What is Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 is the name given to describe collective elements of change that have taken place in the way people and businesses interact with their computers and each other using computers. The collective elements of Web 2.0 are:
‘ Platform based
‘ Data driven
‘ User involvement encouraged
‘ Continually in a state of “Perpetual Beta”
‘ Limited intellectual property protection
‘ Cooperative as opposed to authoritative or dictatorial
‘ Integrated service design
“Like many important How Corporations Fail their Customers concepts, Web 2.0 doesn’t have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core. You can visualize Web 2.0 as a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles, at a varying distance from that core” (O’Reilly, 2005).
For our purposes though, we are going to contain ourselves to the layering aspect of Web 2.0, and how it can directly affect your bottom line as a nonprofit agency or organization.
Web 2.0 is the descriptive term used to differentiate between the first internet applications called “static” applications used in the late 1990’s and into the beginning of early 2000, and the advanced connectivity of applications in use today. Web 2.0 delineates the very specific differences between the two, namely, the ability of applications to inter-connect with each other, and with other applications that were not compatible previously.
Think Droid… Droid has the ability to interact with 10,000+ applications all at once! (Verizon)
Think Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia that allows the user to be a contributor as well (O’Reilly, 2005). There are the online colleges and universities that allow students to interact with their teachers and each other which is another example of Web 2.0.
Governments are also beginning to utilize Web 2.0 applications. Interactive applications are being provided to survey target populations for their input, and to interact with agency or department counter-parts throughout the world.
The internet and its capabilities have been the catalyst for a paradigm shift or “a change from one way of thinking to another” (Kuhn, 1962) in the way application service providers formerly provided their services, and they way they must provide their services now if they wish to remain viable in the rapidly changing field of technology.