Web 2.0 Concepts and Design

What is web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is a concept which refers to the second generation of web based service- like social platform (MySpace, Friendster), communication tools, wikis and folksonomies etc. It was coined by O’Reilly that refers to a new generation of websites. During surfing the web, these programs help people to communicate and share information with each other online that was not possible in web 1.0 because it was ‘read-only’ web, whereas web 2.0 is extended into ‘read-write’ web.

Google, Amazon, etc. are some examples of web 2.0.

According to Wikipedia-

"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."

Basically web 2.0 is a web based application that focuses on user experience and collaboration.

Characteristics of Web 2.0

Web 2.0 has the following characteristics:

• The entire data is shared through open source code as well as open source content.
• Introduction to different web trends like sharing of articles, blog posting- increasing Web 2.0 applications.
• Web 2.0 delivers web based applications.
• It executes social networking capabilities.
• Using web 2.0 application, the users of different websites are able to interact with the web based application.
• It is more user friendly based on the latest technologies like AJAX.
• It has a vast potential for pioneering web applications.
• It helps to implement social networking capabilities where people can interact with each other.

The tools used here are RSS, Social Bookmarking and AJAX etc which are very powerful and operate faster compared to the previous concepts that were implemented in the earlier arenas.

In traditional web application, when anyone clicks something, he has to wait for the page to load, and thus is time consuming. But in Web 2.0, AJAX has made it most popular because the result comes without wasting time e.g. Google Maps.

Several different business models uses web 2.0 concept. Some of them are-

Ø Web development

Ø Web designing

Ø Search Engine Optimization

Ø E commerce.

The web2.0 is gaining popularity because of it's simplicity and becoming important for marketers. It redefines the market with new opportunities.

Due to the simplicity in web 2.0 concept, various websites are implementing the web 2.0 technologies and are becoming successful. Some of them are:

· YouTube.com : YouTube has gained popularity due to it’s user friendly nature and simple concept. Here people can also share video files among each other worldwide. Due to its popularity, it was sold for over 2 billion dollars to Google.

· MySpace.com: In this website, anyone can create his own profile, friend list and personal homepage. They can share their profile and web page both. In this web site anyone can create the web page by introducing images, text, video, etc.

· Wikipedia: It is a huge and famous encyclopedia available free to online. It is full of resource for everyone that can be updated and edited by anyone.

· Digg.com: Websites like Digg.com is an example of social bookmarking that offers people to create friend lists and share websites, opinions, stories etc globally.

· MySpace.com: As mentioned above, people can also create their own profile, friend list and their own homepage by adding text, images, videos, etc. in this website anyone can share their profile and web page worldwide. It is one of the most visited website viewed online.

Web 2.0 design:

Web 2.0 is designed in a simple way where high contrast colors are used. Colors like green, blues, oranges and pinks are used frequently in web 2.0.

3 basic things are needed to design a Web2.0:

1. Text.
2. Object, and
3. Style

The style of rounded corners in web 2.0 has made it popular globally. The user friendly nature, clever visual design with layout and copywriting will help to go a long way.

Web 2.0 font and color scheme:

Simple clean and rounded font style with pastel or high contrast colors are used in web 2.0.

Posted in: basic seo, color, design, font, layout, web 2.0