Welcome Back! 1.Walk quietly to your seat 2.Place your backpack under your seat 3.Turn on your computer and log in 4.Log into (remember, same username and password as your computer), and begin reading “What is Web 2.0?”

Wait, what’s Web 1.0?

The World Wide Web (AKA: The reason websites begin with “WWW”) The Web is a system of interconnected hypertext documents accessed via the internet. Prior to the invention of the web, the internet could only be used to transfer plaintext information.

It looked pretty boring:

Hypertext Like regular text, but better! The development of hypertext led to some important innovations: – Hyperlinking – Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) – Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) – Pretty pictures

Web 1.0 During the 1990s, the popularity of the World Wide Web skyrocketed. New websites were popping up every day, with new and exciting content for all tastes. Owning a top-level domain name meant you had made it in the world; website creation was in high demand. In fact, owning a.com domain or simply adding the prefix “e-” to your company name meant your stock price could potentially double overnight.

BUT THEN It turns out if you don’t have a product to sell, people stop giving you money. The “dot-com bubble” and collapse heralded the end of Web 1.0, or the content-driven era.

2.0 at the end of things makes them seem more advanced It turns out writing

Web 2: Electric Boogaloo Though coined in 1999 by Darcy DiNucci, the phrase did not become popular until 2004 following its use by Tim O’Reilly at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Conference. While it suggests a wholly new version of the original world wide web, it’s not actually a technical upgrade regarding how the web works.

Seriously though, what’s the difference? The key difference between 1.0 and 2.0 is a shift from an environment of few creators and many consumers to an environment where the consumers are themselves creators. Rather than passively retrieving information, users can now collaborate, network, and create new content.

Web 2.0 is defined by a few key features, such as: – User/Mass Participation – Folksonomy – A Rich User Experience – The Long Tail

User Participation Information now flows both ways between site owner and site user. Users are invited to create accounts, comment, discuss, and otherwise actively contribute as opposed to simply consuming information. This can be seen in the rise of collaborative and social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, et al.

Mass Participation Moreover, the stream of new users is essentially ceaseless. New demographics and content userbases are being created every day, with niche interest groups flourishing about as well as wider interest groups.

Folksonomy The free classification of information via tags. This is a collaborative practice that is fairly new, and democratizes the categorization of information online. Now search engines can retrieve both hypertext data and metadata, increasing the accuracy of web searches.

Rich User Experience Web content is now dynamic rather than static; it responds to user input. An example is Youtube’s “suggested video” feature, which will try to suggest videos similar to ones you have recently viewed.

The Long Tail The long tail is an economic concept not fully realized until the rise of Web content and Web 2.0 in particular. The traditional supply/demand model would only work if there was a known market; niche interests could not recoup the costs needed to produce content for them.

The Long Tail (surprisingly literal)

Amazon and friends Web distribution has stretched the playing field, thanks to a dramatically lowered cost of distribution. Services can now cater to increasingly niche interests through “ala carte” or on-demand services, with little to no distribution overhead.

Simply put: If you want to create something, you no longer have to tailor your work to the lowest common denominator. Many creators now make a comfortable living catering to niche audiences through web services like Kindle or Bandcamp.

But don’t take my word for it: If you like extra credit (and who doesn’t?), open up your web browser and navigate to Make a free account, write an introductory post, and then me the URL/web address of your new blog. This will replace your lowest daily grade with a