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Visualizing Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is described here as a term given to a natural emergence of related events, rather than some artificially imposed vision. I think that's a very true and crucially important aspect of Web 2.0.
It's now so clear that people are suddenly shifting their attention en masse to the Web for their computing needs. That is, instead of installing and maintaining a bunch of rapidly aging and non-integrated bits onto their personal computers.
People are finding that Web 2.0 places like Flickr, or Voo2do, and especially del.icio.us are terribly useful because they're always available, whenever they need it, anywhere they go, with their information.
And then there's the added value factor of putting your information into a highly social place. It becomes much, much more useful. People can leverage it, add value to it with comments, tagging, aggregation, bookmarking it, and so on. Your information, if you want, becomes part of the scene.
And with Web 2.0 apps, you still maintain control of your data. You haven't lost it at all, you've really just put it in context.
Yes, so Web 2.0 is such an engaging, lively, and useful place when compared to computing alone.
However, I still struggle to explain the Web 2.0 to my fellow technologists. It's hard to understand all the Web 2.0 forces and the way that they actually seem to fit together so nicely.
Web 2.0 is so much more than Google supplanting Microsoft with services that replace traditional software and just exchanging one market leader for another.
So I'm working on yet another visualization of Web 2.0. It's not the O'Reilly meme-map, it is a more traditional, concrete diagram of Web 2.0 that shows the people facing side and the content and services. And what's inside them.
It's not complete, or necessarily 100% correct. But it's a start. Please comment or change it, I'd like to get this right. And help more people understand Web 2.0.
Source: Social Computing Magazine
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