What is Web 2.0

There is no reason to post 4 pages of stuff that can be said in 1 sentence or 1 paragraph. And that is what the article at O'Reilly did.

It all boils down to:

web 2.0 are dynamic sites that are easy to change or interact with.

web 1.0 are static sites that are difficult to change and users can not interact with.

The term "web 2.0" is overrated and over used. By definition web 2.0 websites have been around for at least 10 years. So I do not understand why there is so much hype about it?

 

I think everyone has their own version of what web 2.0 means to them. For example, a PHP programmer would say web 2.0 is a way to describe a more interactive website based around modern features, eg. facebook. But a designer on the other hand would tell you web 2.0 is a way of describing a design style which incorporates a more clean and glossy look.

Personally, i don't care what web 2.0 is, all i need to know is what my client wants and its my goal to make it a reality.

 

Again: absolutely false and whether pages do those things or not is no determination whether they are web 2.0 or not!

 

People guess at the definitions of things all the time without consulting a dictionary. In your examples, some question whether facebook is 2.0-ish while the second is flat out wrong.

If your customer asked for his site to be 2.0, and you followed the definition but the customer wanted glossy buttons, you'd be in trouble.

 

Yea that's the reality, if a client asks for web 2.0, 99% of the time they are talking about gradients, peeling/glossy buttons, twit birds, diagonal stripes, paint splashes etc..

The actual definition of something and what the percieved defintion of something is are both important to know.

 

It is a combination of things. Better server-side applications plus a style of design and add social integration to the mix and you have Web 2.0.

Server-side apps mean that the server, not the user, starts the application. Older computers and browsers are under less stress and you can create better, more popular appliances. A certain type of graphic presentation is often associated with the Web 2.0 culture. The icing on the cake was social network integration. That is really the core of it.

 

Even though the real definition was given a couple times in this thread, including links, we'll still get people like this guy coming in and give the same, wrong answer.

 

Then why dont you go edit the article on wikipedia about web 2.0?

Web 2.0 boils to to this very basic element

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Depending how long someone has been on the internet, and how much experience they have in web development - they may or may not be able to tell the difference between web 1 and web 2.

If someone is new to the internet, and all they know is myspace, facebook, forums,,,,, then its going to be difficult to tell the difference. Because they may have never seen a static html page.

People that have been in the internet for 15+ years will remember the static pages that used to populate the majority of websites.

In the 1990s, when web developers built static pages that rarely changed and people were not able to interact with - that was web 1.

Facebook, myspace, forums, blogs, database driven sites that are easy to update - web 2

 

Because it's Wikipedia, not Britannica. Some 12-year-old will come by after you and change the article to about his this one kid at his school is such a big douche and turd sammich.

Wikipedia's only usefulness besides quick lookups are instead the references at the bottom of the article. Reading those is much better than reading Wiki.

And when you start doing that, you start seeing how often someone cites something to back up a statement and the reference doesn't even have much if anything to do with the subject of the article.

I been on teh innerwebz a while. The difference is, one sounds more jawsome and the other sounds so yesterday. Bleh.

You missed reading Tim Berners-Lee's answer to this one apparently. Of course people could interact. What the heck is a hyperlink but interaction? That there are slowly more avenues for interaction available, it needs some name? Well, certainly, it needs a name when you're in Marketing of course. Something that sounds... jawsome. Like, uh, Livescript, that was so web 1.0, but the jawsome name of Java Script, look, it's got that Java in there, that's web 2.0! Makes shit, like, dynamic and stuff. Like those radical fade-ins and dancing/singing shit all over the screen and other l33t trix.

Something with a version number after it, so it sounds like a newer stronger faster harder better version of something. As if it were a software release or something.

If the term had come into existence just a bit later, it would have been called "web BETA" and came with a shiny pink Mattel star.

Not like these things are new enough to deserve a special name. Forums? A tabled version of usenet, lawlz. Myspace? How is Myspace different from the 1990's best of the worst, Geocities? So why is Myspace 2.0 and Geocities 1.0? Is it because the numbers don't really mean anything and are a poor attempt to hype up a general difference between static and dynamic sites? Suddenly adding a database only means you have more information to store. Bookstores have freakin databases. Easily updatable? You mean like my bank records? I could do that since... 199-something. Oh no, you mean posting embarassing photos of myself and my friends with a sparkling animated-gif background making all the text illegible, lawlz.

I have a much better idea. Let's call them real names: static sites, and dynamic sites, and of course that anyone can have any mixture of the two (what was that, Web 1.5?). There. No hype, no bullshit, just simple plain-spoken descriptions, no artificial marketing additives or flavours added.

Better for your health, I swear.

Better for the Doc's blood pressure too I think. Doc, you're fighting a losing battle. Just throw in the towel man. This is Digital Point.

 

I know. Sometimes I forget. I'm a teacher at heart.

One thing, though. Interactivity between the user and a page is a symptom of true Web2.0 and not the definition of it.

 

Interesting. Explain?
Do you mean a symptom of the hype or a symptom of some natural progression?

Makes more sense for the gradient madness though, as a symptom rather than a definition.

 

Just because a web page interacts with a user does not positively identify a web 2.0 site anymore than a sneeze is a positive indicator of the flu. The sharing of data or information and the using the web as a platform means much more than a page like that.