Web 2.0

The Web as Platform

Like many important concepts, Web 2.0 doesn’t have a hard 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.

Tim O’Reilly, What is Web 2.0?

Examples:

• Google Apps

(Gmail, Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Google Reader, Google Maps, etc.)

• WordPress.com
• JumpCut

The underlying technology for these web-based apps is often called AJAX:

However, the potential of the web to deliver full scale applications didn’t hit the mainstream till Google introduced Gmail, quickly followed by Google Maps, web based applications with rich user interfaces and PC-equivalent interactivity. The collection of technologies used by Google was christened AJAX, in a seminal essay by Jesse James Garrett of web design firm Adaptive Path.