What is Web 2.0?

I recently got to explore Web 2.0 for my CWE job at school, where I work for the DoDDS district office. I found some pretty interesting things about it, most of which I already knew, but some I did not.

What is Web 2.0?

In my trips around the web I feel that I have personally grasped the new web mentality, design structure and what makes a website decent. Web 2.0 is a term that I often refer to when I find sites of interest. Despite being able to list contributing factors to what makes a website a part of the Web 2.0 mind set, I’ve never been able to clearly describe what Web 2.0 really is, and in my research I’ve found that really no one can?

To look for a clear definition to Web 2.0, I went to a page that is considered a part of the Web 2.0 world, Wikipedia. Wikipedia had great information about Web 2.0, but stated that an actual definition for Web 2.0 was really up in the air. Rather it listed programs and it stated that Web 2.0 is the current state of most web production today, where the web has really turned around its ideas since its early ages of the internet. In the Web 2.0 communities design is elegant just simplistic, sites work together and create web applications, like 37signals.com and biggu.com and the suite that Google has been putting together. Web 2.0 also has a nice community feel to it, sites like Digg.com are on the breaking edge of this booming social networking technology. They offer the freedom for anyone to submit, vote, and comment news stories and the viewer’s best stories get to the front page. In Web 2.0 people are friendly, open source is common, and sites are open in as many ways possible.

Wikipedia also noted that Tim O’Reilly originally published the Web 2.0 idea, from oreillynet.com. I was able to track down his article on Web 2.0 here.

Most Web 2.0 websites have to feature most of the technologies below:

- RSS
- CSS (for design)
- AJAX
- Social Networking
- Weblog publishing (blogging)
- Clean, easy to remember URLs
- Syndication
- Flash remoting
- Advanced user integration languages (XUL or SVG)

To track Web 2.0 I listed one of my favorite websites, designed with a sort of Web 2.0 idealistic design, which tracks Web 2.0 as it happens, TechCrunch.

Also I’ve come across a Web 2.0 Wiki, which features the ideas and sites that fall under Web 2.0.

Lastly you can find a complete list of Web 2.0 companies here.