Web 2.0 changing the web worldwide
Md. Saquib Hussain | Sunday, 8 June 2008
Internet had been an indirect platform for many people. An average user simply wouldn't write html or make massive websites but use applications and services that are made by professionals to share information. It major missing feature was how to get the views of another person who might actually have the same taste, views and questions. In a new revolutionary model, called "Web 2.0", the end users finally got to the front for of publishing, sharing, and getting involved on the Internet.
Web 2.0 gives a user more than the opportunity of getting information. It provides everyone the opportunity to put their message on the Internet. And this just works! Imagine a store telling you that they sell the best meat in town. Now compare this with another buyer telling you that the store actually sells the best meat in town. You probably would have never believed the store if it wasn't for someone else's opinion. This also gives the opportunity to find out how far such ads are credible. Knowing that a store's quality will be compared by buyers, they would try to avoid selling things that would give them bad reputation. Apart from making the content of an ad more acceptable, this technology brought millions of new users to the World Wide Web. It facilitates harnessing collective intelligence and experience on the Internet for more people to use them. As people become more familiar with benefits of such user generated content, Web 2.0 will become more popular, and make more dependable information easily available.
The entire lifestyle of people has been changing thanks to Web 2.0. Countless social networking sites have popped up fueled by this revolution. It's inevitable, unbelievable, unexpected, yet just perfectly fine. Our social lives are moving towards the electronic revolution, changing the ways of work. From making new friends to keeping up with friends, updating thousands of people about what we are up to everyday, joining groups who share exactly the same views, or showing off new toys - everything in our personal life is now public; but the most interesting part is, this is gives us the scope to choose. Privacy to personal information has always been a key concern. But people themselves chose to put it there because it brings us exposure - something that everyone craves for. Web 2.0 is the spark that really makes anybody and everybody a celebrity on the Internet. The Internet social life have merged so vividly that it's almost as essential as anything else. People would go online before teeth brushing to find out how their friends are doing thousands of miles away. In fact, now it seems alright not to look good while you are rushing to a store nearby, but to make sure you look the finest online -- the effect is of such immense proportions that it has become a part of our identity.
Tim O'Reilly, one of the founders of Web 2.0 says "Many people concluded that the web was overhyped, when in fact bubbles and consequent shakeouts appear to be a common feature of all technological revolutions". People need to have something new, something that really makes Internet different form everything else. Web 2.0 gives us the chance to address such limits by making everyone a publisher. It has made Internet, the biggest ever publishing platform, and I doubt that's about to change anytime soon. We don't need to write codes or use sophisticated tools to make websites; content generated by anyone can easily go up on the Internet. Blogs have given us the power to have our online journal, where we put our thoughts and share with anyone we want to. We don't need to have certification, or permission to express our views on politics, economics, and finance or even review products and make comments. Web 2.0 brings democracy to the world; everyone has the right to convey. An artist does not need a gallery, a photographer does not need an exhibition, a writer does not need a publisher; Web 2.0 is the place to express. This has increased the creative potential of millions of people around the world, who always wanted a platform for publishing. Kids with hidden talents who never got to express, or someone who was too shy to make an opinion public now has the power to do so. The technology has so much potential that even advertisement for US Presidential Elections, or opinion of VP of a company is also coming to these platforms. Web sites like Wikipedia made the encyclopedia obsolete. Millions of articles on just about anything got published by the users for the users, making it the most fascinating encyclopedia ever made.
Videos, photos, write-ups, music or any other media can now be published by the end user. This also makes us discover things exactly of our own interest. The process has become so integrated with the way of life that many of us are actually posting without even using a computer. Some sites support the ability to post articles, photos, and videos directly from the mobile phones; making the content on Internet rich, updated, and more practical. The technology has even grown to such standards that people are actually broadcasting live from their camera phones to their websites.
Another focus of Web 2.0 is bringing applications online. E-mail services on the Internet has made our lives easier, we don't need to download everything all the time, and can always work with emails from anywhere. The photo and video sharing websites have started to give us such features too. The idea is to make information hardware independent. Such applications typically require little or no disk space, upgrade automatically with new features, and provide cross-platform compatibility. Imagine having programmes like Microsoft Word being an Internet application. We can browse into the site, open the word processing program and work with it. Our files and information can be on the Internet, letting us open, edit or share our files practically from anywhere around the world. We will not be tied to our computers because of the need for access to basic desktop software. The value of Information simply becomes higher when it is more accessible, and that's exactly what Web 2.0 wants.
Web 2.0 makes information itself the actual capacity of the Internet, not the software. This lets people discover that they can help themselves to solve problems and get information, Internet is only a platform. This in proper sense is not a technology that is different from the earlier version of Internet, rather a trend of how things work on the World Wide Web. It brings innovative approaches that offer new ways of building, deploying and using IT applications. The society of the digital natives as well as the digital immigrants is empowered by the value of Web 2.0. For countries like ours, the barrier still lies within the overall Internet speed of an average user. We need to make sure that more of us can connect and keep up with the global information highway by adding more bandwidth. The Web 2.0 enhancement is not just for making new possibilities but driven by the fact that it actually provides superior end user experience. It is a platform that is fueled by the users themselves, a technology that is here to stay and only grow bigger.
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The writer is a Training & Implementation Specialist at Therap services, LLC. He can be reached at saquib.h@gmail.com
Web 2.0 gives a user more than the opportunity of getting information. It provides everyone the opportunity to put their message on the Internet. And this just works! Imagine a store telling you that they sell the best meat in town. Now compare this with another buyer telling you that the store actually sells the best meat in town. You probably would have never believed the store if it wasn't for someone else's opinion. This also gives the opportunity to find out how far such ads are credible. Knowing that a store's quality will be compared by buyers, they would try to avoid selling things that would give them bad reputation. Apart from making the content of an ad more acceptable, this technology brought millions of new users to the World Wide Web. It facilitates harnessing collective intelligence and experience on the Internet for more people to use them. As people become more familiar with benefits of such user generated content, Web 2.0 will become more popular, and make more dependable information easily available.
The entire lifestyle of people has been changing thanks to Web 2.0. Countless social networking sites have popped up fueled by this revolution. It's inevitable, unbelievable, unexpected, yet just perfectly fine. Our social lives are moving towards the electronic revolution, changing the ways of work. From making new friends to keeping up with friends, updating thousands of people about what we are up to everyday, joining groups who share exactly the same views, or showing off new toys - everything in our personal life is now public; but the most interesting part is, this is gives us the scope to choose. Privacy to personal information has always been a key concern. But people themselves chose to put it there because it brings us exposure - something that everyone craves for. Web 2.0 is the spark that really makes anybody and everybody a celebrity on the Internet. The Internet social life have merged so vividly that it's almost as essential as anything else. People would go online before teeth brushing to find out how their friends are doing thousands of miles away. In fact, now it seems alright not to look good while you are rushing to a store nearby, but to make sure you look the finest online -- the effect is of such immense proportions that it has become a part of our identity.
Tim O'Reilly, one of the founders of Web 2.0 says "Many people concluded that the web was overhyped, when in fact bubbles and consequent shakeouts appear to be a common feature of all technological revolutions". People need to have something new, something that really makes Internet different form everything else. Web 2.0 gives us the chance to address such limits by making everyone a publisher. It has made Internet, the biggest ever publishing platform, and I doubt that's about to change anytime soon. We don't need to write codes or use sophisticated tools to make websites; content generated by anyone can easily go up on the Internet. Blogs have given us the power to have our online journal, where we put our thoughts and share with anyone we want to. We don't need to have certification, or permission to express our views on politics, economics, and finance or even review products and make comments. Web 2.0 brings democracy to the world; everyone has the right to convey. An artist does not need a gallery, a photographer does not need an exhibition, a writer does not need a publisher; Web 2.0 is the place to express. This has increased the creative potential of millions of people around the world, who always wanted a platform for publishing. Kids with hidden talents who never got to express, or someone who was too shy to make an opinion public now has the power to do so. The technology has so much potential that even advertisement for US Presidential Elections, or opinion of VP of a company is also coming to these platforms. Web sites like Wikipedia made the encyclopedia obsolete. Millions of articles on just about anything got published by the users for the users, making it the most fascinating encyclopedia ever made.
Videos, photos, write-ups, music or any other media can now be published by the end user. This also makes us discover things exactly of our own interest. The process has become so integrated with the way of life that many of us are actually posting without even using a computer. Some sites support the ability to post articles, photos, and videos directly from the mobile phones; making the content on Internet rich, updated, and more practical. The technology has even grown to such standards that people are actually broadcasting live from their camera phones to their websites.
Another focus of Web 2.0 is bringing applications online. E-mail services on the Internet has made our lives easier, we don't need to download everything all the time, and can always work with emails from anywhere. The photo and video sharing websites have started to give us such features too. The idea is to make information hardware independent. Such applications typically require little or no disk space, upgrade automatically with new features, and provide cross-platform compatibility. Imagine having programmes like Microsoft Word being an Internet application. We can browse into the site, open the word processing program and work with it. Our files and information can be on the Internet, letting us open, edit or share our files practically from anywhere around the world. We will not be tied to our computers because of the need for access to basic desktop software. The value of Information simply becomes higher when it is more accessible, and that's exactly what Web 2.0 wants.
Web 2.0 makes information itself the actual capacity of the Internet, not the software. This lets people discover that they can help themselves to solve problems and get information, Internet is only a platform. This in proper sense is not a technology that is different from the earlier version of Internet, rather a trend of how things work on the World Wide Web. It brings innovative approaches that offer new ways of building, deploying and using IT applications. The society of the digital natives as well as the digital immigrants is empowered by the value of Web 2.0. For countries like ours, the barrier still lies within the overall Internet speed of an average user. We need to make sure that more of us can connect and keep up with the global information highway by adding more bandwidth. The Web 2.0 enhancement is not just for making new possibilities but driven by the fact that it actually provides superior end user experience. It is a platform that is fueled by the users themselves, a technology that is here to stay and only grow bigger.
...........................................
The writer is a Training & Implementation Specialist at Therap services, LLC. He can be reached at saquib.h@gmail.com