Silicon.com has a Web 2.0 cheat sheet for those interested in learning the basic concept of Web 2.0. Many people have heard of it and it’s hard to pinpoint an exact definition for the term. It is a broad generalization of a number of things.
As the cheat sheet states, Web 2.0 is the next dot-com era. This for the most part is true. In my opinion I think it’s the next best thing on the Internet making much improvement over technologies that we have come to use on a daily basis.
The examples the cheat sheet gives are Blogger, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube and Wikipedia. The popular thing about all of these sites is user generated content. All of these sites are based on what the internet user has to say and they are what make the site as popular as it is.
The whole concept of Web 2.0 comes from all different directions on all different topics. As I said earlier most of these projects are taking someone we already use and making it better by making it faster and easier to use.
Another principle of Web 2.0 is the conversion of desktop applications to web applications in order to create cross platform environments accessible anywhere there is an Internet connection. Although these applications are primitive and limiting compared to their desktop counterparts, many of these web applications are written well enough for most people to use.
As Web 2.0 gets bigger hopefully people have learned from the original dot-com bust. By learning from the mistakes there will definitely be some great web applications of the future. Many of which we are seeing today, but I think that this is only the beginning.
