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Web 2.0: what does it really mean?

Tim O’Reilly created the term Web 2.0 in 2004 as a title for a developer conference. Actually, there is not a clear-cut definition for Web 2.0 but it typically describes a form of user-to-user communication over the internet. For unlike Web 2.0 is not a technical innovation. With offers for social interaction such as Blogger.com, Del.ico.us, facebook, Flickr, GarageBand, Habbo-Hotel, MySpace, Linkdin, Spoke, Studylounge, YouTube, Wikipedia and Xing, the Web 2.0 merely documents the realisation that the internet was always a social forum for exchanging opinions and banal experiences and never just a digital market place.

In simple term, just it needs to understand that Web 2.0 is the current version, characterized by social networks (Orkut), online multigaming, audio, video and text sharing and communities built around them, wikis, blogs and so on so forth.

Web 2.0: A super-medium of Business

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. It is a medium enriched with all the possible facilities of doing business such as buying/selling/auction (eBay) classifieds (Yello, CraigsList) job search engines / aggregators (Monster, Bixee). A clear picture of B2B, C2C, B2C, B2C2B markets is provided by Web 2.0.

Writing Semantic Markup for Designers

A web designer avails a lot of facility when s/he uses 2.0. To understand what useful it can be it is one of the biggest steps in realizing Web 2.0 is the transition to semantic markup. The most popular markup languages, HTML and XHTML, are used primarily for display purposes, with tags to which designers can apply styles via CSS.

Designers can describe content, but only to the extent that it fits within the (X) HTML tag set. For example, designers can mark up content as headers, paragraphs, list items, citations, and definition lists using the heading, paragraph, list, citation and defination list tags, respectively. For some simple documents, these tags are adequate to describe content effectively. For most documents, however, there is no way to accurately describe the content with the (X) HTML tags we have available. In Web 2.0, this description is not only possible, but also critical.

Providing Web Services not the Place

During the early years of the Web, before content had semantic meaning, sites were developed as a collection of “pages.” XML technologies enabled content to be shareable and transformable between different systems, and Web services provided hooks into the innards of sites. Instead of visual design being the interface to content, Web services have become programmatic interfaces to that same content. Anyone can build an interface to content on any domain if the developers there provide a Web services API.

An interesting interface built using eBay’s Web services is Andale, a site that tracks sales, prices to give auction sellers a better idea of what items are hot, and how much they have been selling for.

Online Privacy

E-commerce is a wide array of interconnected business concept in 2.0 equipped with modern technologies and cultural phenomena. With the advent of E-commerce, many opportunities are now available to business: transcending geographic boundaries being open 24 hours and expanded profiling and marketing capabilities.

For deliverance to your customer, you need to know you customer, though the customer may rather keep that information private.

An immense amount of data is being collected not only from browsing on the internet, but from credit cards, mobile phones and frequent buyer programs such as “fly buys”. Retailers may exploit the personal information every time a user uses his or her credit card. In the beginning, the Internet allowed a certain level of anonymity. With the development of 2.0, this is no longer the case. People feel susceptible to privacy invasion.

Be a driver, not a passenger

Interactive Web 2.0 applications such as online diaries (blogs, see box), online libraries (wikis) or virtual worlds have changed the way that consumers gather information. Instead of settling for the role of passive customer, the active Web2.0 user wants to contribute and discuss the latest news. Interactive platforms challenge existing business models and demand on appropriate reaction as information spreads through new channels.

Be authentic: it is an advance way of communication

Web 2.0 heralds a new era of communication with a massive increase in information supply and news, opinion and services flow directly from user to user. Financial institutions can take advantage if they stay abreast of this development. However, any Web 2.0 presence of a financial institution must be authentic and consistent with the institution’s brand and corporate culture. To leverage the potential, the need for an immaculate reputation and the right type of brand is becoming ever more important.

Conclusion:

From the concept of emerging technologies such as the Semantic Web transforming the way the Web is used (and leading to new possibilities in artificial intelligence) to the observation that increases in Internet connection speeds, modular web applications, and advances in computer graphics will play the key role in the evolution of the World Wide Web.

Now, even 2.0 is left behind the need and web-planet is looking forward for the new invention. Web 3.0 is the future, supposed to be characterised by natural language search (algorithms infirmed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) research); referred to as GGG (Global Giant Graph) by Tim Berners-Lee, who is father of www.

We have been realizing that Web 2.0 is well documented and talked about. The power of the Net reached a critical mass, with capabilities that can be done on a network level. We are also seeing richer devices over last four years and richer ways of interacting with the network, not only in hardware like game consoles and mobile devices, but also in the software layer. You do not have to be a computer scientist to create a program. We are seeing that manifest in Web 2.0 and 3.0 will be a great extension of that, a true communal medium…the distinction between professional, semi-professional and consumers will get blurred, creating a network effect of business and applications.