Introduction to the Social Web (Web 2.0, social media, social software)

Abstract

Web 2.0 is a widely-used and wide-ranging term (in terms of interpretations), made popular by Tim O’Reilly who wrote an article on the seven features or principles of Web 2.0. To many people, Web 2.0 can mean many different things. Most agree that it can be thought of as the second phase of architecture and application development for the Web, and that the related term ‘Social Web’ describes a Web where users can meet, collaborate, and share content on social spaces via tagged items, activity streams, social networking functionality, etc. There are many popular examples that work along this collaboration and sharing meme: MySpace, del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, Upcoming.org, Technorati, orkut, 43 Things, and the Wikipedia.