One of the first things I did was to seek out what the consensus was on the "driving" forces of web 2.0 . one site, http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/web-2.0-websites lists the top 15 most popular web 2.0 websites. Among them are the more well-know names such as Twitter, Craigslist and Youtube. Curiously though, it does not list sites such as Facebook or linkdyn. Does this mean that the site author believes social networking is not an element of web 2.0? One might jump to that conclusion. But digging a bit deeper it appears that he used the term "web 2.0" out of convenience as a category name for one of several lists, all of which are likely components of web 2.0, such as "the 25 most popular Blogs," "top 20 Social Bookmarking site," and "the top 20 social networking site." There were many more, including job-hunting, Health, Travel etc.
So what's my point?
Perhaps reflecting partly on my own cynicism about the way society tries to neatly box concepts, I see a lot of unintentional misuse of the "web 2.0" label likely derived from the perceived need to mark clearly defined lines on "what is" and What isn't" web 2.0
The reality is that like the concept of "cloud computing" (which will no-doubt be as equally misunderstood and misused) web 2.0 is a natural trend of the evolution of the internet which is as likely to touch everything online to one degree or another. As soon as retailers figured out that thay could safely (?) retain your order info an compare your buying habits to others to shape marketing, web 2.0 was born. Certainly, there are still many sites where one cannot post comments, save personal data or create a profile and therefore may not be embracing the concepts of web 2.0, But I would argue that the mere ability to include "contact us" email too makes it part of the 2.0 trend.
your thoughts?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
To me the interactive accessability of such things as facebook is what makes them part of web 2.0.
ReplyDelete-Mira
OLIT 593 Student Lora H
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that it takes a certain amount of commercialism to take something like Web 2.0 to the current level of activity and options we enjoy and use. I think we do have some control over the tracking and contact availability by critically examing the applications and web sites for potential misuse and misdirection of the information we put out there.
Brian,
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job explaining yourself and it is great to read another students blog. I to am oblivious to the whole Web 2.0 social world but the more I research the more I find some good in the semantic web.