Web 2.0

From Computing and Software Wiki

The expression Web 2.0 was offered to represent the new World Wide Web. This evolution concerns the new technologies used as well as the purposes of the different usages. Web 2.0 is generally used to describe interfaces with which Internet users could interact on the content of web pages and with other users. Thus, it makes Web 2.0 interactive and very suitable for web communities. Therefore, based on a powerful community will, many blogs, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis appeared to be part of the Web 2.0 . These differents kinds of website show very important characteristics of the Web 2.0 which are information sharing and customization.

History

"Web 2.0" is the result of a brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International more particularly with Dale Dougherty and O'Reilly. They noticed that the web took another dimension and so was evoluding because many new original and exciting applications and websites appeared very fastly. They furthermore agreed on the fact that the companies which had survived this evolution to share certain things or thoughts. Perhaps it was the start of a collective thought through the web and it marked a turning point for the "Web 2.0" concept which was materialized with the birth of the "Web 2.0" Conference in october 2004. They listed several principles during this first conference; one of the first important principles was "The Web as a platform".

Since then the term "Web 2.0" has been clearly used, with several million citations in Google. However "Web 2.0" is still a topic for discussions because many people disagree with the definition of this term. Some people just see it as a meaningless marketing buzzword, and some others are delighted with this new revolution and accept it as a new collective thought and source of knowledge.

Architecture

Component architecture

In web 2.0 the page is still constituted of composents. However, the big difference with previous web pages is that these components can operate independly from each other and "from the whole page". The page will be dynamic, the user does not need to wait till the whole page is reloaded, only the components which need new content will be reloaded with asynchronous communication.

Asynchronous communication

Aynchronous communication is a key point for Web 2.0. In this mode, we will not have to wait for the answer for every request made. As we saw before, a Web 2.0 page has several components. These components could request independantly data from several databases. Therefore, with asynchronous communication, component's requests will not block the whole page. Thus, the user can continue utilizing the interface without knowing that data is being exchanged.

Server and Client

The interface is totally separated from the data. It means that changing data won't need to reload the whole interface or web page. The server will provide only once the interface at the begining, it then supplies only data. The interface and data are respectively hosted by the client and the server.

Global SOA

Both technologies provide open access of functionnalities of software systems for everybody who need it. They also warmly embrace Web services and they agree on the fact that new solutions can be the result of combinations of existing functionalities or services. The data is one of the most important aspect of Web 2.0. It is the same truth for SOA.

Web 2.0 can indeed be defined as a Global SOA that is already composed of many services, composite applications and users. Furthermore, it can be seen as the result of the addition of an internal SOA system and the web-facing application which will allow the internal SOA system to connect to internet.

However they have some divergent points. Indeed, Web 2.0 has an important social dimension contrary to SOA. SOA is more centralized in its management, whereas Web 2.0 is free and savage because there is virtually no control structure. Web 2.0 deals with presentation and style, because style and personalization are rather crucial for the social dimension. Indeed, Web 2.0 has a face for the user. SOA is not concerned by issue of presentation. SOA tends to be standard and characterless, while Web 2.0 twinkles with style thanks to its user interface. But they appear rather supplementary.

Technical characteristics

Tagging : It offers the possibility to users to mark some information and to share it with other people.

Publication : Users should tag, edit pages and add some comments.

Database : Tagging and published information are centralized in a database accessible for everybody.

HTTP : The web communication is based on that protocol

XHTML : To display the content of web pages in a structured way.

CSS 2.0 : To define the style of websites. Thus, it provides the customization and personalization of web pages.

Javascript : To improve interaction between users and interfaces.

XML

RSS: Used to publish frequently updated works

Web Services

Using XML on HTTP in asynchronous mode Javascript is called « Ajax ».

Few Web 2.0 services

Dailymotion

Facebook

Flickr

MySpace

Netvibes

Picasa Web Album

Twitter

Wikipédia

YouTube

Blogger

Social issues

According to O'Reilley Data is the Next Intel Inside, it means that the semantic content of the data is the key point of Web 2.0. So, the major issues of Web 2.0 concern its data content.

Web 2.0 deals with a big privacy problem. The number of user of social networking website such as facebook is in a perpetual growth. Many people exposed there their private life. Even if these websites have some policies about privacy, It is easy to get some information about different people. Furthermore these websites provide interactions with other services which can access to your personal data for other purposes. It could be seen as a double-edged effect because purposes can be kind as well as malicious even if for the moment it is mainly marketing goals.

Web 2.0 is specifically for users, and Users create the content of Web 2.0. This creation can be totally original which is very rare. Most of creations are in fact combinaison of several existing contents. As it is not simple to check the original source of the content, it is often difficult to check the real consistency of the data.

With Web 2.0, by tagging and having a strong social network, people become the media. So, the resulting word of mouth is really powerful and fast. For instance, video of a promising singer could be tagged and seen by many people which could offer a big boost for the career of the singer. This effect could create a Buzz. It is rather difficult for the target of the buzz to control it. We have to be very careful of this phenomenon, because it can easily manipulate people's mind. Marketers really pay attention to this, because a buzz is a strong advertisement for them. So, for them, create the buzz and maintain it is considered as jackpot. A good example of marketing buzz is the Iphone.

Another important problem is the challenge between keeping standards and personalization. Because Web 2.0 is based on creativity and personalization, it is rather interesting to analyze how it can change standards in the education for instance. Students need some structure from teachers. However, social softwares such as "second life" provide them new strong sources of knowledge and new way of learning. So, the education should pay attention to these new methods and perhaps integrate them into their standard ones. Moreover, collaborative work became more important now with web 2.0, because it is easier to have advices from other people and to use information from other websites. As written previously contents of Web 2.0 pages are often based of other contents. So, it is a priority to teach learners how to choose and aknowledge their sources and make them aware about property rights, copyright, and plagiarism.