What is Web 2.0?
- Content mash-ups
- User-generated content
- Read-write web
- Democratisation
- Tagging (folksonomies)
- Social bookmarking
"In Web 1.0, a small number of writers created Web pages for a large number of readers. As a result, people could get information by going directly to the source: Adobe.com for graphic design issues, Microsoft.com for Windows issues, and CNN.com for news. Over time, however, more and more people started writing content in addition to reading it. This had an interesting effect-suddenly there was too much information to keep up with! We did not have enough time for everyone who wanted our attention and visiting all sites with relevant content simply wasn't possible. As personal publishing caught on and went mainstream, it became apparent that the Web 1.0 paradigm had to change.
Enter Web 2.0, a vision of the Web in which information is broken up into "microcontent" units that can be distributed over dozens of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we're looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways." in http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_2_for_designers/
Rather than 'going TO' individual websites to view content, we can BRING updated content from selected sites 'to US', using what we call RSS (really simple syndication). Basically, RSS is an easy way for sites to tell people when there is new content available. So, instead of browsing to your favourite site over and over again to see if something is new, you can simply subscribe to its RSS feed by typing the RSS URL into what we call a 'feed aggregator'. The aggregator will periodically check the site, notify you if something is new, and deliver that content to YOU. It's a real timesaver.
As mentioned in wikipedia, "User Generated Content refers to various kinds of media content that are produced by end-users, (as opposed to traditional media producers such as professional writers, publishers, journalists, licensed broadcasters and production companies)".
User-generated content is one of the key characteristics of Web 2.0, which encourages the publishing of one's own content (text, photos, video, bookmarks...) and commenting on other people's.
We hear about the 'read-write web', and the web becoming democratised, about content 'mash-ups' and social bookmarking. But what does this all mean?
What we're going to today is give you an overview of some typical Web 2.0 applications, before looking at a few of the applications in more detail and getting you to have a go at setting up a couple of applications for yourselves... by the end of the session you should have a pretty good idea of Web 2.0 and how to make it work for you!
