What is Web 2.0?
Alot of readers are struggling over this whole Web 2.0 topic, so I thought I’d better clear the air and leave some helpful information here.
The term “Web 2.0″ was originally coined by O’Reilly media back in 2004 based on their predictions and trend reporting on where surfers spent their online time and what internet users would want next.
Web 2.0 is a broad term that relates to some relatively new ways to seek and spend (time or money) online.
If you’ve been online as long as I have you’ll remember that there wasn’t much to look at back then and every login (at least my sessions) began with a search engine hunt. I’d start at yahoo, type in my term and hit all the sites that resulted for research or education (there were not millions of results back then). Within an hour you’d be done and disconnect.
Women can relate to these old ways in this manner: you go to a new shopping mall and peek inside or browse every store in the mall. As you move through the stores you’re collecting data – something that your sister would like, something you’d like to save for, a great shop to visit before Christmas, or even never go to that shop again.
The internet grew and so did it’s user count. Junk websites abounded, search results became less relevant, more hours were spent to gather the same quality information that you could grab in an hour (if it even existed).
But not only has the number of pages and sites grown, not only have the numbers of surfers grown, but we as individuals have changed. Most of us have begun the journey of understanding that our tastes, preferences, ideas, class, etc. define us. As such, we become frustrated trying to learn about something from a site created by an unlike mind.
Now if that’s not enough to send you off this post I don’t know what is. I will try to rewrite this for clarity later, but the gist here is that…
“We have learned that we can find easy-to-digest knowledge, that is applicable to our purposes, without all the painful searching and re-searching…if only we could just find someone who ’speaks our language’. Which seldom is the case when we surf by search engine results.”
Let me give you a personal example…
I’m a business woman 1st, an internet marketer 2nd, and a geek 3rd.
I’ve been all week in research over web-based applications that will assist me in the creation of a social networking site. (Not like myspace or 43things, I’ve got something different in mind.)
The sites that google serves up for my search terms are developer’s websites, programmer’s forums, all written in some kind of geek language that makes little sense to my business woman’s brain. Frustrating as all get out – even for a part geek like me!
The showcased scripts and applications, software and dedicated server languages seldom list a full set of features with working demos and talk of what is to come.
These sites are only of minor assistance because they’re not ’speaking my language’. Without a marketing mind behind the software I have no idea how each one will integrate with my marketing efforts, serve or attract my target market, monetize my efforts, etc.
I need ‘like minds’ speaking to research my options fully and from that make an educated decision.
That is precisely how we’ve changed as internet users. We’re looking for our clans, our peers, our social equals and it’s all showing up in the sites we frequent!
We aren’t always interested in commenting or sharing our views, but we are certainly interested in reading like-minded others’ thoughts, training, and recommendations.
We’re hunting for people with the same personal goals (43things.com), people with the same interests (cafemom.com), people in the same profession (linkedin.com), and so on.
Web 2.0 is all about online collaboration, the sharing process between users (you don’t have to share to be in this ‘club’, intake of information is, after all, a fractal piece of any collaboration), and the services that facilitate the new way to spend time online*.
- That ’sharing’ began with public bookmark lists (social bookmarking) – “Here are the places I frequent. If they resonate with you, then you’ll want to check out more of those places.” (see deli.cio.us)
- The next big wave was social networking – “Here are my friends, favorite music, photos, goals…” (see myspace, flikr, 43things).
I will continue to discuss Web 2.0 until it becomes clearer for you in future posts. In the meantime visit some of the sites within past paragraphs and get a taste for yourself.
As always, leave me notes, questions, or comments below.
Yes, and some recommendations if you’re already running your own social network site with a script that integrates articles, reviews, cards, images, videos, audios and IPN.
Thanks for being here,
Laura Childs
www.smartzville.com
p.s. I’ll say it once more, “to date the best training you can get on understanding and creating 2.0 sites is here“.
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*I highly suggest setting aside an hour or so and surfing through descriptions of Web 2.0 sites who are already seeing the joys of being ahead of the curve at http://go2web20.net/
It will take you hours to read through the description of each (click on any logo for a short description on the right pane) but doing so will give you a strong understanding of what classifies as a Web 2.0 site.
If you don’t have hours to browse (boy do I understand that!), then use the search tags and search for sites that are meeting your current target market with their trendy innovations. Now you know what you’re up against in the coming months!
I will warn you, the site is a little clunky at the moment, but an upgrade is in the works to improve speed and tag browsing.
