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Wait, what’s Web 1.0 ???. The World Wide Web. (AKA: The reason websites begin with “WWW”) The Web is a system of interconnected hypertext documents accessed via the internet. Prior to the invention of the web, the internet could only be used to transfer plaintext information.
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The World Wide Web (AKA: The reason websites begin with “WWW”) • The Web is a system of interconnected hypertext documents accessed via the internet. • Prior to the invention of the web, the internet could only be used to transfer plaintext information.
Hypertext Like regular text, but better! • The development of hypertext led to some important innovations: • Hyperlinking • Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) • Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) • Pretty pictures
Web 1.0 • During the 1990s, the popularity of the World Wide Web skyrocketed. New websites were popping up every day, with new and exciting content for all tastes. • Owning a top-level domain name meant you had made it in the world; website creation was in high demand. • In fact, owning a .com domain or simply adding the prefix “e-” to your company name meant your stock price could potentially double overnight.
BUT THEN… It turns out if you don’t have a product to sell, people stop giving you money. The “dot-com bubble” and collapse heralded the end of Web 1.0, or the content-driven era.
2.0 It turns out writing at the end of things makes them seem more advanced
Web 2: Electric Boogaloo • Though coined in 1999 by Darcy DiNucci, the phrase did not become popular until 2004 following its use by Tim O’Reilly at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Conference. • While it suggests a wholly new version of the original world wide web, it’s not actually a technical upgrade regarding how the web works.
Seriously though, what’s the difference? • The key difference between 1.0 and 2.0 is a shift from an environment of few creators and many consumers to an environment where the consumers are themselves creators. • Rather than passively retrieving information, users can now collaborate, network, and create new content.
Web 2.0 is defined by a few key features, such as: • User/Mass Participation • Folksonomy • A Rich User Experience • The Long Tail
User Participation • Information now flows both ways between site owner and site user. • Users are invited to create accounts, comment, discuss, and otherwise actively contribute as opposed to simply consuming information. • This can be seen in the rise of collaborative and social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, et al.
Mass Participation • Moreover, the stream of new users is essentially ceaseless. • New demographics and content userbases are being created every day, with niche interest groups flourishing about as well as wider interest groups.
Folksonomy • The free classification of information via tags. • This is a collaborative practice that is fairly new, and democratizes the categorization of information online. • Now search engines can retrieve both hypertext data and metadata, increasing the accuracy of web searches.
Rich User Experience • Web content is now dynamic rather than static; it responds to user input. • An example is YouTube’s “suggested video” feature, which will try to suggest videos similar to ones you have recently viewed.
The Long Tail • The long tail is an economic concept not fully realized until the rise of Web content and Web 2.0 in particular. • The traditional supply/demand model would only work if there was a known market; niche interests could not recoup the costs needed to produce content for them.
Amazon and friends • Web distribution has stretched the playing field, thanks to a dramatically lowered cost of distribution. • Services can now cater to increasingly niche interests through “ala carte” or on-demand services, with little to no distribution overhead.
Simply put: If you want to create something, you no longer have to tailor your work to the lowest common denominator. Many creators now make a comfortable living catering to niche audiences through web services like Kindle or Bandcamp.
But don’t take my word for it: If you like extra credit (and who doesn’t?),when you get home, open up your web browser and navigate to www.wordpress.com. Make a free account, write an introductory post, and then email me (timondrick.richard@chisd.net) the URL/web address of your new blog. This will replace your lowest daily grade with a 100.