Jerry Leventer

I was browsing for information about Google’s SOAP-based search engine API, and I happened to come across this older article about Web 2.0 from Business Week.

The main question to ask yourself is, how can Web 2.0 make it easier for me to get my work done, communicate with people, and turn a profit.

Here are some snippets from the Business Week article.

Silicon Valley loves its buzzwords, and there’s none more popular today than Web 2.0.

Unless you’re a diehard techie, though, good luck figuring out what it means.

Web 2.0 technologies bear strange names like wikis, blogs, RSS, AJAX, and mashups. And the startups hawking them — Renkoo, Gahbunga, Ning, Squidoo — sound like Star Wars characters George Lucas left on the cutting-room floor.

Web 2.0 sites are not online places to visit so much as services to get something done — usually with other people.

The collective actions, contacts, and talent of people using services such as MySpace, eBay, and Skype essentially improve those services constantly (see BW Online, 6/20/05, “The Power Of Us”).

“We’re shifting from a presentation medium to a programming platform,” says Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. “Every time we go on these sites, we’re programming the Web.”

So, you ask, “What’s the biggest idea behind Web 2.0?”

Answer: Communication and Collaboration.