Web2.0

**Web 2.0** (also known as **participative** (or **participatory**) **web** and **social web**) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and devices) for end users.

The term was coined by Darcy DiNucci in 1999 and later popularized by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty at the first Web 2.0 Conference in 2004. Although the term mimics the numbering of software versions, it does not denote a formal change in the nature of the World Wide Web, but merely describes a general change that occurred during this period as interactive websites proliferated and came to overshadow the older, more static websites of the original Web.

A Web 2.0 website allows users to interact and collaborate with each other through social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community. This contrasts the first generation of Web 1.0-era websites where people were limited to viewing content in a passive manner. Examples of Web 2.0 features include social networking sites or social media sites (e.g., Facebook), blogs, wikis, folksonomies ("tagging" keywords on websites and links), video sharing sites (e.g., YouTube), image sharing sites (e.g., Flickr), hosted services, Web applications ("apps"), collaborative consumption platforms, and mashup applications.

Whether Web 2.0 is substantially different from prior Web technologies has been challenged by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, who describes the term as jargon. His original vision of the Web was "a collaborative medium, a place where we [could] all meet and read and write". On the other hand, the term Semantic Web (sometimes referred to as Web 3.0) was coined by Berners-Lee to refer to a web of content where the meaning can be processed by machines.

Web 2.0, term devised to differentiate the post-dotcom bubble World Wide Web with its emphasis on social networking, content generated by users, and cloud computing from that which came before. The 2.0 appellation is used in analogy with common computer software naming conventions to indicate a new, improved version. The term had its origin in the name given to a series of Web conferences, first organized by publisher Tim O’Reilly in 2004. The term’s popularity waned in the 2010s as the features of Web 2.0 became ubiquitous and lost their novelty.

At the first conference in 2004, the term was defined by “the web as platform.” This, however, was augmented the following year with a still more nebulous expression incorporating the idea of democracy and user-driven content, especially as mediated by the Internet. In particular, many of the most vocal advocates of the Web 2.0 concept had an almost messianic view of harnessing social networking for business goals.

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An exact definition of Web 2.0 proved rather elusive, in part because the concept encompassed different goals and expectations for the future of the Internet and of electronic publishing in general. A leading critic of the Web 2.0 concept was Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, who pointed out that

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> Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.
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That is, social networking had always been central to the Web, for, according to Berners-Lee,

> Web 2.0…means using the standards which have been produced by all these people working on Web 1.0. So Web 2.0…means moving some of the thinking client side so making it more immediate, but the idea of the Web as interaction between people is really what the Web is. That was what it was designed to be as a collaborative space where people can interact.
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In contrast, Berners-Lee advocated the development of the Semantic Web, which some visionaries call part of Web 3.0.