0[58] as an example of Techno-utopianist rhetoric.[59]

In terms of Web 2.0's social impact, critics such as Andrew Keen argue that Web 2.0 has created a cult of digital narcissism and amateurism, which undermines the notion of expertise by allowing anybody, anywhere to share and place undue value upon their own opinions about any subject and post any kind of content, regardless of their particular talents, knowledge, credentials, biases or possible hidden agendas. Keen's 2007 book, Cult of the Amateur, argues that the core assumption of Web 2.0, that all opinions and user-generated content are equally valuable and relevant, is misguided. Additionally, Sunday Times reviewer John Flintoff has characterized Web 2.0 as "creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity: uninformed political commentary, unseemly home videos, embarrassingly amateurish music, unreadable poems, essays and novels", and also asserted that Wikipedia is full of "mistakes, half truths and misunderstandings".[60] Michael Gorman, former president of the American Library Association has been vocal about his opposition to Web 2.0 due to the lack of expertise that it outwardly claims though he believes that there is some hope for the future as "The task before us is to extend into the digital world the virtues of authenticity, expertise, and scholarly apparatus that have evolved over the 500 years of print, virtues often absent in the manuscript age that preceded print".[61]

There is also a growing body of critique of Web 2.0 on political economic grounds. Since, as Tim O'Reilly and John Batelle put it, Web 2.0 is based on the "customers... building your business for you,"[62] critics have argued that sites such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are exploiting what Tiziana Terranova calls the "free labor"[63] of users who create content.[64] Web 2.0 sites use Terms of Service agreements to claim perpetual licenses to user-generated content, and they use that content to create profiles of users to sell to marketers.[65] This is part of increased surveillance of user activity happening within Web 2.0 sites, and critics argue that this collected data can be easily abused by governments seeking to monitor dissident citizens.[66][67]

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.[68] 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,[69] but retracted it two days later.[70] The "WEB 2.0" service mark registration passed final PTO Examining Attorney review on May 10, 2006, and was registered on June 27, 2006.[68] The European Union application (application number 004972212, which would confer unambiguous status in Ireland) was [3] refused on May 23, 2007.

Web 3.0

See also: Semantic Web

Definitions of Web 3.0 vary greatly. Some[71] believe its most important features are the Semantic Web and personalization. Focusing on the computer elements, Conrad Wolfram has argued that Web 3.0 is where "the computer is generating new information", rather than humans.[72]

Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, considers the Semantic Web an "unrealisable abstraction" and sees Web 3.0 as the return of experts and authorities to the Web. For example, he points to Bertelsmann's deal with the German Wikipedia to produce an edited print version of that encyclopedia.[73] CNN Money's Jessi Hempel expects Web 3.0 to emerge from new and innovative Web 2.0 services with a profitable business model.[74]

Futurist John Smart, lead author of the Metaverse Roadmap,[75] defines Web 3.0 as the first-generation Metaverse (convergence of the virtual and physical world), a web development layer that includes TV-quality open video, 3D simulations, augmented reality, human-constructed semantic standards, and pervasive broadband, wireless, and sensors. Web 3.0's early geosocial (Foursquare, etc.) and augmented reality (Layar, etc.) webs are an extension of Web 2.0's participatory technologies and social networks (Facebook, etc.) into 3D space. Of all its metaverse-like developments, Smart suggests Web 3.0's most defining characteristic will be the mass diffusion of NTSC-or-better quality open video to TVs, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices, a time when "the internet swallows the television."[76] Smart considers Web 4.0 to be the Semantic Web and in particular, the rise of statistical, machine-constructed semantic tags and algorithms, driven by broad collective use of conversational interfaces, perhaps circa 2020.[77] David Siegel's perspective in Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web, 2009, is consonant with this, proposing that the growth of human-constructed semantic standards and data will be a slow, industry-specific incremental process for years to come, perhaps unlikely to tip into broad social utility until after 2020.

According to some Internet experts, Web 3.0 will allow the user to sit back and let the Internet do all of the work for them.[78] Rather than having search engines gear towards your keywords, the search engines will gear towards the user. Keywords will be searched based on your culture, region, and jargon.[79]

See also

Wikiversity has learning resources about Web 2.0
Application Domains

References

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