What is web 2.0?

‘What Is Web 2.0’ is a very popular article written by Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Media, who is widely accepted as having coined of the term 2.0. The article’s aim is to clarify exactly what constitutes web 2.0. Despite its establishment amongst new media terms, there is still widespread controversy about what web 2.0 actually means. O’Reilly discusses how the dot-com “crash” of 2001 was viewed by him as a turning point for the web, as he noted exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity. The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and ‘MediaLive International’ (O’Reilly, 2005). A list of examples, which represented both web 1.0 and web 2.0, was compiled, in order to differentiate between the two terms. O‘Reilly (2005, 1) explains: “We began trying to tease out the principles that are demonstrated in one way or another by the success stories of web 1.0 and by the most interesting of the new applications."

Collins (2007) also compares and contrasts the differences between 1.0 and 2.0, highlighting that:

“Knowledge worker 1.0 are forced to look like this:
· limited location
· limited roles
· inside the wall
· stuck at a desk (and stuck using email and other standard tools)
· custodian of information
· knowledge as process
· uses rigid ways of organizing information

In contrast:

"Knowledge Worker 2.0 looks like this:
· all over the organization
· broad skills on solid base
· not bound to one place
· connects with colleagues, peers and client community everywhere
· Understands “the way we do things around here”
· Uses many different tools
· No particular age
· Knowledgeable, interested, engaged, contributing
· Shares and distributes information freely

As discussed in lecture 2, O’Reilly (2005) explains in detail the differentiation between expert knowledge (1.0) and user-driven knowledge (2.0). He uses many examples such as Google, Ebay, Amazon, Wikipedia, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Linux and Folksonomy (in contrast to taxonomy) to illustrate how “network effects from user contributions are the key to market dominance in the Web 2.0 era” (O’Reilly, 2005, 2).

This is a comprehensive article which uses an enormous range of examples to explain and illustrate the differences between and significance of web 2.0 as opposed to 1.0. In addition to those mentioned above, these include RSS feeds, blogging, Netscape, podcasting, AJAX, JavaScript, XHTML, and the list goes on. Each of the examples explored in the article demonstrates one or more of the key principles, or what O’Reilly (2005) believes are the “core competencies, of Web 2.0 companies.” These are:

· Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
· Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
· Trusting users as co-developers
· Harnessing collective intelligence
· Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
· Software above the level of a single device
· Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models”

(O’Reilly, 2005, 5)

This resource acts as an excellent example of Networked Information. I specifically chose this article for two reasons – one being the reputability and credibility of the author; the other being it’s relevance to the week 2 lecture. More specifically, it provides further insight into one of the related slideshows provided at the end of the lecture notes, ‘I Am Knowledge Worker 2.0.’