Web 2.0 Technology

Semantic web is an evolving extension of World Wide Web Consortium and It’s Director Tim Berner’s Lee founded in the year 1989.

Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web culture communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies.

O'Reilly and John Battelle they frame the themes of Web 2.0.

Four levels in the hierarchy of Web 2.0 sites:

1. Level-3 applications, the most "Web 2.0"-oriented, exist only on the Internet. Examples: eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype, dodgeball, and AdSense.
2. Level-2 applications can operate offline but gain advantages from going online. Examples: Flickr.
3. Level-1 applications operate offline but gain features online. Examples: Google Docs & Spreadsheets and iTunes.
4. Level-0 applications work as well offline as online. Examples: MapQuest, Yahoo! Local, and Google Maps.

Web 2.0 websites typically include some of the following features/techniques

1. Rich-Internet application: Techniques to improve the user-experience in browser-based application such as AJAX, Adobe Flash, Flex, Java, Silverlight, Curl etc.
2. Server-Side software: Dynamic content management system by using much more robust database and workflow support.
3. Client-side software: Reduce server workloads and to increase responsiveness of the application by using scripting language such as JavaScript/AJAX, Flash, Curl Applets or Java Applets.
4. XML and RSS
5. Specialized protocols such as FOAF and XFN (both for social networking)
6. Web APIs which allow web-based access to data and functions: REST and SOAP
7. Search: Easily find the information in the site by specifying the keyword which makes the platform valuable.
8. Links: guides to important pieces of information. The best pages are the most frequently linked to.
9. Authoring: Able to post content by different users. While in blogs is increasing that posts and comments of individuals are accumulated over time.
10. Tags: categorize content by creating tags (one-word description) increase facilitate of searching.
11. Extensions: Automation some of the work and pattern matching by using algorithms e.g. amazon.com recommendations.
12. Signals: Notify users frequently about the changes that are made to the site by sending mails to them in the format of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) technology.

Current World Internet Usage and Population Statistics