According to Tim O'Reilly in a post from 2005:
"Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences."
At the time of this blog post, the term web 2.0 had was about 8 years old. It rose in the public consciousness when Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., and a colleague held the first Web 2.0 conference.
(O'Reilly, Tim, and John Battelle. 2004. Opening Welcome: State of the Internet Industry. San Francisco, California, October 5. )
...responses were a conversation in which a group was figuring out the meaning in real-time.see discussion
Again, O'Reilly responds:
"...the very essence of Web 2.0 is that we're making people part of the machine, and the machine part of the people, in new ways, blurring the boundaries between the two. Harnessing collective intelligence means that users are continually improving the application by their very interaction with it. Meanwhile, our communication, our knowledge acquisition, our social network, is increasingly computer mediated."
(O'Reilly, Tim, and John Battelle. 2004. Opening Welcome: State of the Internet Industry. San Francisco, California, October 5. )
...responses were a conversation in which a group was figuring out the meaning in real-time.see discussion
Again, O'Reilly responds:
"...the very essence of Web 2.0 is that we're making people part of the machine, and the machine part of the people, in new ways, blurring the boundaries between the two. Harnessing collective intelligence means that users are continually improving the application by their very interaction with it. Meanwhile, our communication, our knowledge acquisition, our social network, is increasingly computer mediated."
Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. O'Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the Web 2.0 Summit, and the Gov 2.0 Summit. Tim's blog, the O'Reilly Radar, "watches the alpha geeks" to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim is on the boards of CollabNet and Safari Books Online, and is a partner in O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.According to Michael Sauers in his book Searching 2.0, web 2.0 has three characteristics that most affect its users:
- Convergence brings tools like print, music, and video (books, radio, cinema) together into one large information pool. Sauers uses the example of the cell phone which is now a multipurpose tool
- Remixability which allows users to take data from one source, add it to data from a second source, and come up with a totally new product. Take a picture with your phone while traveling, download it to Flickr, and create an online scrapbook of your trip, or upload to another program that will create a printed book for you.
- Participation can be seen in the form of blogs, wikis, and collaborative sites such as Wikipedia which are created and kept alive by those who read, comment, and add to create the product.
As we proceed through this course we will be checking the tools we learn to use for these three qualities.
Comparing web 1.0, web 2.0, and web 3.0