Web 2.0 information blog

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Many of my friends and clients ask me what exactly is a web 2.0 application and what types of them exist. I tell them these applications can have different degrees of being web 2.0 based on the following:

Level 3 applications

Level 3 applications can only be used with an Internet connection, and they are nothing without the human-driven network. These applications require human participation to improve in content and quality. Level 3 applications include the ever-present eBay, which would of course be useless without people offering goods and other people to bid on those goods; Craigslist for much the same reason as eBay; Wikipedia, since readers are responsible for editing content if they know it to be incorrect or outdated.

Also a member of Level 3 is the application Del.icio.us, where bloggers can increase traffic by submitting their blogs for other readers to comment on and tag based on their own vocabulary. Del.icio.us is especially promising as a new way for searches to work, where readers use their own methods for determining searches. This is expected to help the Internet community in general search more effectively and productively.

Level 2 applications

Level 2 applications are different from level 3 because they are operable without an Internet connection, but their greatest advantages are realized online. These include Flickr, a photo sharing database which is improved by the photos that are uploaded by the Internet community. Without the Internet, Flickr can still be used, but it quickly stagnates when no new photos are uploaded.

Level 1 applications

Level 1 applications are similar to level 2, but gain less in quality by going online. Such sites include Apple iTunes, where you can listen to music offline, but can only purchase new songs by going online. Again, like with level 2 application, the means of updating is dependent on an Internet connection.

Level 0 applications

Finally, Level 0 applications work as well offline as online. These applications are the “least web 2.0 of all.” Some of these applications include MapQuest, which readers do not contribute to, but rather use only for passive reference. Similarly, Yahoo! Local and Google Maps are also level 0.

Finally on the spectrum are non-web applications including email, instant-messaging clients and the telephone.

In general, Web 1.0 is now thought of as “web as information source” whereas web 2.0 is thought of as “web as networking platform.”

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Flickr, Google AdSense, Syndication, Web 2.0, Wikipedia. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.