I continue to lay out for discussion the interesting moments of my thesis “Usability in web 2.0” ( read the first part here ). The second part is called "The emergence and formation of the concept of web 2.0." In addition to the above text, I also talk about the main aspects of Web 2.0. However, I would like to focus attention on this issue.

The concept of web2.0 and the reasons that led to its appearance

The emergence of the term "web 2.0" is usually associated with the article Tim O'Reilly - What Is Web 2.0. In this article, the author compares web 1.0 sites and similar web 2.0 examples. Looking at this comparison in detail, Tim O'Reilly highlights the basic principles of the Web 2.0, formulating the basic principle as “Web as a platform”. The following features correspond to this principle:

• Permanent beta. Unlike desktop software companies, web 2.0 sites instead of scheduled releases are just constantly being improved.
• Use instead of licensing and sales. The principles of monetization of web 2.0 sites differ from the principles of the software industry.
• Wide audience reach. The “long tail principle” is used. Instead of several large clients, thousands of small ones are attracted.

The need to separate the web 2.0 from other categories of sites arose in connection with the appearance on the web of a new category of sites that provide users with various kinds of services and are designed for a large audience of users. Later, the term "web 2.0" became a popular word. The use of this term allowed various sites, far from the concept of the Web 2.0, to attract attention. This at some point led to serious disputes regarding the reasonableness of the definition of the term “web 2.0”. On the other hand, there was a problem of predicting the essence of the web 3.0, which follows from the advent of the web 2.0. Personally, I think that in reality conversations about the Web 3.0 are just a tautology, because there is an incorrect name for the term “Web 2.0”. In fact, web 2.0 is not the next generation of the web. Web 2.0 is only a new category of sites, which has emerged with the advent of new opportunities relating to the Internet and web technologies.

Constantly increasing Internet speeds and connection reliability, as well as the rapid growth in the number of Internet users, have allowed developers to create more functional sites that are designed to work with a huge number of users.
New web technologies allowed to expand the functionality of websites, to create new, interesting services for users. Such services include streaming video and audio, keeping personal diaries, storing and working with files of various formats in the network, services for users to communicate.
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Web 2.0 Prospects

At the present stage of its development, Web 2.0 is a rather fashionable and popular trend on the Internet. More and more web 2.0 sites of various subjects appear on the Web. The largest directory of web 2.0 runet resources has about 400 projects in the database.

Some of the sites are more popular, some less, but there is a tendency of an explosive growth in the number of similar projects and the interest of the user audience to them.
However, a reasonable question arises: will the web 2.0 bubble burst like the dot-com crash of 2000? To predict the future of Web 2.0, it is necessary to consider the trends occurring with projects right now.

Borrowing web 2.0 elements by other types of sites

In connection with the opening of the Web 2.0 new opportunities for organizing and providing information, sites that are not directly related to the Web 2.0, borrow various elements. On the Internet, you can now find customer clouds, commenting on company news, maps - google maps applets. All this is the trend of integrating web 2.0 with other types of sites, and also speaks about the versatility and importance of the components used in web 2.0.

Web 2.0 resources in the current stage of web development are innovators. Ideas implemented in these projects often do not find analogues in the Internet. Convenient API mechanisms allow you to take advantage of these ideas and adapt them to any project, or develop them to the desired level. Because of this, Web 2.0 is developing rapidly and gives the rest of the Internet a lot of useful ideas and knowledge.

In this regard, there are several options for borrowing elements of Web 2.0:

• The introduction of Web 2.0-created blocks into the site, with adjustment to the theme of the site. For example, the implementation of the geography of sales of a software product using the tag cloud of customer cities on the site russianit.ru . The tag cloud, traditional for web 2.0 sites, is borrowed here, but it is transformed under the theme of a corporate site.
• Using the created web 2.0 API sites to use functional elements on the site. An example would be a google maps map integrated into corporate websites inserted into the site using the open API from Google. In this case, the Web 2.0 service functionality helps to better show the location of the company's office than static drawing schemes.
• The use of elements of socialization. For example, the establishment of corporate blogs is becoming very popular in order to create social connections between company employees and potential customers.

Combining web 2.0 projects

In connection with the ever-increasing number of web 2.0 projects, users have a problem related to the need to find intersections in social connections on different resources. Having gathered a social circle on one resource, a user is forced to look for people from this circle and on other sites in order to fully use these sites. This can create a problem for the user, because of which he can refuse to use new sites.
To the aid in solving this problem come the widely spread funds.

• Services that allow you to connect information from several sites simultaneously. An example of such services is, for example, the site bestpersons.ru . This site allows the user to receive information about events occurring in the networks in which he is registered. Thus, the user does not have to visit the sites of all social networks in order to be aware of the events taking place there.
• The process of creating a single API for social networks. The leader in this area is the Google OpenSocial project. More than 15 major social networks are already participating in the project.

Simplify user registration

One of the most difficult places to use web 2.0 sites is registration required in almost all projects. And although the registration process itself is fairly simple, it assumes that there is a certain confidence in the site and a desire to use the site. Not all users are ready to go through the registration process on sites. Users have several main reasons for this:

• Distrust of the site
• Lack of confidence in the need to use the site
• Outwardly quite complicated registration process

Not all of these reasons relate directly to the site, so the creators themselves are often unable to force the user to go through the registration procedure.
To help developers comes the increasingly popular solution, called OpenID.