Web 2.0 vs Web 1.0

Major dividing line between them is in mode of content creation. In a Web 1.0 site all content is created by site owner. In Web 2.0 site content is partially created by site owner. Degree of Web2.0-ness can be assessed by proportion of owner created content against user created content. Pure Web 2.0 sites do not have any (or very little) content created by the site owner (Flickr, del.icio.us, Google, Wikipedia). Less pronounced Web 2.0 sites have mixture of owner and participant content (blogs with comments, forums, wikis).

Web 2.0 sites differ in degree of literal participation (my term) of users . On some sites users literally participate in the content creation by commenting and contributing articles (Wikipedia, forums, blogs). On other sites participation is not as clearly visible - users do something (tagging of bookmarks in del.icio.us) that fulfills their need (organizing bookmarks for own use) and participation aspect is derived from this activity.

Examples of non-literal participation are Google link ranking, del.icio.us and Technorati tagging. In extreme cases of non-literal participation users are not even aware that their content is being used. RSS aggregation sites do not need to make RSS feed owner aware of aggregation. Users might not know how content is used too (Google does not disclose how much of site content is cached and how site ranking uses link information). The most extreme form of non-literal participation are mushups.

Variations in degree of literal participation present serous ethical and legal problems. Should content usage be acknowledged and how? What is fair use of content in a mushup? Is it ethical to aggregate RSS in a way that impedes site owner ability to receive advertizing revenue?

Initiative for Participation

For the sites with high degree of literal participation quality of the content define degree in which site can engage readers into participation. Wikipedia is a major success for this sort of sites.
For the sites with non-literal participation it is service and technology of information processing define degree of participation. For example del.icio.us provides a bookmaking service and participation is defined by usefulness of this service and underlying technology.

Web 2.0 vs BBS, USENET and Gopher

It is clear that Web 2.0 is conceptually close to earlier technologies for distributed collaboration. Good old mailing lists are still in use today. There is not much difference between USENET groups and Web 2.0 forums. Google Groups is an example to it. Old BBS systems were popular and they were used in a way similar to MySpace. IMHO MySpace is what AOL was some time ago…

I think there are several differences between older systems and Web 2.0
Friendliness of user interfaces

• Nice presentation with CSS
• Standartized syntax of HTML
• Interactivity of AJAX
• Multimedia content

Ease and ubiquity of access

• access over Internet is much simpler than calling a BBS using local phone number
• any Web 2.0 system can be accessed using the same browser
• user capacity of web server is usually higher than BBS and Gopher systems

Searchibility

• web sites are easier to search than old mailing lists
• there were no centralized search engine for mailing lists
• Gopher had very limited searching capability

Economic model

• advertizing revenue of some Web 2.0 sites exceed 1 million a month at the higher end of the scale
• a lot of blogs generate enough income for their owners. For many blog owners $100 a month is enough reason to keep writing

Mushability

• web service interfaces and APIs allow too create systems of systems
• RSS allows platform-independent publish/subscribe functionality
• meta data allows effective content filtering
• tagging allows identify popularity of content

MUDs, MODs, and Virutal Worlds

A special word has to be said about Multi-user Dungeons. I think Web 2.0 has not caught up with them yet. Degree of user engagement and participation in MUD is much higher… Would Web 2.0 become a virtual world for people? I remember how one my co-worker showed up to work with his palm in a cust because he damaged it playing World of Warcraft on a weekend. I have seen a student that could not do anything for two weeks because ot this game… Do we have that kind of participation in Web 2.0?

I think Virtual Reality games are proprietary version of Web 2.0. They tend to create their own worlds that do not interact with other worlds. My wild guess is that in the future we might see them open up and mushup. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see World of Warcraft conquering SecondLife… or a battle for domination between several virtual worlds?

However I think that more realistic scenario would be for Web 2.0 site to become more interactive and become more like Virtual Worlds. I can see an AJAX-based virtual environment working across multiple Social Networks sites mushed-up into one system. It would have virtual reality graphics and rules of participation similar to a Virtual World. That would become a beginning Virtual World Web. How is that for an idea?