Web 2.0

Definition

To some, "Web 2.0" might suggest a new version of the internet, but in reality refers to a second generation of web development and design which facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and applications such as social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashup and folksonomies.

Characteristics

Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. They can build on the interactive facilities of "Web 1.0" to provide "Network as platform" computing, allowing users to run software-applications entirely through a browser.

Users can own the data on a Web 2.0 site and exercise control over that data. These sites may have an "Architecture of participation" that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it. This stands in contrast to traditional websites, the sort that limited visitors to viewing and whose content only the site's owner could modify.

Web 2.0 sites often feature a rich, user-friendly interface based on Ajax and similar client-side interactivity frameworks, or full client-server application frameworks such as OpenLaszlo, Flex, and the ZK framework.

The concept of Web-as-participation-platform captures many of these characteristics. Bart Decrem, a founder and former CEO of Flock, calls Web 2.0 the participatory Web and regards the Web-as-information-source as Web 1.0.