Jump to content

Web 2.0

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 209.157.148.134 (talk) at 23:36, 24 August 2006 (→New web-based communities: add link to wikipedia online communities article). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The phrase Web 2.0 was coined by O'Reilly Media to refer to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services that let people collaborate and share information online in a new way—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies. O'Reilly Media, in collaboration with MediaLive International, used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences and since then it has become a popular, if ill-defined and often criticized, buzzword amongst the technical and marketing communities.

Introduction

With its allusion to the version numbers that commonly designate software upgrades, the phrase "Web 2.0" hints at an improved form of the World Wide Web, and the term has appeared in occasional use for several years. The more explicit synonym "Participatory Web", emphasizing tools and platforms that enable the user to tag, blog, comment, modify, augment, select from, rank, and generally talk back to the contributions of other users and the general world community, has increasingly seen use as an alternative phrase. Some commentators regard reputation-based public wikis, such as Wikipedia, as pioneering examples of Web 2.0/Participatory Web technology.

O'Reilly Media and MediaLive International popularized the term Web 2.0 for a conference they hosted after Dale Dougherty mentioned it during a brainstorming session. Dougherty suggested that the Web was in a renaissance, with changing rules and evolving business models. The participants assembled examples — "DoubleClick was Web 1.0; Google AdSense is Web 2.0. Ofoto is Web 1.0; Flickr is Web 2.0" — rather than definitions. Dougherty recruited John Battelle for a business perspective, and it became the first Web 2.0 Conference in October 2004. A second annual conference was held in October 2005.

In their first conference opening talk, O'Reilly and Battelle summarized key principles they believe characterize Web 2.0 applications: the Web as platform; data as the driving force; network effects created by an architecture of participation; innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers (a kind of "open source" development); lightweight business models enabled by content and service syndication; the end of the software adoption cycle ("the perpetual beta"); software above the level of a single device, leveraging the power of The Long Tail.

Earlier users of the phrase "Web 2.0" employed it as a synonym for "semantic web", and indeed, the two concepts complement each other. The combination of social networking systems such as FOAF and XFN with the development of tag-based folksonomies and delivered through blogs and wikis creates a natural basis for a semantic environment. Although the technologies and services that comprise Web 2.0 are less powerful than an internet in which the machines can understand and extract meaning, as proponents of the Semantic Web envision, Web 2.0 represents a step in its direction.

As used by its proponents, the phrase refers to one or more of the following:

  • The transition of websites from isolated information silos to sources of content and functionality, thus becoming computing platforms serving web applications to end users
  • A social phenomenon referring to an approach to creating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and "the market as a conversation"
  • A more organized and categorized content, with a far more developed deeplinking web architecture
  • A shift in economic value of the web, possibly surpassing that of the dot com boom of the late 1990s
  • A marketing term to differentiate new web businesses from those of the dot com boom, which due to the bust now seem discredited
  • The resurgence of excitement around the possibilities of innovative web applications and services that gained a lot of momentum around mid 2005

Many find it easiest to define Web 2.0 by associating it with companies or products that embody its principles and Tim O'Reilly gave examples in his description of his four plus one levels in the hierarchy of Web 2.0-ness:[1]

  • Level 3 applications, the most Web 2.0, which could only exist on the internet, deriving their power from the human connections and network effects it makes possible and growing in effectiveness the more people use them. His examples were eBay, craigslist, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype, Dodgeball, and Adsense.
  • Level 2 applications, which can be offline but gain unique advantages from being online. His example was Flickr, benefiting from its shared photo database and community-generated tag database.
  • Level 1 applications are also available offline but gain features online. His examples were Writely, gaining group editing capability online and iTunes because of the music store portion.
  • Level 0 applications would work as well offline. His examples were MapQuest, Yahoo! Local, and Google Maps. Mapping applications using contributions from users to advantage can be level 2.
  • non-web applications like email, instant messaging clients and the telephone.

Examples other than those cited by O'Reilly include digg, Shoutwire, last.fm, and Technorati.

Commentators see many recently-developed concepts and technologies as contributing to Web 2.0, including weblogs, linklogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds and other forms of many to many publishing; social software, web APIs, web standards, online web services, and others.

Proponents of the Web 2.0 concept say that it differs from early web development (retrospectively labeled Web 1.0) in that it moves away from static websites, the use of search engines, and surfing from one website to the next, towards a more dynamic and interactive World Wide Web. Others argue that the original and fundamental concepts of the WWW are not actually being superseded. Skeptics argue that the term is little more than a buzzword, or that it means whatever its proponents want it to mean in order to convince their customers, investors and the media that they are creating something fundamentally new, rather than continuing to develop and use well-established technologies[2].

File:Web20 en.png
On September 30, 2005, Tim O'Reilly wrote a seminal piece neatly summarizing the subject. The mind map above sums up the memes of web2.0 with example sites and services attached. It was created by Markus Angermeier on November 11 2005.

The retrospectively-labeled "Web 1.0" often consisted of static HTML pages, rarely (if ever) updated. They depended solely on HTML, which a new Internet user could learn fairly easily. The success of the dot-com era depended on a more dynamic Web (sometimes labeled Web 1.5) where content management systems served dynamic HTML web pages created on the fly from a content database that could more easily be changed. In both senses, so-called eyeballing was considered intrinsic to the Web experience, thus making page hits and visual aesthetics important factors.

Proponents of the Web 2.0 approach believe that Web usage has started increasingly moving towards interaction and towards rudimentary social networks, which can serve content that exploits network effects with or without creating a visual, interactive web page. In one view, Web 2.0 sites act more as points of presence, or user-dependent web portals, than as traditional websites. They have become so advanced new internet users cannot create these websites, they are only users of web services, done by specialist professional experts.

Access to consumer-generated content facilitated by Web 2.0 brings the web closer to Tim Berners-Lee's original concept of the web as a democratic, personal, and DIY medium of communication.

Market drivers of Web 2.0

  • Broadband has become popular, leading to greater use of the internet for even small tasks. Many devices (such as cell phones) are now connecting to the internet.
  • More people go online for what they would usually do offline (for example, shopping, reading news, research). [citation needed]
  • Much of what was learned from the dot com boom is being applied. [citation needed]
  • Barriers to entry are lower, there's less pressure to gain venture capital, and less pressure on companies. [citation needed]

New web-based communities

Some websites that potentially sit under the Web 2.0 umbrella have created new online social networks amongst the general public. Some of the websites run social software where people work together. Other websites reproduce several individuals' RSS feeds on one page. Other ones provide deeplinking between individual websites.

The syndication and messaging capabilities of Web 2.0 have fostered, to a greater or lesser degree, a tightly-woven social fabric among individuals. Arguably, the nature of online communities has changed in recent months and years. The meaning of these changes, however, has pundits divided. Basically, ideological lines run thusly: Web 2.0 either empowers the individual and provides an outlet for the 'voice of the voiceless'; or it elevates the amateur to the detriment of professionalism, expertise and clarity.

New web-based applications and desktops

The richer user-experience afforded by Ajax has prompted the development of web sites that mimic personal computer 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. Java enables sites that provide computation-intensive video capability. One of the best known sites of this broad class, Writely, was acquired by Google in early 2006.

Several browser-based "operating systems" or "online desktops" have also appeared. They are essentially application platforms, not operating systems per se. These services mimic the user experience of desktop operating systems, offering features and applications similar to a PC environment. The primary difference is that they can be used from any modern browser.

Numerous web-based application services appeared during the Dot-com bubble and then vanished, having failed to gain a critical mass of customers. The best known of these, Intranets.com was acquired in 2005 by WebEx for slightly more than the total it had raised in venture capital, after six years in business.

General characteristics

While interested parties continue to debate the definition of a Web 2.0 application, they generally accept that a Web 2.0 website would exhibit some basic characteristics. These include:

Visual elements

Common Web 2.0 design elements: rounded corners, gradients, hatch backgrounds, large fonts, a supermarket sticker and the wet floor effect used heavily by Apple

Many Web 2.0 websites assert priority to their visual design and aesthetics, with the intention of providing a clear, well-organized and visually appealing site. Common design techniques include[6][7]:

  • Gradient backgrounds
  • Large colorful icons, often with reflections and drop shadows
  • Large text (especially in comparison with the emphasis on very small text in earlier designs)
  • Diagonal hatch background
  • Glossy three-dimensional elements
  • Apparently random highlights and call-outs in text

This particular visual style of elements is often mistaken as the web 2.0 style. This is not correct. The visual elements of the site does not determine its web 2.0 status, but it is rather the technologies that are used determine the web 2.0 status.

Technology overview

The complex and evolving technology infrastructure of Web 2.0 includes server software, content syndication, messaging protocols, standards-based browsers with plugins and extensions, and various client applications. These differing but complementary approaches provide Web 2.0 with information storage, creation, and dissemination capabilities that go beyond what was formerly expected of websites.

A Web 2.0 website typically features a number of the following techniques:

Rich Internet applications

Main article: Rich Internet application

Recently, rich-Internet application techniques such as Ajax have evolved that can improve the user-experience in browser-based web applications. Ajax involves a web page requesting an update for some part of its content, and altering that part in the browser, without refreshing the whole page at the same time. There are proprietary implementations (as in Google Maps) and open forms that can utilise web service APIs, syndication feeds, or even screen scraping.

Server-side software

The functionality of Web 2.0 rich Internet applications builds on the existing web server architecture, but puts much greater emphasis on back-end software. Syndication differs only nominally from dynamic content management publishing methods, but web services typically require much more robust database and workflow support, and become very similar to the traditional intranet functionality of an application server. Vendor approaches to date fall under either a universal server approach, which bundles most of the necessary functionality in a single server platform, or a web-server plugin approach, which uses standard publishing tools enhanced with API interfaces and other tools.

Client-side software

The extra functionality provided by Web 2.0 depends on the ability of users to work with the data stored on servers. This can be through forms in an HTML page, a scripting language such as Javascript, or through Flash or Java. These methods all make use of the client computer to reduce the server workload.

RSS

Main article: RSS (file format)

The first and the most important evolution towards Web 2.0 involves the syndication of website content, using standardized protocols which permit end-users to make use of a site's data in another context, ranging from another website, to a browser plugin, or to a separate desktop application. Protocols which permit syndication include RSS (Really Simple Syndication), RDF (as in RSS 1.1), and Atom, all of them flavors of XML. Specialized protocols such as FOAF and XFN (both for social networking) extend functionality of sites or permit end-users to interact without centralized websites. See microformats for more specialized data formats.

Due to the recent development of these trends, many of these protocols remain de facto (rather than formal) standards.

RSS is also known as web syndication.

Web protocols

Web communication protocols provide a key element of the Web 2.0 infrastructure. Major protocols include REST and SOAP.

  • REST (Representational State Transfer) indicates a way to access and manipulate data on a server using the HTTP verbs GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE
  • SOAP involves POSTing XML messages and requests to a server that may contain quite complex, but pre-defined, instructions for the server to follow

In both cases, access to the service is defined by an API. Often this API is specific to the server, but standard web service APIs (for example, for posting to a blog) are also widely used. Most, but not all, communications with web services involve some form of XML (eXtensible Markup Language).

See also WSDL (Web Services Description Language), which is the standard way of publishing a SOAP API, and the list of Web service specifications for links to many other web service standards, including those many whose names begin 'WS-'.

Criticism

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. For instance, many people pushing Web 2.0 talk about well-formed, validated HTML; however, not many production sites actually adhere to this standard.[citation needed] Many people will also talk about web sites "degrading gracefully" (designing a website so that its fundamental features remain usable by people who access it with software that does not support every technology employed by the site); however, the addition of Ajax scripting to websites can render the website completely unusable to anyone browsing with JavaScript turned off, or using a slightly older browser.[citation needed] Many have complained that the proliferation of Ajax scripts, in combination with unknowledgeable webmasters, has increased the instances of "tag soup": websites where coders have apparently thrown <script> tags and other semantically useless tags about the HTML file with little organization in mind, in a way that was more commonly done during the dot-com boom, and is something many standards proponents have been trying to move away from.[citation needed] Web 2.0 websites are also criticised for their cluttered, arcane navigation structure.[citation needed]

Many of the ideas of Web 2.0 have been employed on networked systems that were around well before the term was developed; Amazon.com, for instance, has allowed users to write reviews and consumer guides since its inception, in a form of self-publishing, and opened up its API to outside developers in 2002[8]. Prior art also comes from research in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning and Computer Supported Cooperative Work.

Conversely, when a website proclaims itself "Web 2.0" for the use of some trivial feature such as blogs or gradient boxes, observers may generally consider it more an attempt at self-promotion than an actual endorsement of the ideas behind Web 2.0. It has sometimes been reduced to simply a marketing buzzword, like 'synergy', that can mean whatever a salesperson wants it to do, with little connection to most of the good, but unrelated ideas that it is based on. The argument also exists that "Web 2.0" does not represent a new version of World Wide Web at all, but merely continues to use "Web 1.0" technologies and concepts.

Other criticism has included the term "a second bubble" stating that there are too many Web 2.0 companies attempting to create the same product with a lack of business models.[citation needed]

Some venture capitalists have noted that there are too few users of the second generation of web applications to make them an economically-viable target for consumer applications. Josh Kopelman famously noted that Web 2.0 is exciting for only 53,651 (which is now actually over 79,000) people, the number of subscribers to TechCrunch, a popular weblog that covers the internet industry.

Trademark controversy

In November 2003, CMP Media applied to the USPTO for a service mark on the use of the term "WEB 2.0" for live events[9]. 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[10], but retracted two days later[11]. The "WEB 2.0" service mark registration passed final PTO Examining Attorney review on May 10, 2006, but as of June 12, 2006 the PTO has not published the mark for opposition. The European Union application (which would confer unambigious status in Ireland) remains pending (app no 004972212); it was filed on March 23, 2006.

See also

References

  1. ^ Tim O'Reilly (2006-07-17). "Levels of the Game: The Hierarchy of Web 2.0 Applications". O'Reilly radar. Retrieved 2006-08-08.
  2. ^ Jeffrey Zeldman (2006-01-16). "Web 3.0". A List Apart. Retrieved 2006-05-27.
  3. ^ a b c d e Tim O'Reilly (2005-09-30). "What Is Web 2.0". O'Reilly Network. Retrieved 2006-08-06.
  4. ^ a b Dion Hinchcliffe (2006-04-02). "The State of Web 2.0". Web Services Journal. Retrieved 2006-08-06.
  5. ^ a b Paul Graham (2005). "Web 2.0". Retrieved 2006-08-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  6. ^ Ben Hunt (2006-02-03). "Current style in web design". Web Design from Scratch. Retrieved 2006-08-06.
  7. ^ Rick Turoczy (2005-12-03). "Web 2.0 interface design checklist". hypocritical. Retrieved 2006-08-06.
  8. ^ Tim O'Reilly (2002-06-18). "Amazon Web Services API". O'Reilly Network. Retrieved 2006-05-27.
  9. ^ USPTO serial number 78322306
  10. ^ "O'Reilly and CMP Exercise Trademark on 'Web 2.0'". Slashdot. 2006-05-26. Retrieved 2006-05-27.
  11. ^ Nathan Torkington (2006-05-26). "O'Reilly's coverage of Web 2.0 as a service mark". O'Reilly Radar. Retrieved 2006-06-01.

Supportive

Critical

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Web_2.0&oldid=71701894"