What Is Web 2.0?

I’ve seen a lot of posts recently about web 2.0 and it seems there are a lot of different ideas about what it is exactly.

I guess this is not surprising as it is marketers and marketing departments in companies that are trying to define it. If that’s the case I think those camps will have as much success defining web 2.0 as they did defining the .NET Framework. They are related any way right?

I’ve seen Web 2.0 described as social networking. Community sites that allow people to create profiles and share information and resources. Well, though we do now have some huge social networking sites like mySpace and it seems like everyone and their brother needs to get online and slap up a profile and some pics, that’s hardly a new concept is it? Readily accessible to the masses now yes, but we’ve had bulletin boards for donkeys years and forums too.

I’ve seen it described the merging of web with video to an online experience more like TV (Oh God Noooo, we can’t allow that to happen). But if video and streaming media is becoming more prevalent now, isn’t it bandwidth that has allowed that to happen? With 2/3 + US users having broadband internet access according to a recent report by Nielsen-Netratings.com.
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I’ve seen it described as this fabulous new technology called AJAX but little or no discussion of how this works etc (mainly marketing talk remember).

Here’s my take on web 2.0 just for the record. Web 2.0 is the merging of the www with the desktop of your computer. Eventually, you won’t really know if you are online or not. Your user experience will be the same when you are using installed programs or using a website (to the untrained marketers eye anyway). So AJAX and related technologies will play a large part in making Web 2.0 happen.

Yes web 2.0 will include streaming video and audio and chat and email and signups and downloads etc. The key thing is it will all be pretty transparent to the end user. You won’t be aware of being online (we aren’t so much anymore with broadband now right)

Maybe it will be Web 3.0 before its truly transparent…