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Everybody nowadays is talking of Web2.0, but what is exactly web2.0 ? According to Eric Schmidt Google CEO, it’s just about AJAX. Most of you that this is completly untrue and Web2.0 is all about communities. But what exactly defines this community principle ? This is what I’ll try to explain in this posting.
Communities
Web2.0 is just about connecting people ™
Web2.0 famous application are mostly places where you can network, meaning you can contact people with the same interest as yours, share your knowledge or just talk with them.
Sharing and collaboration are not evil, you can work collaboratively on mostly anything, share your arts, opinions, thoughts, etc… through many platforms and what makes them so attractive is that people can make themselves a name using this tools. Blogging is the first of them that appeared and for the first time, so called journalists or bloggers could not only talk to the masses, but also receive feedback, therefore enhancing user knowledge and making them feel “known” by the author.
Functionnalities
So what makes a web application a Web2.0 application ?
Most of these functionalities if implemented on a software may make it ready for Web2.0 logo :
- Item sharing, whatever your application is about, you must be able to share its content to selected users
- Evolution tracking, also called version tracking, if something changes on a page, you must be able to notify users, or even better, log the modification so that you can see the old version
- Public discussion, people must be able to talk over the item you shared to give their feedback
- Private messaging, allowing users to talk in private (meaning not on the public place)
- Communities, you must be able to create communities or groups of interests.
- Tagging, is used to help people find things related to your items, allowing a new level of search whithin your site.
- Information pulling, meaning your users will be able to track whatever they want using RSS
There must be many other options existing, but to me, these are the keystones of any good Web2.0 application. Of course, you can still consider an application Web2.0 if some of these are missing, but having all these can make you succeed in Web2.0 application development.
The last thing that must be noted about Web2.0 is, never, ever forget that users make your app. You should listen to them as they will never hesitate to leave you if they are not satisfied.
