What a Changing Web We Weave
Less than 2 years ago, O'Reilly Media popularized the term Web 2.0 to characterize a new phase in the development of uses and applications for the Web. Wikipedia, in an extensive article summarizing the characteristics of Web 2.0 gives this definition of the characteristics:
- The transition of websites from isolated information silos to sources of content and functionality, thus becoming a computing platform serving web applications to end users
- A social phenomenon referring to an approach to creating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and "the market as a conversation"
- A more organized and categorized content, with a far more developed deeplinking web architecture
- A shift in economic value of the web, possibly surpassing that of the dot com boom of the late 1990s
- A marketing term to differentiate new web businesses from those of the dot com boom, which due to the bust now seem discredited
- The resurgence of excitement around the possibilities of innovative web applications and services that gained a lot of momentum around mid 2005.
Greater personalization, social networking, and new technologies such as AJAX are the features most users see in this new stage of the web development. It is a little misleading to use the term 2.0, as to many people renumbering something implies some kind of new release that deserves a new version number.
The truth here is that large number of innovative uses added up sufficiently to suggest that a new phase was in operation, as illustrated by new applications and uses. Students of the web still disagree over whether this new phase is a discrete new paradigm or just an amalgamation of creative new features and functions. Nevertheless, the innovations have led to rather striking new uses in part based on blog and wiki notions of collaboration, including many rather new and interesting web sites such as CollectiveX that take group collaboration to a new level.
Web 2.0 is more an interim threshold leading eventually to the full implementation of the semantic web. Sort of like saying that the child status of initial web uses has become the teenager that will soon enough lead to a much more mature and innovative set of solutions.
There is so much to exploit in the innovations that have been bundled together under the roof of Web 2.0 that according to a Gartner, Inc., news release published by Government Technology, enterprises are not figuring out how to fully take advantage of the features related to social networking in particular. Companies that figure this out will give rise to new solutions for law enforcement and justice as well as the general public.
9:24:12 PM 
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