Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The difference between web 1.0 and web 2.0

Web 2.0 was often refered to as the 'future goal' of online development, but the fact of the matter is the change from web 1.0 to web 2.0 is in many ways indefinable. As such, i belive the shift is very much a gradual segway from one platform to another, with various online businesses and communities showing what can be done with the new software.

This being said, it is possible to highlight 10 key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0:

1. Open standards Base: Ensure service connectivity is reliable

2. Ubiquitious Broadband: The infrastructure is now available to support web 2.0 models.

3. Less investment required: Companies can get far without a massive investment meaning companies can quickly be incubated to spread the risk.

4. Better Browsers: New format support, RSS etc enriches the user experience

5. Powerful development environments: AJAX is young but powerful and holds the promise of being easier to use compared to J2EE

6. Device convergance: Ability to access the web from a multitude of devices means on-demand services are more functional for real everyday use.

7. More Innovation: The de-skilling of the technological requirements mean more people get involved in trying to create, often from a more creative user-base.

8: Change in Use: The focus of the web and web 2.0 is firmly on usefuleness and in many cases commercial basis.

9. Maturity: Resiliance and Scalability are easier to provide with cheaper hardware and better understanding of how to achieve this.

10.History: Lessons from the dot com crash are noteasily forgotten…

See: Jana Technology Services

Like many important concepts however, web 2.0 doesn't have a clearly defined 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).

No comments: