What is Web 2.0?

The term “Web 2.0″ was coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004 as part of a marketing exercise for a conference and the term has been widely taken up by the community at large. There is disagreement about what Web 2.0 means, with some people decrying it as a meaningless marketing buzzword, and others accepting it as the new conventional wisdom!

Web 2.0 has been described as a state of mind, an attitude, a new business model, the next generation of Web-based software and services, a set of development principles, a revolution! Web 2.0 is about participation, sharing, remixing, communicating and facilitating community, all which is built upon trust.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, maintains that Web 2.0 is just an extension of the original ideals of the Web and it does not warrant a special label . When asked in an interview about the common explanation that Web 1.0 was about connecting computers and making information available; and Web 2.0 is about connecting people and facilitating new kinds of collaboration, Berners-Lee replied:

Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is, of course, a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.

With greater access to broadband services and Web 2.0 applications, new forms of relationships and patterns of communicating and learning have emerged.

This blog will be discussing Web 2.0 tools and how you can use them to boost your business.

Here’s a great video about how Web 2.0 is changing the way we operate:

And here’s another with facts & figures & a little more technical information: