Web 2.0 Definition
So what is Web 2.0, anyway? You’ve heard about it, you know your teenagers are using it, but what the heck is all the hype about? Web 2.0 is a generation of web applications that allow for enhanced information sharing, communication and collaboration. These tools are called “Web2.0” to indicate a departure from a previous generation of web applications wherein users were able to access and retrieve information. Web 2.0 applications allow users to form communities, compile and add value to data, publish information, voice opinions and be accessed by other users. Web 2.0 tools, also referred to as social media tools, are thought to be democratizing information as users are not simply ingesting information but contributing to information generation.
There are a number of ways to categorize Web 2.0 tools to understand what they do and how they work. Here is one taxonomy, from McKinsey Quarterly :
1. Broad collaboration: facilitating co-creation of content across distributed groups of participants, wikis, commenting tools and shared workspaces allow for ease of collaboration.
2. Broad communication: offering individuals a way to communicate and share information with many others, blogs, podcasts, videocasts and peer-to-peer tools allow people to publish their ideas, synthesize information and generate new content.
3. Collective estimation: generating a collectively derived answer, polling, prediction and information markets taps into the wisdom of the collective.
4. Metadata creation: adding information to content to prioritize it or make it more valuable, tagging, social bookmarking, RSS (Real Simple Syndication), user tracking and ratings allows people to share information they find valuable with others .
5. Social graphing; leveraging connections between people to offer new applications, social networking generates new communities.
Web 2.0 tools are interactive; users generate new content or edit the work of other participants. Web 2.0 tools invite a high degree of participation.
Links:
The McKinsey Quarterly: Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work
