In the briefest description of Web 2.0 is the next generation of web services which refers to social networking, wiki, and communications tools.
This is a definition of Web 2.0 by 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. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.”
Web 2.0 is openness and can be thought of as the next generation of the World Wide Web or new internet technologies that grow with popularity; Web 2.0 is all about access and sharing information on a global scale and enabling users to self publish articles online.
Some examples of web sites that use Web 2.0 are:
- Myspace.com
- Youtube.com
- Goggle Ad sense
- Flicker
- Blogging
- Napster
The list goes on. Some technology that embraces Web 2.0 are PHP, AJAX, Ruby on Rails, XML, RSS to name a few.
In the early days now referred to as Web 1.0 most most pages were text based and information was written by a few for a lot of people to read. Such as Microsoft for windows or Adobe for graphics information, These days their is much more content be published by multiple people for everyone to read and in some cases to edit and share.
Needles to say the web could not continue the way it was going and then came along Web 2.0 were most text is distributed from different sources and accessible for all to read in a more manageable way. For example in the way of RSS news feeds (Really Simple Syndication)