One unique answer to the “Why did the chicken cross the road?” joke goes like this: Colonel Sanders answered, “What?! Have I missed one?” ☺
Similarly, if you have not heard of Web 2.0 today, you are either a very new newbie or you have missed out a historical chapter in the life of the Internet.
Not to worry, you can still brush up on your knowledge by going through this report. My purpose for writing is to get you focused on 2 currently hot aspects of Web 2.0: social networking and social bookmarking. I will touch on some other areas as well.
First of all, what is Web 2.0?
In short, Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users.
Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes. If this sounds a little nerdy, you can read the details for a full-blown account.
Truth be told, “Web 2.0” is nothing new. The label is quite a fresh spin to reflect a phenomenon that is ongoing and striving for full maturity.
People may say, “There are 2 parts to the Internet: one before Web 2.0 and the other after it.” It just might as well be that “the 2 parts come before and after the creation of bulletin boards.”
That’s right. One of the key characteristics of Web 2.0 is participation, collaboration and moderation through the use of web applications.
Web 2.0 sites derive their power from the human connections and network effects from this characteristic that is made possible, and grow in effectiveness the more people use them.
