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Although coined only 3 years ago by O'Reilly Media, Web 2.0 is quickly becoming a common practice in our internet experience, but many people do not know what it really means. Its name suggests that it's an upgrade from the original Web 1.0. As such, web 2.0 would point to the next generation of the internet, truly an enormous thing. But what is the real essence of web 2.0? This article is meant to provide a broad overview of web 2.0, what it is, how it came about, and how you can recognize it.

What Web 2.0 means?

Web 2.0 is changing the entire focus of internet surfing. With web 2.0, you are no longer passively reading through pages and clicking to other pages. Instead, you are contributing with each click, modifying search engines with your own vocabulary, helping to improve your own future online experience, and communicating with, sharing with, and teaching others throughout the world. Web 2.0 is still quite new, but it promises to be the next big generation in internet communications.

The phrase 'web 2.0' itself is a catchy phrase with questionable inherent meaning. O'Reilly Media, working with Media Live International, initially coined the phrase when naming a series of internet conferences in 2004. Since then, the phrase web 2.0 has been adopted by developers and marketers alike, but some people question whether each use of the word adheres to the original definition, or whether a rigid definition even exists. The expert Tim O'Reilly has said, in effect, that web 2.0 includes all applications, using the internet as a platform, that improve in quality and content as more people use them. To put it more glibly, web 2.0 is 'the intelligent web,' where the internet and the collective intelligence combine.

The Levels of Web 2.0

As explained above, Web 2.0 has a lot to do with human interaction in the web; therefore, these levels of interaction have been set at 4 as follows:

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 ubiquitous 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same reason as eBay; Wikipedia, since readers are responsible for editing content if they know it to be incorrect or outdated.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. They 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. They 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.

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

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.' Among these Web 2.0 sites we find the so called Social Bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Digg, Stumble Upon and many more, and the Social Networking sites like MySpace, You Tube, Facebook, Yahoo Answers, Twitter, Squidoo, etc, just to mention the most common ones.

Finally the internet-savvy community has found a way to make money from these social sites. In fact, experts say that the greatest money making schemes on the web are in Web 2.0. But that will be the topic of another article.