Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a term that is used to describe the second generation of the internet, which is still in the process of developing. It’s mostly known for focusing on user interaction and social networking. Without web 2.0, sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Wikipedia wouldn’t exist. Blogs, Podcast, and RSS feeds are also a result of Web 2.0.

I personally really don’t really understand the real specifics of web 2.0, partially because there is a lot of insider jargon used to really describe it. What I can say is that the internet does seem to be going more towards a social networking direction. Back in the early 2000s, the only social interaction I remember getting on the net was though AOL. Then in 2004 when I entered college at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, I remember everyone was making a big deal about MySpace and later on Facebook. These sites made it easier to keep in touch with old friends and new friends. You could quickly hop on to someone’s profile and see what they were interested in, what their class schedule was like, you could even see how their weekend was by photos they posted.

Of course, social networking sites aren’t the only major changes I’ve seen in the way I’ve used in the internet in the past couple of years. Wikipedia has also become one of the sites that I couldn’t see myself living without. Of course, it’s not reliable enough to use for a college paper but its good background information. It’s edited by users who feel like they know enough about whatever topic it is they are updating. The advantage point to this is that Wikipedia is also like a pop culture encyclopedia. For example, I was talking to my friends last Thursday about the death of Heath Ledger, he told me when he heard about it on the radio he thought it was a joke until he looked it up on Wikipedia later on that day. A normal encyclopedia wouldn’t even have an entry on Heath Ledger. What other site can you go to that you can look up something significant like Stem-Cell Research to something as trivial as the life of a celebrity?