2008 Woodie Awards
Feedback - Web 2.0
Brian T. Johnston
Issue date: 3/1/07 Section: Life!
Perhaps you've seen it. A video released on YouTube.com on Jan. 31 that became one of the most popular videos online (topping YouTube's featured video list on Feb. 7). Entitled "Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us" and created by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, tries to convey in under five minutes what Web 2.0 is and how it impacts human interaction. The video is the work of the Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas State.
So what is Web 2.0 and why all the fuss? Web 2.0, simply stated, is an improvement in functionality over the first generation of the web. According to Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, Web 2.0 has at its core a number of principles; most important is that Web 2.0 is built on "applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them" (http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/web_20_compact.html).
He describes the notion of the web as a platform, one with functionality to create and access data. The data is supplied by everyone. Hallmarks of Web 2.0 include things like syndication, blogs, wikis, social networking, tagging and the like. It incorporates the notion of participation-a community.
Take blogging, for example: While the idea of personalized home pages with journals isn't new, Web 2.0 blogging standards allow for a number of fundamental changes. First is the idea of syndication via RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or Atom web feeds. These feeds publish frequently, updating sites such as blogs, podcasts or news sites. Now anyone can subscribe to a constantly updating site by subscribing to the feed. Unlike bookmarks to static pages of the past, the user is notified as soon as updates occur.
Another fundamental change is the notion of community that comes about through the function of commenting. Pretty soon, bloggers find they are part of an entire community just by reading other blogs, commenting and subscribing to even more feeds.
So what is Web 2.0 and why all the fuss? Web 2.0, simply stated, is an improvement in functionality over the first generation of the web. According to Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, Web 2.0 has at its core a number of principles; most important is that Web 2.0 is built on "applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them" (http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/web_20_compact.html).
He describes the notion of the web as a platform, one with functionality to create and access data. The data is supplied by everyone. Hallmarks of Web 2.0 include things like syndication, blogs, wikis, social networking, tagging and the like. It incorporates the notion of participation-a community.
Take blogging, for example: While the idea of personalized home pages with journals isn't new, Web 2.0 blogging standards allow for a number of fundamental changes. First is the idea of syndication via RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or Atom web feeds. These feeds publish frequently, updating sites such as blogs, podcasts or news sites. Now anyone can subscribe to a constantly updating site by subscribing to the feed. Unlike bookmarks to static pages of the past, the user is notified as soon as updates occur.
Another fundamental change is the notion of community that comes about through the function of commenting. Pretty soon, bloggers find they are part of an entire community just by reading other blogs, commenting and subscribing to even more feeds.