The speaker presented the importance of Web 2.0 and why it is important. Web 2.0 is a new form of how websites are being built, presented or formed. It encourages community and collaboration. Web 2.0 provides a way for shared content creation and that is the power of it. When a lot of people work together, it’s more efficient to get knowledge and build a community to share that intelligence. Digg, RSS, VOX, YouTube and MySpace are example of Web 2.0.
Websites that are Web 2.0 usually have a clean and simple interface. Web 2.0 is different from Web 1.0. Whether Web 2.0 is built on Web 1.0 or not, Web 2.0 is certainly an evolution of how information is presented on the Web. Web 1.0 is more static and authoritative; it is generally used as a transitional medium such as online newspaper. But there is also some downsides to the Web 2.0, they usually have limited functionality and are too young in terms of the type of content being presented.
The speaker also showed us the use of Tag in the era of Web 2.0 which is something I have not seen before. The Tag is basically associating information with keywords. Flickr and RSS are examples of the use of Tag. Users of Flickr can associate their pictures with keywords and that’s usually how these pictures are being found by other users. The more popular a Tag is the more likely pictures that are associated with will be found. There is also a “popular Tag” page where a list of popular Tags is being displayed randomly on a webpage. A more popular Tag would have a bigger font, thus easier to be seen. How popular a Tag is will all be decided by the community, the users, and not by the company that maintains the website.
Another big product of Web 2.0 is the RSS, which stands for Really Simple Synchronization. As the speaker describes, RSS is like an In Box for the Web. As you subscribe to the RSS feed, you will receive updated information from your RSS reader only if there is new content coming out of the particular RSS feed. You no longer need to go into a website a couple of times in a day to see if there is new stuff being updated, it will get sent to you as a link to notify you that the website is updated. It is efficient and saves you a lot of time in the sense that you do not have to check your favorite site over and over. This is definitely a new way of thinking and in the long term, RSS feed should save a lot of company’s bandwidth.
At last, the speaker presents a whole bunch of Web 2.0 applications. YouTube is certainly on the list, the video sharing platform that gives a lot of unknown people a channel to create and share their own video. Even though the video might not be professionally made, but maybe that is why it is popular. Funny stuff and amazing footage you do not normally see on TV attract a huge audience and it is only growing. MySpace, VOX, Twitter, Podcasting are some other examples of the Web 2.0 application. The speaker also presented Second Life, a 3D virtual environment where you can create content such as buildings and interact with people. The speaker actually held a gallery show inside this 3D environment with people coming from all over the world, which is pretty interesting.
Links: Examples of Web 2.0
VOX
http://www.vox.com
Twitter
http://www.twitter.com
YouTube
http://www.youtube.com
Second Life
http://secondlife.com
Del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us
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