Web 2.0… is it real?
Posted by on July 19, 2006 at 05:10 PM
Yesterday morning, I was doing my usual morning surf of popurls, trying to keep up with the buzz on the web, when I landed on a page and saw an ad that caught my eye. "Purchase Web 2.0 here."
Wait, what?
It was a marketing firm's ad… did they say Purchase web 2.0?
With the buzz these days about web 2.0, I guess it's easy to get a bit confused, especially if you're not a techie, but I was still surprised to hear someone claim that you could physically purchase it.
The thing is, web 2.0 isn't anything concrete&hellip it's more of an ideology.
As a designer, when I think of what web 2.0 means, I think minimalistic design, jelly buttons, rounded corners and everyday computer geeks that have made it big by democratizing the web. (I heart Kevin Rose…). Technically, it's a blend of a democratic web, Ajax and usability. For my non–programmer people out there, Ajax is not an actual language, but a grouping of technologies used together. It's JavaScript and XML with CSS, XHTML and DOM scripting.
My personal favorite portion of web 2.0 is the bringing of democracy to the web. For example on digg, users have the ability say what's important by "digging" an article if they like it. An article doesn't need to go through a plethora of editors to make the front page, techies (and now non–techies) of all ages get to vote on what's worthwhile right now.
So, what is web 2.0 really? It's just a clever acceptance of the web, and a bit of a marketing scheme.
So don't be swept away with web 2.0. Do what works and what has always worked. And if you're any respectable web designer, you should already have most of the practices in place.
Tags
Web 2.0
Category
Technology
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Posted on July 21, 2006 05:58 AM
Hi, interesting post. Yes, 2.0 is just a term not a definite set of features or technologies. Having seen I like to explain it in this way:
Web 0.1 - educational, experimental, informational
Web 1.0 - online brochures, commercial, "content is kind", central publishing
Web 1.5 - interactive websites, e-commerce, web front ends to back office applications
Web 2.0 - user generated content, social networking, wiki, highly interactive, distributed publishing, consumers contribute to content, etc
I think the technology that is used is irrelevant, AJAX or no-AJAX is not important.
Of course my terms (0.1, 1.0, 1.5) are just arbitrary terms to put things in context of the coined term "2.0", the important bit is the way that web usage has changed, its quite a fundamental shift.
David Ingram, david@izimi.com, www.izimi.com