WEB 2.0

Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2003 and popularized by the first Web 2.0 conference in 2004, refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. O'Reilly Media titled a series of conferences around the phrase, and it has since become widely adopted.Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to Web technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the web as a platform. According to Tim O'Reilly, "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."Some technology experts, notably Tim Berners-Lee, have questioned whether one can use the term in a meaningful way, since many of the technology components of "Web 2.0" have existed since the early days of the Web.In alluding to the version-numbers that commonly designate software upgrades, the phrase "Web 2.0" may hint at an improved form of the World Wide Web. Advocates of the concept suggest that technologies such as weblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds (and other forms of many-to-many publishing), social software, Web APIs, Web standards and online Web services imply a significant change in web usage. Stephen Fry (actor, author and broadcaster) describes Web 2.0 as "an idea in people’s heads rather than a reality. It’s actually an idea that the reciprocity between the user and the provider is what’s emphasized. In other words, genuine interactivity if you like, simply because people can upload as well as download" .As used by its supporters, the phrase "Web 2.0" can also refer to one or more of the following:the transition of web-sites from isolated information silos to sources of content and functionality, thus becoming computing platforms serving web applications to end-users a social phenomenon embracing an approach to generating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and "the market as a conversation" a pronounced distinction between functionality and web technology, enabling significantly easier creation of new business models and processes by using readily available intuitive modular elements enhanced organization and categorization of content, emphasizing deep linking a rise in the economic value of the Web, possibly surpassing[citation needed] the impact of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s Earlier users of the phrase "Web 2.0" employed it as a synonym for "Semantic Web". The combination of social-networking systems such as FOAF and XFN with the development of tag-based folksonomies, delivered through blogs and wikis, sets up a basis for a semantic web environment.[citation needed]Tim O'Reilly regards Web 2.0 as business embracing the web as a platform and utilising its strengths (global audiences, for example). O'Reilly considers that Eric Schmidt's abridged slogan, don't fight the Internet, encompasses the essence of Web 2.0 — building applications and services around the unique features of the Internet, as opposed to building applications and expecting the Internet to suit as a platform (effectively "fighting the Internet").
In the opening talk of the first Web 2.0 conference, Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle summarized what they saw as key principles of Web 2.0 applications:

• the web as a platform
• data as the driving forc
• e network effects created by an architecture of participation
• innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers (a kind of "open source" development)
• lightweight business models enabled by content and service syndication
• the end of the software adoption cycle ("the perpetual beta") software above the level of a single device
• leveraging the power of the "Long Tail" ease of picking-up by early adopters