What is web2.0?

The dot com fiasco of 2001 has resulted in
the evolution of a brand new concept of delivering content on the internet,
aptly named as Web2.0, as it is a new avatar of the original style of web
design.

Web2.0 is not exactly a new technology, but rather a set of principles and practices, which govern the design and content of sites which knowingly or unknowingly adhere to these principles.

The Web2.0 era lays more stress on providing Services to its users than dishing out the products in the form of releases as done previously.

Some of most popular services provided by the Web2.0 genre of websites are GMail, Wikipedia, Flickr, Amazon, ebay etc. What is common in all these services is that they are not very heavy applications but rather simple open source technologies, which might be hacked and reused by anybody. These sites rely not only on open source but also use light weight scripting techniques like AJAX.
Scripting languages like java script and perl were once decried by the software engineers as pseudo languages. But now these very scripts have become the backbone of quick and simple web applications.

Another essential feature of Web2.0 is that it relies on harnessing collective intelligence. Therefore, these applications are updated and enhanced on a regular basis based on the updates received from the users. The main benefit for the users is that they do not have to wait for new releases to come. Most of these applications may stay in a beta stage for years together. Moreover, this kind of a structure prevents the user from getting stuck between different versions of an application. All users of MS Office know how cumbersome and painstaking it is to maintain different versions of the same document!

Companies like Amazon and Google at first started off with a basic database, and then went on refining it with constant inputs from their users. Eventually they have now created a database which is tailor made to suit their specific requirements.
The online image data website, Flickr is another example! This online database of images allows all users add multiple tags to the images. This enhances the value of the images as now people can dig a lot deeper into the database and find out just the right image which they were looking for!
Point to be noted here is that, unlike as it existed in the Web1.0 era, Flickr does not decide the classification of its database, but has given its users a complete free hand.

Advertising on the internet has also seen some radical changes in the Web2.0 era. Earlier, most online advertisers focused on the major (read very large) websites to promote their wares. And the prevalent mode of advertising was mostly banner ads and pop-ups.
But off late, with the advent of Google's adsense, small, non intrusive ads can find place in almost any web page. Thus not only the major websites but also the small sites which incidentally comprise the major chunk of the web can also be utilized.
Now-a-days any serious website owner would like to use the viral marketing techniques of adsense to popularize his site, rather than going in for the more conventional methods of advertising.

However, apart from the above mentioned features, what really sets Web2.0 apart is the rapid growth of blogs. Earlier, people used to have personal web pages on which they voiced their thoughts. But Blogs have given a new dimension to the concept of freedom of expression. Use of RSS feeds have given a further boost to blogging as now one can access the blogs of his choice right from the desktop of his computer!

Web2.0 also encourages the application builders to break free from the PC Platform and explore the yet mostly uncharted territories of hand held devices, and other communication channels. One such example is iTunes, which lets users download music files to their iPods using their PC as a local database.

Lastly, Web2.0 always lays stress on rich user interface. That time is not far away when we will be using most of the applications like spreadsheets, word processors, email and chatting softwares etc on the web. With the vastly improved internet connectivity of today, the concept of keeping local databases and applications is a passe; the future is in web based applications like Gmail and Writely!