Weddings and Ramblings“What ??!??! There’s a new version of the world wide web ? where can i download it ?!?!”
ok .. geek jokes aside.
Like I said in my previous entry, its been a while since I’ve posted a Tech entry, so I decided to put in some explanation, and some of my thoughts on this topic. This is only Slightly technical, so its not too bad.
Web 2.0 is not a new version of the web. The way that computers are being linked to each other thru the internet has not changed much fundamentally. So what is the hype about this web 2.0 thing about ? I’m no expert so feel free to challenge me where I’m wrong.
Remember those days, when you went to a fantastic restaurant and walked away damn pleased, so you recommend it to your friends, and your friends recommend it to their friends, and soon, the information gets well known? Thats the power of social networks. Even multi-level marketing/network marketing firms recognise this potential and push their sales through this channel. Of course everyone who tried it added their own opinions as well, adding to the recommendations.
Fundamentally, thats what web 2.0 is about. Social networking. Participation. Its about having social circles contributing, passing on and sharing information, and we’re living in it now. Blogs, social bookmarking, social networks … are all tools that are currently driving this hype (as I am typing this, a sudden horror just struck me … this is a huge topic). Lets look at the internet 10 years ago (if anyone can remember that far). The traditional model was everyone had information. They published their own websites, had the information, just no good way of passing it on.
A notable pioneer to the drive of social networks on the Internet was SixDegrees. SixDegrees was cool that time, it was based on a socialogy experiment that proclaimed that people are all connected to each other by six degrees of separation. This was perhaps the first social networking site. It allowed people to be connected to each other, send messages to each other, post on bulletin boards and let people see whom they were connected to.
Innovation driving other innovations, driving evolutions. From standard personal websites 10-15 years ago that we prayed people would stumble upon, we now have flickr, del.icio.us, friendster. Blogs are born every second and the information is now everywhere. People share photos, links of what they were reading, tag and categorise what they read, and have data feeds (syndication) to bring the information to our fingertips.
Of course with evolution, the whole web started to change. Social networking was just a driver. From here, other technologies also evolved, namely
1) rich clients
2) web services/api
3) mashups
these services overlap each other, we now have rich client browser word processors, spreadsheets, instant messengers. We have mashups of technologies, like flickr on your blog, or bus scheduling with google maps. The fast paced changes were driving mega corporations to change. Companies were getting bought up, and the dot com era seems to be making a comeback.
The web was growing, and changing. It’s still a far cry from what Tim-Berners Lee (father of the internet)
envisioned what his version of web 2.0 would be like (google : semantic
web), but we’re slowly getting there.
Some notable websites/applications driving 2.0
1) Friendster (social networking)
2) Blogspot/Blogger (blogging)
3) Flickr (photo sharing)
4) Del.icio.us (social bookmarking/tagging)
Of course, web 2.0 can’t be simply explained away by an ignorant techie by me, and there are thousands of articles already written on these topics already.
ok. a bit of rambling here. The Straits Times published an article about blogging, and bloggers just 2 weeks ago. Although I only glanced through the article, it showed me that the press still have a rather negative view about bloggers, portraying them as attention seekers. Thats just a frog in the well speaking… I wonder how the reporter got the job to write the front page article.