We quoted Tim O'Reilly's definition of Web 2.0:
Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.
In general, we believe that there are number of other points that help define Web 2.0:
- User generated and/or user influenced content
- Applications that use the Web (versus the desktop) as a platform, in innovative ways
- Similar visual design and shared functional languages
- Leveraging of popular trends, including blogging, social tagging, wikis, and peer-to-peer sharing
- Inclusion of emerging web technologies like RSS, AJAX, APIs (and accompanying mashups), Ruby on Rails and others
- Open source or sharable/editable frameworks in the form of user-oriented "create your own" APIs
It seems that now, a good few years into the life of Web 2.0, one does not so much need a list to define it as an explanation of its emerging outcome: Web 2.0 sites, which are becoming more and more prolific, have turned the Internet into a two-way street. Whereas traditional media had a stranglehold on the flow of information, the Internet is not a medium where publishing rights are limited by access to a printing press or a studio, or by expensive equipment. Tthis has always been somewhat true, but the open-source, user-generated environment is made easier with Web 2.0 technology. In short, it ensures that online, the power structure of communication is close to flat.
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