What is Web 2.0?

Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Media, is the man who first coined the phrase “Web 2.0”. As quoted by him “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”. This phrase, although complex, manages to cover almost all aspects of what Web 2.0 is. But it can be comprehended if we understand what a platform is and how the Internet acts as a platform.

The main aim of Web 2.0 is to facilitate and bring up creativity, collaboration among users and a new world of information sharing. Web 2.0 has brought about the development of entirely new concepts and has led to the evolution of web-based communities. Hosted services like blogs, wikis and social-networking sites are all offshoots of Web 2.0. The whole idea is that users can now own data on a site that is Web 2.0 compliant, and exercise some sort of control over the data available. It encourages user participation as opposed to earlier sites, which allowed only the web developer to change the information.

Computer terminology defines a platform as either hardware architecture or software framework that allows software to run. The most common platform that everyone who uses a computer is familiar with is the operating system (or OS). Programming languages are used to tell the operating system what to do.

The phrase “Internet as a platform” came about from the development of the Websites that do a lot more than just allow users to retrieve information. With more and more websites offering online services previously only accessed via a computer's desktop, it means that the Internet itself is turning into a platform on which applications, services and software could be both built and accessed. Confusing? Think of it this way: five years back, images could only be stored on your computer or transmitted via e-mail. With the advent of sites such as Flickr, and YouTube, you can now upload your photos and videos on the Internet and store them, and allow others online to view them. The concept of Internet as a platform literally means to use the Internet as a base for a service or product.

Think of this fact: Amazon.com has made a lot of money by selling small amounts of hard-to- find items to many customers, instead of only selling large amounts of popular products. This in general is “The Long Tail” effect as described by Chris Anderson (October 2004- Wired Magazine). Web 2.0 utilizes the power of the Long Tail i.e. the masses, to develop, and data acts as its driving force. The public would help design products with companies and in most cases, the customers themselves would do the value creation.

With the evolution of new technologies available on the Internet, Web 2.0 uses a mixture of server-side applications such as XML, Java Scripts, Cascading Style Sheets and the most popular Web 2.0 term – AJAX. These technologies make it possible for users to interact and add information the sites.

It would be incorrect to say that Web 2.0 has been defined conclusively in this post. The definition of the phrase Web 2.0 is not very clear, for the simple reason, that no one knows where to draw the line between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. However, we must accept that the websites of today offer much more interaction with the audience than ever before. This is the crux of Web 2.0, and we can say that Web 2.0 has definitely arrived.