As people are more and more using the website, the innovation will have no limit, this is because there is a desire to meet the demands of all people, this has lend to creation of many social networking sites for example Flickr, Facebook and YouTube, terms like web 1.0 and web 2.0 are much more being used to distinguish the platforms on which the website are built, I believe in the near future web 3.0 will also resurface on a bigger scale as it appears that it is in the pipeline.
Web 2.0 is a term introduced in 2004 to characterize design patterns in a constellation of new generation Web applications which may provide an “infrastructure for more dynamic user participation, social interaction and collaboration.” The dynamic user in web 2.0 is given the space and opportunity to enhance their creativity, share information and collaborate with other users. This term was coined during the first O’Rielly media conference in 2004. It does not differ in technology from the ordinary web 1.0 but its differences from web 1.0 lie in the way software developers and end users apply it. At the mention of web 2.0, social networking sites like facebook or myspace come in mind; this is because these sites have taken over the use of web 2.0 and utilised well.
Web1.0 on the other hand is just the first implementation of the web, which according to Berners-Lee, could be considered the “read-only web.” In other words, the early web allowed us to search for information and read it. There was very little in the way of user interaction or content contribution. However, this is exactly what most website owners wanted: Their goal for a website was to establish an online presence and make their information available to anyone at any time. I like to call this “brick-and-mortar thinking applied to the web,” and the web as a whole hasn’t moved much beyond this stage yet.
There are differences between web1.0 and web2.0 and these can be noticed in the functions of both platforms, despite the fact that there even differences in the cording, this is much more noticed by the web designers but to the end user, what matters is the functions and abilities of the platforms. Here are some of the differences:
“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”. The web as is stands (Web1.0) is seen as a “static” thing, like a billboard or a magazine. You can see lots of billboards, buy lots of magazines, enjoy or dislike them but they stay the same until they are changed by the publisher.”Web2.0 applications” are ones that are “user-generated” or “user-shaped”. Instead of being “published” by someone, the people using the site “publish” the content. They also market it and edit it. Famous examples of “Web2.0 applications” already in use and much talked about are Flickr for photographs, Wikipedia for encyclopedia articles, Facebook for maintaining friendships, YouTube for seeing young people mugging to video cameras and Answers.com for combining syndicated elements of these with its own user-generated Q&A section. On the other hand however, web 1.0 is seen as a primary use of the internet, taking print media and posting it online, it saw books, news, music and everything else being moved into a digital format but the it was controlled by the publisher. This movement is still going on and will probably never stop. This is because as new data becomes available it needs to be made available online, but the majority of the community has shifted focus toward data integration since there is not much innovation remaining in posting data online.
Web 2.0 is a kind of service oriented. Web 1.0 was about publishing, not participation; that advertisers, not consumers, ought to call the shots; that size mattered. Internet was increasingly being dominated by the top websites. Web 2.0 helps to increase the participation of the users like blogs,
e-commerce websites, torrents etc, where every user gets a chance to publish in a website one way
Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. They can build on the interactive facilities of “Web 1.0” to provide “Network as platform” computing, allowing users to run software-applications entirely through a browser. Users can own the data on a Web 2.0 site and exercise control over that data. These sites may have an “Architecture of participation” that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it. This stands in contrast to very old traditional websites, the sort which limited visitors to viewing and whose content only the site’s owner could modify.
Web 2.0 sites often feature a rich, user-friendly interface based on Ajax,Flex or similar rich media. The sites may also have social-networkingaspects. The concept of Web-as-participation-platform captures many of these characteristics. Bart Decrem, a founder and former CEO of Flock, calls Web 2.0 the “participatory Web” and regards the Web2.0-as-information-source as Web 1.0.
The impossibility of excluding group-members who don’t contribute to the provision of goods from sharing profits gives rise to the possibility that rational members will prefer to withhold their contribution of effort andfree-ride on the contribution of others. The characteristics of Web 2.0 are: rich user experience, user participation, dynamic content, metadata, web standards and scalability. Three further characteristics that Best did not mention about web 2.0: openness, freedom and collective intelligence by way of user participation – all should be viewed as essential attributes of Web 2.0.
In conclusion the main differentiation between web 1.0 and web 2.0 only lie in their level user. Web 2.0 allows users to browse and obtain information that is available but as well as share their own media content throughout the internet challenging the mainstream media’s ability to deliver news at the same pace. It is web 2.0 that has continually enhanced the idea of the global village where people from all over the world can share information in the easiest way possible making geographical boundaries seem less an obstacle as it was years back.
Bibliography
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/Web_1_point_0.html
www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/Web_1_point_0.htm
http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/464/Basic-Definitions-Web-10-Web-20-Web-30/
