Web 2.0

Channels and tools

Web 2.0 is the second phase of the World Wide Web, in which users move from reading content to creating, sharing and commenting on it.

It is a change of paradigm more than a technology. The phrase first appeared in 1999 in an article by the designer Darcy DiNucci and spread from 2004 with the conference organised by Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle; in 2005 O'Reilly's essay What Is Web 2.0 set out its principles: the web as a platform, where services run in the browser instead of being installed on the computer; the architecture of participation, where a service improves the more people use it; the collective intelligence of users; data as the real asset; the perpetual beta, software released early and improved continuously in public instead of in closed versions; the long tail of small audiences, described by Chris Anderson in 2004. The media scholar Henry Jenkins called the world it created participatory culture, and in 2006 Time magazine named ‘You’, every user, its Person of the Year. Blogs, wikis, social networks, podcasts and video platforms are its tools; Skype, founded in 2003 by a Swede and a Dane and developed in Estonia, is a European example.