Web 2.0

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(Krishnamurthy and Cormode 2008) and are support by the HTTP, HTML and URL technologies (Aghaei, Nematbakhsh et al. 2012). During this phase, the main goal of the websites was to publish the information for anyone at any time and establish an online presence (Aghaei, Nematbakhsh et al. 2012). Therefore, this incarnation of the Web focuses on removing time and space restrictions of information transfer; in other words, enhancing cognition (Raffl, Hofkirchner et al. 2009, Fuchs, Hofkirchner et al. 2010, Aghaei, Nematbakhsh et al. 2012).

Figure 2.5.: The relationship between the Web, the Users, and Content Providers in Web 1.0 (Bernal 2010)

2.4.2. Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is the next phase in the Web’s progression marked by the introduction of interactivity as suggested by the O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 Conference in late 2004, it is the extension and enhanced version of its predecessor, Web 1.0 (O'Reilly 2005).

In other words, Web 1.0 is a subset of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is also known the wisdom web, people-centric web, participative web, and read-write web. With reading as well as writing, the web could become bi-directional (Aghaei, Nematbakhsh et al.

2012) as depicted in Figure 2.6. Like all of the developing and evolving phases of the Web, Web 2.0 is not a phase in the Web’s progression that can be defined and described by hard boundaries, but rather, gravitational cores. These gravitational

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cores resonate with the transitional progressions from Web 1.0 into Web 2.0.

Specifically, Web 2.0 circled around the cores of enabling (O'Reilly 2005):

 The Web as Platform: The Web is no longer just a network for enhancing cognition and communication, but is a platform for cooperation and collaboration.

 Harness of Collective Intelligence: With the possibility for online cooperation and collaboration enabled, the Web can harness the collective intelligence from its massive user.

 Harness of Mass Data: The quantity and quality data can be increased from the emerging Platforms that collect data from its massive user population.

 End of the Software Release Cycle: Upgrades can be made rapidly and constantly since applications are served across the Web Platforms as services.

 Introduction of Lightweight Programming Models: New scripting languages and file formats enable faster, more interactive websites that can interact with users and data sources.

 Enrichment of User Experiences: The web became a more dynamic and entertaining place that allows contents to be produced and consumed by its massive users.

From the gravitational cores of Web 2.0 as a Platform that enables the Web’s ability to interact, collect and enrich, websites that adopt the Web 2.0 gravitational cores have extremely different key characteristics from the Web 1.0 websites.

Specifically, the Web 2.0 websites strongly embraced in the concept of “openness”

which allowed and enabled their users to interact, cooperate, and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual platform such as Wikis and Blogs, as opposed to the previous in the previous Web 1.0 phase where people are limited to the passive consumption of content

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(O'Reilly 2005, San 2007, Ivanova and Ivanova 2009). The transition into Web 2.0 spawned a social transformation that decentralized content into the hands of its users (Funk 2009). Not only did Web 2.0 decentralized content creation and rights, its gravitational core of collective intelligence has also encouraged an environment for content creators to share knowledge via the Web 2.0-based platforms and make use of others’ contributions for growth (San 2007, Ivanova and Ivanova 2009).

Further, due to the decentralization phenomenon of Web 2.0, the previous categorization and organization of content in Web 1.0, or Taxonomy has evolved to a more advanced and efficient form of categorization and organization executed via Folksonomy. It is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of cooperatively and collaboratively creating and managing tags by machines and humans to annotate and categorize content (Pink 2005, Peters 2009) derived from the portmanteau of “folk” and “taxonomy”. The Software as a Service or SaaS model was also enabled in Web 2.0 (Funk 2009) and software applications can now be hosted on the internet and delivered on demand via the Web (Funk 2009). Different from Web 1.0 were the Web is merely an information portal for available services, Web 2.0 transformed the Web itself into a platform that is capable of delivering services (Funk 2009). Not only so, the Mashup technologies in Web 2.0 enabled different software applications to leverage resources and functions to combine and provide better services demanded by the users. Table 2.3 displays a simplified comparison of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 characteristics (Funk 2009, Aghaei, Nematbakhsh et al. 2012).

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Web 1.0 Web 2.0

Read Read/Write

Centralized Decentralized

“One to Many” communication “Many to Many” communication

Taxonomy Folksonomy

Owning Sharing

Services sold over the Web Selling web services

Information Portals Platforms

Table 2.3.: A simplified comparison of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

Since the Focus of Web 2.0 is building platforms that can harness resources resulted in interactions, thus, success in Web 2.0 is dictated from harnessing the power of different platforms such as social, computing, media and opinions, and advertising (Funk 2009). Further, to maximize the advantages of Web 2.0, based on its characteristics, the presence of feedback loops between the users and producer is a meaningful and integral part of an individual platform that is based on Web 2.0 (Funk 2009). From the interactive characteristics of Web 2.0, many business, innovation and management concepts emerged, such as prosumers, long tail, etc and are practiced in accordance with the collaborative practices of co-creation (O'Reilly 2005).

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Figure 2.6.: The relationship between the Web, the Users, and Content Providers in Web 2.0 (Bernal 2010)