The Real Definition of Web 2.0!

Web 2.0  a phrase coined by by Tim O’reilly for a series of conferences in 2004  where some technicians and marketers adopted it, and they opened many debates about its right definition or meaning.  Many are listed below and your are free to decide which describes it best.

“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. (This is what I’ve elsewhere called ‘harnessing collective intelligence.’) Tim O’reilly “.

Eric Schmidt has an even briefer formulation of this rule: “Don’t fight the internet.” That’s actually a wonderful way to think about it. Think deeply about the way the internet works, and build systems and applications that use it more richly, freed from the constraints of PC-era thinking, and you’re well on your way.

As it is known in the world of computer every software or application has a version number, and so is the Web in its 2nd version 2.0, it is a bit off weird when we hear it because we all knew the web and that’s it, we never thought that we might have versions for it, it might be true or not.

Web 2.0 is an improved form of what is called the “World Wide Web” where many web applications are used such as weblogs, social bookmarking sites, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, social software, Web Standards and many other online services that imply a significant change in web usage.

Also the “Web 2.0” can refer to the following:

1. The transition of websites from isolated information silos to sources of content and functionality, those become computing platforms serving web applications to end users.
2. A place to share and re-use of content such as articles, images, videos, music, as well a social place for dating.
3. Enhanced organization and categorization of content.

In the opening talk of the first Web 2.0 conference, Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle summarized key principles of Web 2.0 applications:

1. the web as a platform
2. data as the driving force
3. network effects created by an architecture of participation
4. innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers (a kind of “open source” development)
5. lightweight business models enabled by content and service syndication
6. the end of the software adoption cycle (”the perpetual beta”)
7. software above the level of a single device, leveraging the power of The Long Tail.
8. easy to pick up by early adopters

Tim O’Reilly gave examples of companies or products that embody these principles in his description of his “four plus one” levels in the hierarchy of Web 2.0-ness:

1. Level 3 applications, the most “Web 2.0″, which could only exist on the Internet, deriving their power from the human connections and network effects Web 2.0 makes possible, and growing in effectiveness the more people use them. O’Reilly gives as examples: eBay, craigslist, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype, dodgeball, and Adsense.
2. Level 2 applications, which can operate offline but which gain advantages from going online. O’Reilly cited Flickr, which benefits from its shared photo-database and from its community-generated tag database.
3. Level 1 applications, also available offline but which gain features online. O’Reilly pointed to Writely (since 10 October 2006: Google Docs & Spreadsheets, offering group-editing capability online) and iTunes (because of its music-store portion).
4. Level 0 applications would work as well offline. O’Reilly gave the examples of MapQuest, Yahoo! Local, and Google Maps. Mapping applications using contributions from users to advantage can rank as level 2.
5. non-web applications like email, instant-messaging clients and the telephone.

Examples of Web 2.0:

Characteristics of Web 2.0

While interested parties continue to debate the definition of a Web 2.0 application, a Web 2.0 web-site may exhibit some basic characteristics. These might include:

1. “Network as platform” — delivering applications entirely through a browser.
2. Users owning the data on the site and able to control that data.
3. An option that allow users to add value to the application as they use it, as we believe a site made for the users is built by the users.
4. A rich, interactive, user-friendly interface based on Ajax or similar frameworks.
5. Some social-networking aspects.

Technology Overview

The new technology infrastructure of Web 2.0 includes server software, content syndication, messaging-protocols, standards-based browsers with plug-ins and extensions (like we see it in firefox), and various client applications. These different things gave another look for the web that goes beyond what the public formerly expected of websites.

A Web 2.0 website may typically feature a number of the following techniques:

1. Rich Internet application techniques, optionally Ajax-based
2. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
3. Semantically valid XHTML markup and the use of Microformats
4. Syndication and aggregation of data in RSS/Atom
5. Clean and meaningful URLs
6. Extensive use of tags
7. Use of wiki software either completely or partially
8. Weblog publishing
9. Mashups (A mashup is a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience. It is sometimes created as a critique or commentary on an existing work or product)
10. REST or XML Webservice APIs (Representational State Transfer (REST) is a software architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems like the world wide web)

Innovations associated with “Web 2.0″

Web-based applications

The richer user experience afforded by Ajax gave the web an advanced technology, where developers are able to develop web applications that are similar to desktop applications such as word processing, spreadsheet, and slide-show presentation. Also WYSIWIG wiki sites and other such as project management applications.

Several browser-based operating systems or online desktops have appeared, which give the user to access his computer, or desktop within any modern browser.

Rich Internet applications

Rich internet application techniques such as Ajax, Flash, and Flex have evolved that can improve the user-experience in browser based applications. These technologies allow a web-page to request update for some part of its content without reloading the whole page.

RSS

The first and the most important step (according to one point of view) of evolution towards Web 2.0 involves the syndication of site content, using standardized protocols which permit end-users to make use of a site’s data in another context, ranging from another web-site, to a browser plug-in, or to a separate desktop application. Protocols which permit syndication include RSS (Really Simple Syndication — also known as “web syndication”), RDF (as in RSS 1.1), and Atom, all of them flavors of XML. Specialized protocols such as FOAF and XFN (both for social networking) extend functionality of sites or permit end-users to interact without centralized web-sites

Web Protocols

Web communication protocols provide a key element of the Web 2.0 infrastructure. Major protocols include REST and SOAP.

1. REST (Representational State Transfer) indicates a way to access and manipulate data on a server using the HTTP verbs GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE
2. SOAP involves POSTing XML messages and requests to a server that may contain quite complex, but pre-defined, instructions for the server to follow

In both cases, an API defines access to the service. Often servers use proprietary APIs, but standard web-service APIs (for example, for posting to a blog) have also come into wide use. Most (but not all) communications with web services involve some form of XML

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