Why the fuss about web 2.0?

During the past two to three years the Internet has been changing. Although the finer details are still being argued over, a definite drift towards what is popularly known as “web 2.0” has already taken place.

Web 2.0 is not a separate implementation of the web: web 1.0 and web 2.0 pages appear alongside one another, relatively seamlessly…unless, that is, you know what you are looking for. The primary significance of Web 2.0 software is in its capacity to allow website users to progress beyond simply reading the web and to begin writing the web. It enables user contributions, it forms networks: it empowers communities.

This is why WEB 2.0 SOFTWARE has come to power the websites that increasingly dominate the web, including the ubiquitous “social network” sites, such as Wikipedia, Flickr, Facebook, You-Tube, Orkut, Twitter, Tumblr and more. However, these popular websites are really only the icing on the web 2.0 cake. The real work is taking place within hundreds of thousands of organisations and business across the globe who are utilising web 2.0 principles to get their message across, to keep it up to date and to connect daily, even hourly, with their clients, readers and website users.

For some examples of web 2.0 and the difference it is making in the way we use the Internet, see these article on my "tech talk" blog, which covers the rise in popularity of social networking, blogging, online photo sharing, podcasting and wikis.

However, if you're reading this because you think you might need a web 2.0 website then this is what you probably need to know:

A web 2.0 website typically incorporates an editorial or administrative 'back-end', where site-editors and administrators can easily and readily make continual changes to a website, without needing any great technical knowledge of things like HTML or CSS — tthe kind of things which previously created a barrier to producing functional and attractive websites. The software itself does all the clever stuff such as producing internal web links without requiring any messy coding! Furthermore, incorporating images, videos and even audio files is made straighforward too.

For those who require advanced functionality, the sky's the limit: you can have sub-sites and interest-groups with their own discrete sections; forums; polls; e-commerce; categories, tags, taxonomies; image galleries; videos and podcasts; blogs; community membership pages and so on.

With Web 2.0, and Drupal in particular, you're limited only by your imagination!

And if you'd like a little help with that, head over to our portfolio to see some of the implementations we've already been involved in and then contact John with your thoughts.