Hello, my friend! - Cover story

Blogs, podcasting, RSS, wikis and social networks like MySpace and YouTube are metaphorically deluging us with ways to interact and connect with each other online. The explosion of social media is invariably grouped under the umbrella title of ‘Web 2.0’ and it’s worth looking at how Web 2.0 differs from Web 1.0. Arguments abound as to how to define Web 2.0 accurately, but a concise one for this context is provided by Tim O’Reilly (http://radar.oreilly.com), reputedly the first person to coin the term. “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.” A central plank of Web 2.0 is the concept of the ‘network as platform’ –the web browser runs software applications, as opposed to software residing on individual devices. The transition of many websites from ‘isolated information silos’ to interlinked computing platforms is well underway. Another important ethos for Web 2.0 is user participation, although in this respect, Web 2 is an evolution, rather than a revolution, of ideas that have long been around. For example, pre internet electronic bulletin boards enabled users to ‘post’ a topic and others to respond. Discussion about the extent to which users should be able to control content is ongoing, but Shel Israel and Robert Scoble captured the sentiment of openness and dialogue behind the growth of social media with the title of one of the first books documenting it – ‘Naked Conversations’.