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The Web 2.0 Cheat Sheet

It's ok to admit it: You've seen the phrase "Web 2.0" tossed around so much you're starting to get dizzy and yet you still have no idea what it means. Having done a few long write-ups on Web 2.0 that I'm honestly not sure made the waters any clearer, it dawned on me that what we really need is a Web 2.0 cheat sheet. So, consider this your quick-reference for all things Web 2.0 and, hopefully, your one-stop source for not feeling stupid the next time you're surrounded by geeks.

Web 2.0, The Buzz
When most people say "Web 2.0", they're usually talking about one of two things: (1) social networking, or (2) website development technologies like AJAX. I'll discuss both in more detail below.

Web 2.0, The Facts
Coined by the O'Reilly Group, the phrase "Web 2.0" is really just a way of recognizing that, over the course of the past decade, the internet has changed in fundamental ways. In a nutshell, users are now creating the vast majority of web content, causing a content explosion that requires new technology and new methods of accessing and organizing information.

Web 2.0, The Truth
As a friend astutely observed recently, Web 2.0 is just a phrase we internet people made up because the rest of you kept running away every time we said "dot-com".

Social Networking
In the non-internet world, social networking is a way of studying complex social structures. In the Web 2.0 era, social networking has come to refer to websites that create content through participation. The typical examples are sites like Facebook and MySpace, which allow people to post profiles and personalized content and then connect that information to others with similar interests, creating virtual networks of friends.

Social Bookmarking
Bookmarking was a key feature of Web 1.0, allowing people to store their favorite websites for easy reference. Social bookmarking allows you to share those favorites with other people and build a network to find new websites that interest you.

Tagging/Folksonomy
Activities like social bookmarking require new ways to categorize information, and just like the content itself, that categorization has been left to the users. User-based category structures are sometimes called "folksonomies" and the act of assigning a category to a website or other resource is commonly known as "tagging".

Crowdsourcing
Here's one to pull out when you're with the business types and want to sound cool. The real joy of Web 2.0 for website developers is that users are doing most of their work for them for free. Why build your own content when thousands of teenagers will do it for you? Plus, it's completely legal. We call that "crowdsourcing".

AJAX
This won't help at all, but AJAX stands for Asynchronous Javascript And XML. One of the core problems with web pages is that they're basically static; once they're delivered to you, they can't change much. As people want websites that act more like software and are interactive in real time, those sites need a way to send and receive data on the fly. To grossly oversimplify, that's what AJAX does. It's at the heart of dynamic Web 2.0 applications like Google Maps.

Blogs
In many ways, blogs are really Web 1.0 technology, but they've come into their own in Web 2.0. Blog is just short for web-log, and it started out as simply a form of online journal. Now, tools like Blogger and WordPress make blogging easy, and thousands of blogs are being created daily on a wide variety of topics.

Wikis
In some ways, Wikis are a cross between blogs and social networking. Wikis are collections of content that users can collectively create and edit, making for an ever-evolving work-in-progress. The classic example is the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

RSS
Essentially an advanced form of bookmarking, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds allow readers to quickly organize and access snippets of content (blog posts, news articles, etc.). RSS "readers" allow you to follow dozens or even hundreds of syndicated feeds, tracking what you've read and staying on top of what's new.

Wrapping It All Up
Of course, I'm sure I'm missing a few buzzwords, but these basics will put you ahead of the curve. There are thousands of Web 2.0 websites (usually spotted by silly names like Digg, Flickr, and Squidoo), and the best way to understand social networking and the new internet is to give it a test drive. Social networking, in many ways, is the new word-of-mouth, and has become a powerful tool for many small business to project credibility, find prospects, and interact with their market niches. Web 2.0 may seem like a lot of hype, but getting to know the new web can be a rewarding and profitable experience.

7 Comments · Subscribe · Tuesday, October 23 · Dr. Peter J. Meyers