What is Web 2.0 and How Does it Affect Me?

There is a lot of debate about what Web 2.0 actually is. In my opinion it’s not really something specific; everybody interprets it differently.

No technical changes have been made to the World Wide Web itself, it is more of a change in the way programmers and users employ it.

The old ‘traditional’ web site has a simple HTML design usually and consists of information, pictures (if any), links, email addresses and a contact phone number. Kind of like a really detailed electronic business card. The web has really come a long way since those days and more and more people are being interactive online. There was chat, IM, message boards, etc. But now, we’ve entered a whole new dimension.

Myspace is a great example of a web 2.0 website. Social networks and wikis (which are information sites that anybody can edit and/or add to) are the epitome of web 2.0 and its concept. Other examples include online classified sites such as Craigslist, FaceBook, Skype, eBay and AdSense. Users can actually add something of value to the site as they are using it, as opposed to the webmaster of the site being the only one who can edit it and add/remove content. I would even consider certain photo and file sharing sites to be in the same realm of web 2.0. Think of it as the next wave of website technology. You can call the older way of doing things Web 1.0.

So what is web 2.0? That’s for everybody to decide! I wouldn’t consider email and instant messaging to really be web 2.0. The more interactive the web becomes, the closer we will get to web 3.0? I hope this answers your “What is Web 2.0″ questions and I wish you the best of luck and happy surfing!