Web 2.0 - what is it?

The first time I came across the term Web 2.0 was at a Massachusetts Library Association yearly conference in Sturbridge about 2 years ago. One of the workshops being offered was "Web 2.0" and, though I'd heard the term, I had absolutely no idea what is was.

I got to the workshop a little late. (There's always the temptation at these conferences to try to catch a bit of 3 workshops going on in the same time slot.) The workshop was packed and I joined the people sitting on chairs by the doors. The speaker had a power point presentation and she was talking about MySpace. Okay, so I now knew MySpace was part of Web 2.0. Then she talked about "Second Life" which I'd never heard of. It sounded like the role playing games my son played in high school in the back room of the local gaming store, but this was on the web. Maybe I would have had a better understand of Web 2.0 if I'd gotten to this workshop at the beginning. But at least I knew a couple of things that were included in Web 2.0 though I didn't know why.

So I just googled "Web 2.0" and Wikipedia came up first. Reading this entry, I learned that Web 2.0 isn't a different technology, but is the interactive use of the web. It's about the changing trends in the world wide web involving more information sharing, collaboration, and creativity in the web's use. Okay, this makes sense. I had thought it meant something totally new. But Web2.0 seems to be referring to the new ways the web is being used, where users can add to websites, can "meet" new people, can alter websites to add their own information, and can get new information delivered to their own computers (through something called RSS feeds).

This very blog is part of Web2.0! Now I get it.


So are social networking ,video sharing sites, folksonomies (I have no idea what this is or what collaborative tagging and social indexing are which are part of folksonomies - ah, another blog entry!). I learned that social networking refer to sites that link user generated content to users and users to users. This must be where MySpace fits in.

Wikipedia is itself part of the Web2.0 phenomenon. Users can contribute to this online encyclopedia. Its content changes constantly and grows with users' input. Craigslist, eBay, Skype, dodgeball are all part of this development in the use of the web. I suppose that certain kinds of new software have helped move this Web 2.0 along. Instead of just looking at a website, users can now interact with it, change it, add to it, get feedback from it. It's pretty amazing.

What's even more amazing is that Dixie Foster at GSLIS recently told a group of us who were struggling along with TOR 2 that she keeps hearing about Web 4.0!. I'd better get to that workshop at the very beginning!