Imagine that all of you are venture capitalists, who has invested money in internet companies. If fall year 2000 were out of the window you would find yourself in a deep trouble, because you have just witnessed mass death of internet businesses and astounding collapse of high technology markets. At the end of DOT COM era you might be crying for the money lost. If at that moment I would show this number 2, what would happen ? You would not care, consider me an idiot. But with start of new internet era in 2004 – 2005 0 will be added to tis nice number 2. Being an investor in 2007, you might be smiling while seeing 2.0.
Now Forget about investors – and who you really are, potentially addicted to internet users. Today, let me enhance your knowledge about Web 2.0 phenomenon, which I am sure most of you already enjoy.
Traditionally, we have to start with a definition. Web 2.0 is … Ups. The definition doesn’t exist. Nobody can clearly specify clear logical requirements to classify the web-sites : this site is web 1 and this is web 2.0. But everybody knows icons of Web 2.0 and let me introduce them!
The intellect of Web 2.0 - free online encyclop(a)edia, created and edited, attention !, by internet users. Wikipedia was started in 2001: everybody was able to give defition of a term, and what is mote important everybody was able to edit what the first gut posted. Collective mind of internet produced 1 920 000 articles just in English as of Monday, July 30th the day I wrote this article. The major advantage of Wikipedia traditional encyclop(a)edias:
- It is modern. its updates in real time. Somebody wins Eurovision, in a half an hours you may find article about winning artist
- it has some unique information, like list of famous cats and definition of Scottish apple pie.
Next to Wikipedia is ever most popular social network MySpace. It started like a teenager network to post a photo of new jeans or favorite cat and developed into most popular web-site in Unitied States. According to Wikipedia at the start of 2007 it had for than 100 million users, and everyday about 230 000 new users join it. My Space allows users to stay in touch with your friends, meet new people, chat your budiies, maintain online diaries, exhcnage music and videos and join communities by interest and so on. There is wide-known “six handshakes” theory that states there is any person in the world is separated from another just by 6 acquaintances, 6 handshakes. If this rule will ever be proved by practical tests, it will definitely happen in the Myspace community.
Now a question ? What is the fastest growing web-site at the web ? Enourmous storehouse for user-generated video, it has about 30 mln of videorolics and everyday is 35 000 thousands more. Most of the time the last minute video from the last George Michael concert or flood in Britain can be found at YouTube first, and later on BBC.
The role of YouTube for videos is taken by Flickr for photos. Fliccr is called “New eyes of the planet” What makes Flickr really special is tagging system, which allows photos to be categorized. For example you have downloaded your picture of London Eye to Flickr and assigned it a tag “London Eye”. By searching a tag “London eye” you will find numerous pictures of London eye taken by other users. Important to mention that you can rate or comment their pictures.
If Flickr is “eyes of the planet, than Last.fm is planet’s ears. It an online radio, but what differentiates it from other radios, it is very smart one. Add Last Fm software to your Windows media player or Winamp, it will analyse songs you like to listen, than it will suggest you new songs based on choice of the listeners with similar taste. No better way to discover new or uknown somgs of your taste has been invented by humanity yet.
To end highlighting the most prominent web-sites of Web 2.0 we need to mention blogs. Blog is an online diary, where you post your views, pictures and video. Most of the people blog for fun , but there are experts that basically become web journalists by maintaining own blog. The good example of blog is Livejournal which has more than 50 000 thousand users in Ukraine.
Here let me give one advise about blogging. If you ever are visiting Izrael and searhing the web, here you see this flashy excitiong blog of Iran president Махмуд Ахмадинеджад and feel you would like to explore it. DON’t. While doing research I found out that Ахмадинеджад’s uses special software, which defines the country of your computer, and if you are from Izrael – it will load virus into your system.
In summary after I have described major representatives of Web 2.0 we may be able to define a couple of features, common for Web 2.0
First and best of it - it’s absolutely free ! Nice.
Second –if website is extremely popular and maintained mostly by volunteers – it probably web 2.0
Third – the only source of content is a user. Till 2010 70% of the WEB content – text, audio, video will be generated by users.
I thought to finished my speech by giving you print-outs with all web 2.0 listed, but I have changed my mind. There is no paper in the world 2.0, to see the list just go to my personal blog - www.lyubomyr.net
List of web-sties mentioned in the speech:
Wikipedia
MySpace
Youtube
Flickr
Last.fm
Livejournal