Web 2.0

So what is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is considered the "second generation" of the world wide web. It incorporates dynamic and shareable content within it's applications in order to facilitate and promote interactivity, interoperability and social networking. Web 2.0 has allowed users to create their own dynamic environments on the web which can be used to network with other users, enhancing the experience of information sharing and the usability of the web.

Possibly the most prevalent examples of Web 2.0 in today's technologically charged society are social networking websites, as seen below:

The original boom in social networking sites was seen with MySpace. MySpace allowed users to customise their page's appearance, music and content and promoted interactivity between users via page comments, picture comments and private messages. This is the MySpace page of popular drummer Travis Barker. Note the heavy use of graphics in the page layout.

(click image for full size)

More recently, MySpace has lost popularity as Facebook started to boom. With more than 400 million active users, Facebook is currently the leading social networking site. Below is the Facebook page of Travis Barker, notice the difference in content on the page, with far less graphics and more textual based content. Users of Facebook communicate with one another via wall posts, messages, picture comments, and status updates.

(click image for full size)

With more than 35 million users updating their Facebook status per day, the market was made clear for the site Twitter. Twitter is very heavily text based networking site where users simply update (or 'tweet') their status or comment on other users pages. Simple graphic backgrounds are the graphic extent of Twitter however a new image sharing application called TwitPic has been developed.

(click image for full size)