Understanding The Fuss About Web 2.0

If you knew the speed with which buzzwords creep into the geek dictionary every year, you'd probably see some cause for alarm. Of all things tech, the worst culprit in this "buzzword fiesta" is in the field of Internet and World Wide Web technologies. Frequently words and terms that can't be found in any dictionary find their way into a popular magazine or some other source of public information and the rest of us struggle to define the true meaning of these terms. Most of the words and terms you use rather freely now, started out this way: spam, blog, phishing, geek, bug, captcha and a host of other terms too numerous to mention.

Web 2.0 is one of such terms. These days you find people adding the term to make any kind of phrase they can think of: "Web 2.0 compliant","Web 2.0 phenomenon". "Web 2.0 media". Unlike other words which later turn out to have a simple meaning, people can't seem to agree what Web 2.0 means. Tim O'Reilly was the primary culprit because he was the one who came up with the term. According to popular lore, some people were of the opinion that there was no such thing; others felt that poor ol' Tim was just trying to con us all and make some money. Another camp felt that the term was just another fancy name that people were using just to make other people feel that they didn't belong to the elite club of "those with knowledge".

While a consensus on the true definition of the term Web 2.0 cannot be reached, it is quite clear to all and sundry that the World Wide Web has evolved from whatever Tim Berners-Lee came up with at CERN decades ago. In the initial stages of the web, using pictures along with text was quite unheard of and the web was the domain of geeks and all things tech. Due to advancements in the field of computer technology, faster internet speeds, faster computer processors and most importantly reduced costs, the web has changed. From pure HTML, CSS is now the standard for formatting web pages, JavaScript is also utilized for various web-based dynamic tasks that vary in complexity.

Nowadays the World Wide Web is different from even what you had at the turn of the millennium 7 or 8 years ago. Pictures are present but multimedia is becomingly part and parcel of everything associated with the web. You have video and audio media being embedded in web pages. Web pages on the whole are no longer static and content is dynamic and personalized according to the needs of every user.

Interaction is now part of websites as it is no longer in the habit of people to visit websites read what they want and just leave. You have visitors to websites interacting with features of the websites as well as with other visitors to these websites. A number of these websites also allow people to edit them and these sites are known as wikis.

It was these developments, these changes and the others that were becoming more commonplace on the World Wide Web, that led Tim O'Reilly to come up with the term Web 2.0. So in finality it can be said that the broad definition of the term Web 2.0 (without any fear of conflict or contradiction) can be said to be a general term used to describe all the changes that have now become commonplace features in most of the websites of the World Wide Web. So the next time someone uses the term Web 2.0, smile and nod your head in recognition not confusion.


Richard Kacerek CEO Empire Elements

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