Tuesday, November 18, 2008

What is Web 2.0?








Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”
-Tim O'Reilly

Web 2.0 is a classic case of a new term being bandied about by commentators and publicists without anybody having a very clear idea what they’re talking about. Almost every new application or idea for anything to do with online commerce or user interaction with the Web is being described as part of this wonderful new concept, but it’s hard to tie down what it means.Web 2.0 is a classic case of a new term being bandied about by commentators and publicists without anybody having a very clear idea what they’re talking about. Almost every new application or idea for anything to do with online commerce or user interaction with the Web is being described as part of this wonderful new concept, but it’s hard to tie down what it means.

The term was coined by Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty in 2004 during a conference discussion about the future of the Web. Their view was that the companies that had survived and prospered after the dot.com bubble had burst in 2000 had certain qualities in common. All had a strong connection to and involvement with their user base or customers (think of Amazon.com’s reader reviews, for example) or they were collaborative, like Wikipedia or Flickr, or they relied on people telling each other about good ideas in a process called viral marketing. Tim O’Reilly summed their ideas up in an article in September 2005 as “Network effects from user contributions are the key to market dominance in the Web 2.0 era”. Or, putting it more simply, “Users add value.”


1 comment:

Mylene said...

good research. but it would help if you just put on bullets or outlines to make it more readable... :)