Web 2.0 Applications Essay Example for Free

Web 2.0 Applications Essay O’Reilly (2006) in his Commencement Speech at UC Berkley , explained that the genuine Web 2. 0 application is the one where there is a proportionality between the number of users and the development of the application. Because of this, it is argued that the core value of Web 2. 0 is being able to effectively harness the innovativeness of everyone in the group. This kind of development is a step forward as compared to the previous state of the internet where the Web as a platform remained a baffling mess of buzzwords with no real clarity. Spolsky(2005) agreed with this stating that Web 2.0 is â€Å"a big, vague, nebulous cloud of pure architectural nothingness† and that â€Å"when people use the term Web 2. 0, I always feel a little bit stupider for the rest of the day. † Although this is obviously true, in this specific sense, the concept of the Web 2. 0 application is nothing new at all to the World Wide Web. The term Web 2. 0 is used when a read-write aspect of the Web is used in a participatory way that actually creates greater shared knowledge for all. It was the widespread adoption of blogs, wikis, MySpace and other read-write techniques that ushered in a common I-write-and-everyone-reads-it usage pattern (Hinchcliffe 2006). The concept of Weblog or Blogging has been defined by Drezner and Farrell (2004) as â€Å"A web page with minimal to no external editing, providing on-line commentary, periodically updated and presented in reverse chronological order, with hyperlinks to other online sources. † Yet even though this definition exists, other researchers such as Nardi et al (2004) express that weblogs currently accessible in the internet have a great diversity that is there is not a single dominant style of activity in the net. Others (Dyrud , Worley Quible, 2005) agree with this but on the hand, they expressed that there is something common to all blogs and that is they are primarily a venue in order to share information (regardless of the amount and manner) between people, groups, and organizations. According to Blood (2000) there are essentially two types of weblog: those that emphasize the diary and comment aspect, and those that emphasize hyperlinks. The former may seek to influence wider public opinion, or merely to raise the profile of the blogger; the latter act as a filter system, looking at what exists on the Web and recommending content that might be of interest to visitors. If bloggers make mistakes in the information they publish, they rely on their peers to point out any errors (Johnson and Kaye 2004) – this sentence is very ‘stand alone’ you may wish to introduce the idea of authority of authority of Web 2. 0 technologies (which will presumably covered again in Wikis etc) . Thus, Blogs have unique features that traditional web media does not have. About 2. 7 million bloggers update their blogs at least weekly. According to Technorati, new blog creation continues to grow Figure X shows the number of new blogs created each day, from January 2004 to January 2006: As was mentioned above, there are various types of blogs and each variation provides the information to the user as different as possible. Factors to be considered are the type of the media to be used in order to transfer the information, the device that is used, the genre, the legal status of the publishers, blog search engines, and blogging communities and directories. One varying consideration to blogs is the kind of media that is used in order to share the message from the person/organization that would want to give the message to the recipient of the message. Take for example; a video blog is called a vlog, a blog that is comprised of links to other sites or networks is called a linklog. Another kind of blog that contains a series of sets of sketches is called a sketchblog and another type similar to a sketchblog is called a photoblog – one that comprises of photos being shared, uploaded and downloaded.