New to the tutorial? Click here to start at the beginning.
Part 2: So what is Web 2.0?
Well unfortunately the definition varies and you’re not going to see the term Web 2.0 in the Oxford English Dictionary any time soon.
The thing is that Web 2.0 is not an official term, as such. It’s not like Bill Gates woke up one day and said “Oooh I’m gonna make a Web 2.0”. When I first (mis)heard about the term a few years ago, I thought they were going to re-vamp the entire Internet infrastructure and make it twice as fast as before (Wikipedia also alludes to that misconception in its definition so I don’t feel quite so dumb).
So I would call Web 2.0 the collective name for a new breed of websites that rely on blogging, social networking functionality and users of the service to supply the content.
I would be so brazen as to say any website worth its salt will have at least a few Web 2.0 elements going forward.
So basically the creators of the website supply little or no content and the people reading or interacting with it create some or all of it. Think about Facebook (if you haven’t used it yet, where have you been?). The developers created an empty shell of a platform with tools for anyone (or almost everyone using the net these days) to upload their own content, in turn creating the website’s content.
Still don’t have a clue? Don’t worry, read on to part 3 of the tutorial where I break down Web 2.0 into the major kinds of websites that fall under this ‘umbrella definition’.
In part 3: What kind of Web 2.0 services are there out there?
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