What is Web 2.0 ?

Today, I'm starting a series of blog entries on Web 2.0. These entries will describe my experience of learning different software offerings from Sun in Web 2.0.

First, lets see what is Web 2.0. The term Web 2.0 was coined by OReilly Media  in the opening talk of first Web 2.0 conference (slides) held in San Francisco Oct 2004. This term is heavily discussed and criticized since it's inception. A year later, Tim O'Reilly explained the intent behind this term and created a mapping between early Web development (retrospectively called as Web 1.0) and Web 2.0 apps. It also mentions 9.5 million Google citations a year after the term was coined. However, irrespective of what the community thinks of the terminology, the fact of the matter is there is a prevalent need for online collaboration that empowers the content authors and that is easy (few minutes learning curve), quick (intuitive) and effective (presentable). Flickr, Wikipedia, MySpace, Writely, Del.icio.us and YouTube are some of the most common (and successful) websites showing Web 2.0 concepts. Most of these websites have gained popularity in past 1.5 years but it's hard to imagine life before them. There are a plethora of web sites emphasizing the social aspects of Web 2.0 which was not prominent in Web 1.0. A Google search on Web 2.0 this morning gave 399 million hits. That's an explosive growth in the number of hits, from 9.5 million to almost 4 billion. The two names that are most prominent in the search results are Sun and O'Reilly :).

Today,  the term is fairly well known as indicated by this random survey. Even though this survey was posed to 500 developers, I feel the term has been excessively hyped in the past couple of years and the survey results can be easily extrapolated to a wider audience. Here is a good collection of different Web 2.0 definitions and explanations. Tim O'Reilly posted a compact definition of Web 2.0 as well. In the past couple of years, the principles of Web 2.0 have spread to other industries giving rise to several off shoots. Here is the list of most promising Web 2.0 Software of 2006.

Network connectivity is the most fundamental principle for Web 2.0 to succeed. Any collaboration amongst users is not possible without being connected to each other. This fundamental principle aligns with Sun's singular vision since it's inception, "The Network is the Computer". Check out how Sun helps customers shape Web 2.0.

AJAX, CSS, RSS/Atom, Folksonomies, Blogs, Mashups and REST are some of the main technologies that enable the principles of Web 2.0. In the subsequent blog entries, I plan to talk about these technologies and Sun's offering in each of these.

_{Technorati: Web 2.0 Sun}