What is Web 2.0?

I joined this forum because I am trying to understand something. Hope you can provide the answer for me.
Can somebody tell me what exactly is Web 2.0? My brain simply refuses to comprehend the Wikipedia definitions...

[EzyStvy]

Apparently is been a "concept" for a long time.

Some technology experts, notably Tim Berners-Lee, have questioned whether the term is meaningful, since many of the technology components of "Web 2.0" have been present since the creation of the World Wide Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

[perkster]

in most simplist terms it is sites like youtube, myspace and blog sites and wikkis, where instead of traditional websites where web authors make a site containing information or tools for users to read, the new generation sites or web2 is where the users create and maintain the content through submitting things and updating things, there is no actual author based content.

while i agree its not really anything new just a few sites have recently made it more popular, people had been using their own websites to air their views and blogs for a long time, now there are just community sites on which they call all do so in the same site and without their own servers.

[mbossman2]

web 2.0 is, at this time, the "end game" applications that leverage the internet infrastructure to provide distributed services that are not platform dependant for the user.

Much of Web2.0 is really dependent upon the widespread availability of high speed internet access. many of the sites that make Web2.0 are high bandwidth applications and would frankly not be overly effective or usable without high bandwidth pipes.

A lot of tech companies, while not using the phrase "web2.0", are integrating this concept into their existing marketing efforts. If you have seen the Cisco "Welcome to the Human Network" commercials, you'll know what I mean: the future of the web is not one of purely commerce but a medium with which to interconnect individuals across cultures, something that has never really been done before.

see here: http://www.cisco.com/web/thehumannetwork/index.html

Ok. So far so good. but what exactly in a website tells you it's web 2.0?

[mairving]

It's just a buzzword that like most buzzwords means essentially nothing.

Originally Posted by mairving It's just a buzzword that like most buzzwords means essentially nothing.

[mbossman2]

Originally Posted by Web2.0_syndrome Ok. So far so good. but what exactly in a website tells you it's web 2.0?

a "site" is not a Web2.0 so there will be no official branding saying "This site is an approved Web 2.0 site" or some such drivel. the application(s)/service(s) running on that site embody the purpose of Web2.0.

[jimmyrules712]

this is a video a professor at my college made for his anthropology classes, it has become very popular and is pretty educational about web 2.0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

[Force Flow]

Web 2.0 basically means that a website depends on users for content, and/or it has a glossy, fisher-price look.

Web pages in the 90's were static pages without many bells and whistles (other than annoying animated gifs). That could be considered web 1.0

[David M]

Seems like it does not mean much of anything. It's clearly not a new or improved version of the internet which the name seems to imply. I don't think how people use the internet has anything to do with a better internet. Learning how to drive a car better does not make for a better car either. Perhaps it would be better described as 2.0 level websites?

[mbossman2]

Originally Posted by jimmyrules712 this is a video a professor at my college made for his anthropology classes, it has become very popular and is pretty educational about web 2.0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

this is pretty much dead on, especially with the issues near the end.

think of the web 1.0 as individual books in a library, provided to you by others and organized by others...

with web 2.0, you are the author, you are the organizer, you provide the content.

This integration of you into the mix (especially the billions of you's...AKA, in the south, all ya'll) makes the available knowledge and content explode exponentially and this creates many issues:

Technological - there are changes in network architecture (its more than switches and routers), computer design and tweaking (a mail server is completely different from a video streaming server), content formatting (the move from html to xml to ?), content organization, content updating.

Legal - issues, as we have seen the tip of the iceberg, with ownership (content and identity are the 2 biggies)

Social - who can/should access what kind of content? what content is "unaceptable" and why? who decides what is OK and what is not? there are countries that severly limit what their citizens can and can not access, is that right? wrong? it is your place to apply your standards to someone else?

so there is a lot going on here and some of it is confined to the web but others have significant non-digital world repercussions.

The web has grown immensely in my lifetime (from 300bps access to electronic bbs's to streaming video of large events rivaling the traditional TV delivery method to how I shop etc) and the web will continue to evolve and I can't really imagine what it will look like in 10, 15, 20 years nor can I guess at the implications of it's impact in the 3 areas above (plus, I am sure, the new areas that the web will impact that we can't see yet).

Originally Posted by jimmyrules712 this is a video a professor at my college made for his anthropology classes, it has become very popular and is pretty educational about web 2.0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

Yes, I've seen it before, when browsing the Internet for finding out what Web 2.0 is.

And yes, just how i thought. Nobody can give me a list of characteristics that define Web 2.0 accept that the users exercise an influence over the content and the more they get involved, the more value they add to the application.

I liked the analogy with the books. And I guess you answer is the closest so far to what i wanted to know.