What is WEB 2.0?

Like a child, can you tell I yearn to know more? But let's start from the beginning and then we'll dig deeper. And yea, it's as simple as, what is WEB 2.0? When I first started reading magazines like Business 2.0 I saw it all the time! Business 2.0, Web 2.0, are they referring to something they made up, is it another magazine from the same publisher, is it a totally different version of the world wide web (ha!); I had no clue. The reason for this post is because I know that if I asked those around me if they knew what Web 2.0 is, they would give me that 'I know I've heard of it' look and then probably follow the same train of thought I did OR there are you webheads out there that would just think I was a joke for asking. This term defines the world we are living in right now more than ever and so much so that that's probably why I felt the desire to start a blog. Web 2.0 refers to using the web as a platform and the second wave of investment we are living in today that was projected a couple years ago.


This straight from Wikipedia...


"Web 2.0 is a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2003 (and later popularized by the first Web 2.0 conference in 2004) in reference to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites wikis and folksonomies — which facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. O'Reilly Media titled a series of conferences around the phrase, and it has since become widely adopted.
Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to Web technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the web as a platform. According to Tim O'Reilly "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”