So, today we talked about web 2.0. I never knew that there was two different versions of the web. Ever since 2004 we've had 2.0, and it couldn't be more amazing. I will begin with a quote from Terry Flew, the associate professor of media and communication in the creative industries faculty at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. "move from personal websites to blogs and blog site aggregation, from publishing to participation, from web content as the outcome of large up-front investment to an ongoing and interactive process, and from content management systems to links based on tagging (folksonomy)". He believed that these were the things that spawned the dawn of web 2.0.
Networking is bigger than ever now. With the enhancements of 2.0 we now have things like Facebook. It has 400 million active users as of today. We are able to not only communicate with people around the world without even leaving our homes, but we are also able to share files, such as pictures, videos, music, or basically anything you want. A very useful tool in the right hands. Google maps is another great example. As you are browsing a map, it requires a lot of information. When you zoom in and out on the map, the loading of the pictures is instantaneous.
Web 2.0 is not a different version of the internet, per say, more of a change in the way that users and developers use the web. For example, when you go to a site that uses the network effect, such as digg, you are not only able to gather up information, but build your own web page and utilize things such as comments, running software applications entirely through a browser, and, again, sharing files with each other. The user has much more control over their data, and their data is their data. Almost none of this was possible with web 1.0.
The network effect blew my mind. The math that is behind web 2.0 is amazing. I believe we have made our networking and business sites very useful because we have a lot of users out there today. The only way it could be utilized to the max is when every single person in the world is using the service, but that will never happen.
I'm excited to see what the next big thing will be in networking and the world of web 2.0. Can it get any better than this?
Photo courtesy of evohosting.
I didn't realize what Web 2.0 was until the other day in class. It is a nice upgrade to the internet to be able to work on the same page without refreshing the page you are on. Google Maps helped explain the concept to me the best.
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