When people hear about web 2.0 technologies then following names of technologies start rolling in their minds; i.e. Google maps, Flicker, Delicious, Digg .weblogs or blogs, Wikis, RSS feeds, twitter and many other social networking sites. People also hear about Blogging, Mashups, Ajax and other hot words. They also use web 2.0 websites or applications like YouTube flicker and yahoo sites. This is a perfect tagging of above technologies with web 2.0 and directly relates to Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 often use combination of technologies developed in late 1990s including weblogs and wiki but web 2.0 becomes really popular with the start of tags and podcasting. Web 2.0 is a set of tools that people are using to interact with each other and they are using blogs wikis and twitter. Flicker. YouTube to convey their messages, thoughts and are intensively using web 2.0 technologies in universities, healthcare, science and technology, research, media and in many other fields. One can say that Web 2.0 indicates the improved form of world-wide-web. In web 2.0, users are more involved and it is more of a conversation rather than lecture, you can comment what people are saying and at the same time you can publish your own perspective as well. The essence of web 2.0 lies in user generated content and you have so many examples like YouTube, wikis where user generated content is in abundance.

The power of social networking and new delivery methods of providing information to users is creating information at enormous rate. Web 2.0 creates more organized and categorized content and shifts the economic value of the web. The web has now become advertiser’s heaven and with the explosion of web 2.0 tools innovation in open source project become high. The transition of Microsoft from packaged goods products to web services oriented products and the dominance of Google and its products are few of the things which happened in the era of Web 2.0.

 Comparison of web 2.0 with web 1.0

Web 2.0 is the development of internet application that focus on sharing and interactivity whereas web 1.0 focus on delivery of information like the reference section of the library whereas web 2.0 is more like the meeting with group in the library and using the library resources. Web 1.0 was mostly read only web whereas web 2.0 is read write web.

From advertising point of view, in web 1.0 you need to put ads of your site on the page whereas in web 2.0 like in Google ad sense that reads your site and recommends the ads for your site. Similarly sites like flicker where you share photos with flicker community and any one can print it.

 Web 2.0 Technologies

From technical point of view Web 2.0 heavily relies on Rich Internet Application RIA and RIA is a direct result of technologies like Flash, Ajax which make today’s rich web applications a reality. With the help of RIA we have been able to bring the experience from desktop to browser whether from graphical point of view to usability point of view such as drag and drop.

Second part of web 2.0 is Service Oriented Architecture SOA and relates to the buzz words feeds RSS web services and mashups. What SOA does is it enables web 2.0 to expose its functionalities and leverage from the integration of technologies.

Third part of web 2.0 is a social web; since web 2.0 is tend to interact not only with the end user but also with the participant like tagging the contacts or contributing to the wiki or doing podcast or blogging. Due to the social nature of these applications the end user becomes the integral part of these applications.

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