When I started reading this article, I realized that I had no idea what Web 2.0 was. When I got to the chart that attempted to give the reader an idea of the definition, I had to really think about what it meant. A friend asked me what I was reading and when I told her the name of the article she asked what Web 2.0 was. So, I tried to explain it this way -
“Web 1.0 was sort of the beginning of mainstream internet with AOL, MSN, Netscape, that stuff. 2.0 was more ‘okay, we see what’s working with these existing programs, let’s up the ante by taking what worked and fix it into a more usable, diverse program.’”
A quote that stuck out to me was on page 2, “…DoubleClick was ultimately limited by its business model. It bought into the ’90s notion that the web was about publishing, not participation; that advertisers, not consumers, ought to call the shots.” This ties back into what we’ve been talking about in class about how technology is a tool. What if advertising was calling the shots on everything now? We’d be in a different place. With the interaction level of the internet, people can give immediate feedback on products, ideas, and other aspects of commercialization. Unless Apple named the iPad specifically to get a lot of media surrounding the “iTampon” joke, it will probably give more thought to its next product name. Why? Because within minutes of Steve Jobs announcing the name, bloggers and Twitter were immediately mocking the name. That is just the sort of participation that this article is talking about.
Another trend I see in Web 2.0 are services that act as liaisons between the user and other users. They act as highways of information, not hubs. When you search Google you’re not actually searching a database called Google. Instead, you’re using their algorithms to find content put up by other users. When you use Torrentz you are not searching their files, you are searching files put up by other users that Torrentz allows you to find. This idea of using the programs to find content by other users is, in my opinion, essential.
