Hello, world!

Though somewhat cliche, such a title feels oddly appropriate for the first post of a blog on the subject of Web 2.0. This being my first entry, I feel I should explain a bit about who I am, and what I intend to write about over the course of the next fifteen weeks. As you’ve probably noticed from the title of this blog, I intend to write about the mysterious concept of Web 2.0, and how it has (and will) affect the way in which people view the world.

As a student who spent much of his youth in the 1990s, I’ve witnessed first-hand the technological transformation which has occurred with the birth and growth of household computers. Within the last decade, however, an online transformation has occurred which stands to fundamentally alter the way people communicate. Without a doubt, this concept of “Web 2.0” has changed millions of lives around the world, though few seem able to define the term. Perhaps first and foremost, Web 2.0 represents an important step towards realizing the full potential of the internet.

In its infancy, the World Wide Web was largely seen as a way to share otherwise paper-bound information; such transfers could be made over great distances and at lightning speed. Soon after, businesses began to recognize how the concept of ‘Internet’ could change the way they ran their businesses. The Web could not only be used to transfer information, but also to act as a platform for corporations to enhance and further refine the consumer experience.

This new technology promised to revolutionize business, but many of those who invested in Internet-based businesses in the late 1990s – the infancy of the Web – didn’t understand how the internet could (and should) be used to create a valuable consumer experience. Eventually, so great was the interest in the Internet that companies were born on the sole premise of having a website. The frenzy over this new technology was surely warranted, but many failed to recognize its full potential.

It was not until well after the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2000 that a more user-centric version of the Web began to take shape. While early websites were static and often one-dimensional, Web 2.0 recognized that the style and content of webpages could be viewed as distinct entities. The creation of Web 1.0 websites was slow and laborious; Web 2.0 offered the ability for new content to be automatically formatted based on a relatively small amount of code. Indeed, it was perhaps this separation of form and content which proved most pivotal to the success of Web 2.0. Content was now able to be separated from form with ease, creating a user-centric experience that made the internet a communication powerhouse. Users could now interact in ways which did not require an intimate knowledge of computers, opening the doors of internet-based content creation to nearly everyone. It was this realization that provided companies an opportunity to give customers a truly unique user experience.

In recent years, several notable companies have begun to capitalize on the successes of Web 2.0 and the many advantages this technology offers the public. Websites such as Facebook, Youtube, and Flickr offer users the ability to easily upload and share unique content, which in turn can be accessed via a multitude of applications and devices. Wikipedia has been generated solely from the anonymous and unpaid contributions of millions of unique visitors. Twitter relies on nothing but one-hundred-and-forty-character ‘Tweets’ to generate a complex network of trending topics and user relationships. New services such as Google Wave seek to redefine the traditional notion of email through an interactive and collaborative method of message creation and modification.

I’m an avid user of many Web 2.0 applications, and have experienced a complete transformation of the way I communicate in the past decade. Naturally, this piqued my curiosity: how exactly has the phenomenon of Web 2.0 altered the way we view the world and communicate with our friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers? Consequently, what this blog seeks to focus on are the social implications of Web 2.0, and how it continues to transform the way we communicate, learn, and perceive the world. In today’s culture of immediacy and constant change, Web 2.0 plays a crucial role in allowing millions of people to interact and transform the in which information is shared. Over the course of the next fifteen weeks, I’ll analyze these new forms of communication and question the benefit and validity each brings to the platform of social media. How will this new content-driven approach to the internet alter the way in which we communicate? How has it already done so? Who stands to benefit from these changes, and who may be at risk?