User Generated Content Guide.com

Internet applications can have different degrees of being web 2.0. These degrees are as follows:

Level 3 applications can only be used with an internet connecting, and they are nothing without the human-driven network. These applications require human participation to improve in content and quality. Level 3 applications include the ubiquitous eBay, which would of course be useless without people offering goods and other people to bid on those goods; craigslist for much the same reason as eBay; Wikipedia, since readers are responsible for editing content if they know it to be incorrect or outdated. Also a member of Level 3 is the application del.icio.us, where bloggers can increase traffic by submitting their blogs for other readers to comment on and tag based on their own vocabulary. del.icio.us is especially promising as a new way for searches to work, where readers use their own methods for determining searches. This is expected to help the internet community in general search more effectively and productively.

Level 2 applications, are different from level 3 because they are operable without an internet connection, but their greatest advantages are realized online. These include Flickr, a photo sharing database which is improved by the photos that are uploaded by the internet community. Without the internet, Flickr can still be used, but it quickly stagnates when no new photos are uploaded.

Level 1 applications, are similar to level 2, but gain less in quality by going online. Such sites include Apple iTunes, where you can listen to music offline, but can only purchase new songs by going online. Again, like with level 2 application, the means of updating is dependent on an internet connection.

Finally, Level 0 applications work as well offline as online. These applications are the “least web 2.0 of all.” Some of these applications include MapQuest, which readers do not contribute to, but rather use only for passive reference. Similarly, Yahoo! Local and Google Maps are also level 0.

Finally on the spectrum, are non-web applications, including email, instant-messaging clients and the telephone.

In general, Web 1.0 is now thought of as “web as information source,” whereas web 2.0 is thought of as “web as networking platform.”

The complex and evolving technology infrastructure of Web 2.0 includes server-software, content-syndication, messaging-protocols, standards-based browsers with plugins and extensions, and various client-applications. These differing, yet complementary approaches provide Web 2.0 with information-storage, creation, and dissemination capabilities that go beyond what the public formerly expected in Web 1.0.

Web 2.0 websites typically include some of these features:

• Rich Internet application techniques, often Ajax-based
• Semantically valid XHTML and HTML markup
• Microformats enriching pages with additional semantics
• Folksonomies (in the form of tags or tagclouds, for example)
• Cascading Style Sheets to separate presentation from content
• REST and/or XML- and/or JSON-based APIs
• Syndication, aggregation and notification of data in RSS or Atom feeds
• Mashups, merging content from different sources, client- and server-side
• Weblog publishing tools
• Wiki or forum software, etc., to support user generated content
• OpenID for transferrable user identity
• Use of Open source software, such as the LAMP stack

Web 2.0 … Web 2.0 …. Web 2.0 ….. what is all this talk about Web 2.0?

Although coined only 3 years ago by O’Reilly Media, Web 2.0 is quickly becoming vernacular in our culture, but many people do not know what it really means. It name suggests that it’s an upgrade from the original world wide web. As such, web 2.0 would signal the next generation of the internet, truly an enormous thing. But what is the real essence of web 2.0? This section is meant to provide a broad overview of web 2.0, what it is, how it came about, and how you can recognize it.

Web 2.0 is changing the entire focus of internet surfing. With web 2.0, you are no longer passively reading through pages and clicking to other pages. Instead, you are contributing with each click, modifying search engines with your own vocabulary, helping to improve your own future online experience, and communicating with, sharing with, and teaching others throughout the world. Web 2.0 is still quite new, but it promises to be the next big generation in internet communications. The phrase “web 2.0” itself is a catch phrase with questionable inherent meaning.

O’Reilly Media, working with MediaLive International, initially coined the phrase when naming a series of internet conferences in 2004. Since then, the phrase web 2.0 has been adopted by developers and marketers alike, but some people question whether each use of the word adheres to the original definition, or whether a rigid definition even exists. The expert Tim O’Rielly has said, in effect, that web 2.0 includes all applications, using the internet as a platform, that improve in quality and content as more people use them. To put it more glibly, web 2.0 is “the intelligent web,” where the internet and the collective intelligence combine.