Web 2.0

Welcome to web 2.0 where all users can interact with each other in a virtual community. Without it there would be no wiki, no blogs, no YouTube and no social networking sites. The term was coined by Tim O’Reilly in a conference in 2004. It makes it sound like there is a new version of the World Wide Web in town, but is that true?  The technology hasn’t really changed so this term has been challenged by lots of different people.  Most noticeably by Tim Berners-Lee who invented the World Wide Web which he states is not different from Web 2.0. They both essentially have the same functions.

So is it just a buzz word that marketing teams love to throw about? It’s gotten to the sad state where companies can buy likes on Facebook and friends, so why not re-brand an already existing product that’s popular (the world wide web) and claim it as their own? Companies can have twitter accounts and web pages that are updated often so their presence is felt online. The only thing web 2.0 can pride itself on is that it is more accessible in terms of design.  It offers an interactive design that can link sites to each other easier (mash ups).

With this much user generated content what does it mean for the ownership of data? Anything we publish online becomes part of a public domain, and seems to be fair gain for anyone to use. That would be fine but were all human and will make mistakes. For example Facebook is full of political comment that clearly displays to the rest of the users that you have actually completely misunderstood the current political situation. People seem so keen to join in that YouTube is full of pointless videos and MySpace has become a playground for people trying to get their music out there ( ‘cuz the bands gonna make it man!’). There are people who have become internet celebrities but they are few and far in between. I’ll be honest with you I’m not really holding my breath for Web 3.0. Im too skeptical and cynical for all this.