Web 2.0

Technologies like a web blogs, social book marking, wikis, pod casts, RSS feeds, social software, web application programming interfaces, and online web services such as eBay and Google mail provide enhancements over read only websites. Stephen Fry describes Web 2.0.

Entering Web 2.0, a vision of the web information is almost broken up into the units of micro content which can be distributed over dozens of domains. The web of documents has morphed into a web of data. We are no longer just looking to the similar old sources for information. Now we are looking to a new set of tools to collective and remix micro content in new and useful ways.

Users are permitted by web 2.0 websites to do better than just retrieve the information. They can build on the interactive facilities of Web 1.0 to provide Network as platform computing, allowing users to run software-applications entire through a browser. On a web 2.0, Users can own the data and exercise to control over the data. Architecture of participation can encourage the 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 base on AJAX or similar rich media. The sites may also have social-networking aspects.

Web 2.0 has often been described as the web as platform, and if we think about the web as a platform for interacting with content, we begin to see how it impacts design. Imagine a bunch of stores of content provided by different companies, individuals, governments, upon which we could build interfaces that combine the information in ways no single domain ever could. Suppose, Amazon.com makes its database of content is accessible to the outside world. Anyone can design an interface to replace Amazon’s that better suits specific needs. The power of this is that content can be personalized or remixed with other data to create much more useful tools.

The effects of Web 2.0 are far reaching. Like all paradigm shifts, it affects the people who use it socially, culturally, and ever politically. One of the most affected groups is the designers and developers who will build it, not just because their technical skills will change.