Web 2.0

Web 2.0 means different things to different people. Marketing teams view Web 2.0 as a viable way to localize sales efforts while video/audio artists view Web 2.0 as an efficient vehicle for delivering their works to viewers/listeners. Alternatively, many people see Web 2.0 as a meaningless buzz phrase, primarily because much of the Web technology that enables Web 2.0 has always existed in the Internet/WWW infrastructure.

The common denominator for all Web 2.0 definitions is the Web as a platform. The vast permutations of Web 2.0 can be traced back to what type of platform is being implemented:
- personal opinion (blogs)
- personal networking (LinkedIn or Facebook)
- video (YouTube or Hulu)
- photography (FlickR)


Web 2.0 transforms the Web from a one-way "pull" technology to a two-way "push and pull" platform. In the early days of the Web, information was maintained on Web servers and "pulled" by Web browsers for viewer consumption. Web users were consumers for the majority of content on the Web.
With Web 2.0, viewers can still pull information from Web servers, but can also "push" personalized information onto the Web (i.e. with Web 2.0, users are information consumers and information producers). This subtle difference opens up a broad range of collaborative, personalized and localized possibilities, including applications/services that are Web-based instead of hard drive-based.

However, some problems accompany the Web 2.0 movement towards collaboration and user-generated content. Attention must be paid to copyright/intellectual property laws and security loopholes, especially when personal information moves online.

Microblogging is a primary example of Web 2.0's highly personal "push and pull" technology. Specifically, the microblogging capabilities available at www.twitter.com. Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.
Another hallmark of Web 2.0 collaboration is open APIs, which allow applications to hook into other Web services. The Twitter API is generally available to the development community.

Although some folks may find the mundane everyday tasks of others mind-numbing and dull, Twitter claims to have over 3,200,000 accounts registered as of October 2008.