“Web 2.0” is a buzzword used all over the place these days. So what does it mean? Web 2.0 actually means a lot of different things and it means different things to different people. This is the first of a multi-part series attempting to define Web 2.0. Follow my blog at http://www.drivingsales.com/blog/mwatson/ for future posts.
Part 1 - “We're Talking Back”
One definition of Web 2.0 is the ability for everyday people to change the Internet.
A few years ago the Internet was mostly created by businesses for shopping, news, travel, research, forums and other important things. The Internet was largely a “read only” collection of information where everyday people had no input.
Today, a very large percentage of the content on the Internet was created by everyday people. Wikipedia, blogs, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and dozens of other websites are all based on content created by every day people. We now have the ability to create our own web pages (ex. MySpace & blogs) and make our mark on the Internet. You could say that Web 2.0 gave us our freedom of speech online.
So how did we get here? Well... it didn't happen over night.
In 1996 web communities like Geocities became common. They allowed users to create their own websites. By the end of 1997 Geocities had 1 million users and was the 5th most popular website on the Internet. Geocities was eventually purchased by Yahoo and still lives on today as a simply way to create your own website, including a blog.
Blogs aren't really that new either. A web blog, as a concept of online commentary or online diaries started in 1993. Although the term “blog” didn't come around until 1999. However, blogging didn't become mainstream until 2004. I created my first blog in 2003... and it still exists today.
Web 2.0 can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. To me, one of the things it means is we have the ability to create the content of the Internet.
We're Talking Back.
Matt Watson
Chief Technical Officer
VinSolutions
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