provided by: 
But is it new or does it just have a new name?
I admit it. Until Peter Prestipino, Website Services' editor, said, "Write a
commentary about Web 2.0," I didn't know that Web 1.0 had been defined, or that
there are some who have declared that the Web 1.0 "dinosaur" is dead.
Now, everyone is jumping on the 2.0 Webwagon. Everything is bigger (or smaller),
better, prettier, more defined, and, most of all, interactive.
RSS feeds, Bazaarvoice, and Flickr exemplify the new movement. Web 2.0 is blogs,
wikis, social nets, personalized home pages, and search engines. It's fun, fun,
fun. Quick, quick, quick.
Web 2.0 establishes villages and teamwork. This is good. It fosters viral
marketing and that can be very good. Conferences about Web 2.0 often are Web 2.0
events because they can be both real and virtual, with online chats throughout
the conference, and real-time video and coverage. Venture capitalists have been
quick to join in, funding new versions of old material with only little more
caution than they used when the Internet boom was booming.
But is it new or does it just have a new name?
The consensus seems to be that Web 2.0 has taken the best parts of 1.0 and
repackaged them. It's become a great marketing gimmick to say, "The new
2.0 version of ...". The difference can be likened to going to the grocery store
and buying lettuce, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and having so much that some of
it won't be used, or going to the salad bar and taking just what you want. We
don't have time to check out all the resources of every website, so we pick out
the menu items we want and that's what we get.
Instead of a directory or taxonomy dictated by the website, you, as a visitor,
apply your own keywords (known as tagging) to the information. As others
apply their keywords and tags to yours, it creates what's now called a
folksonomy - a directory created by and for the public. This facilitates our
ease of access and possibly makes the site more visible to search engines. For
these sites, tables are out and CSS is in. The difference in intent is like the
difference between the online Encyclopedia Britannica, where editors decide what
will be published, and Wikipedia, where anyone can edit an entry. Britannica
isn't obsolete. Wikipedia isn't a
panacea.
Interactivity between site and visitors can test-market a new product or service
you're thinking of launching. You post your ideas; perhaps in your blog,
and because of the interactivity, you might receive a suggestion that would
improve that product or service before it's off your drawing board. These ideas
might not have occurred to you during dozens of brainstorming sessions or focus
groups. Your visitor, having invested time and thought into your site, now feels
a sense of ownership and belonging - a community.
Even if you have an invisible website, accessible only through a user ID and
password, you could see increased attendance at your conferences because of
greater interactivity. Visitors could post questions to you and your speakers
prior to your conference so your seminars could be targeted to what they want to
know instead of what you want to tell them. You could hold virtual meetings open
to many people that might never take the time or expense to attend a real
meeting or conference.
Do you need to know all the new terminology (AJAX, Goowy or GUI, kiko, etc.) to
understand the capabilities of Web 2.0? Unless you're selling bells and
whistles, (or you design and create websites) there's a good chance you won't
need all these bells and whistles on your site; or you could already have the
2.0 features you and your site visitors need. If all you need is a site that has
generation one information on it, then Web 1.0 isn't dead and that's fine.
Otherwise, understanding the concept is sufficient. You don't need to know how
electricity works to turn on the computer.
Judy Colbert, Tuff Turtle Publishing, LLC
Read full article at websitemagazine.com