This week “Web 2.0″ has been coined as the 1,000,000th word in the English dictionary. From what I have read, the news hasn’t exactly been met with open arms. For sure, I realise it’s not the most romantic word around. I think more to the point though, it’s difficult to digest.

“I mean, I ask you: ‘Web 2.0′? Do you call that a word? In my book, it’s no more a word than ‘Bog 43.7′.” (Tom Utley, Daily Mail)

Some have classed it as just a ‘buzzword’ that doesn’t have a real meaning. So I’m going to try and give a brief summary of what web 2.o is. Although I do quite like Bog 43.7, you never know it may just catch on!

Below is a graph from Google Trends showing its growth in popularity, although ironically, now seems to be on a downer.

“After that, the trend is clearly downwards, falling back to the level it reached in early 2006 today. If the trend continues, there should only be a handful of people left who scour search engines for “Web 2.0″ by 2011.” (Robin Wauters, Tech Crunch)

However, in whatever form and however popular, there is some sort of a rational explanation for it’s existence.

The question, “What is Web 2.o”?

Okay, so now lets have a general look at it’s ‘definition’…..”the next generation of worldwide web products.” Well, now that didn’t help too much. So next, we need to know what characteristics these “next generation” products have to possess, in order to be defined as web 2.0.

Tim O’Reilly goes into depth about this topic in his article, What Is Web 2.0. However I am going to pick out the characteristics to try and solve our problem.

Characteristics

1. Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
2. Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
3. Trusting users as co-developers
4. Harnessing collective intelligence
5. Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
6. Software above the level of a single device
7. Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models

Right, looks pretty sensible to me. Next, we need to apply this model to real word “next generation worldwide web product”. Lets take Google Finance.

1. Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability - (Accessible online and without payment)
2. Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them (Mixture of financial feeds, articles and discussion)
3. Trusting users as co-developers – (Full access to discussion and API(Allows developers to have access to certain information))
4. Harnessing collective intelligence – (Articles from various resources, even relating to your portfolio)
5. Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service – (Pretty much self-service)
6. Software above the level of a single device - (Can be accessed on multiple devices such as mobile and desktop, from anywhere.)
7. Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models – (Suppose so, but I think this one is down to personal preference)

Overall, not the most definitive answer to the question. Nevertheless apply the principles above and you may be able to distinguish “Web 2.0″ from”Bog 43.7″.

Sources:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/14/the-death-of-web-20/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1192467/TOM-UTLEY-What-let-The-millionth-English-word-arrives-great-fanfare-So-I-struggling-right-one.html

http://www.google.com/trends?q=Web+2.0