Where We've Been And Where We Are: Web 1.0 and 2.0
It's a mistake to try to label the Web with iterations: this is Web 1.0, this is Web 1.4, this is Web 2.0. The Web is too ubiquitous, too constantly in flux, too flexible, too all things for all people — and businesses to be comfortably, or even accurately, categorized.
Still, it's convenient to have road markers when you're tying to map new territory, especially territory as broad as the Web.
Coined as the theme of a 2004 conference co-sponsored by O'Reilly Media and CMP Media (parent company of bMighty), Web 2.0 was an attempt to enumerate the various ways in which the evolving Web affected business.
A very general outline gives a sense of the areas of demarcation between these "versions" of the Web:
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Take a look at any of the elements in the chart — bearing in mind that this list barely scratches the surface of the technologies and trends that comprise the Web — and think about how it affects both your business and the way you do business
Some – such as social networking and wikis — may be tangential to your business so far (and may remain so.) But others — like e-mail, Instant Messaging, browser-based communication, search engines, and online marketing/sales — are by now so central to virtually every type of business that to think of doing business without them is, well, unthinkable.
Just as clearly, many of these technologies and trends have as yet to be fully integrated into business or fully exploited by it. That's an ongoing process, evolving even as it progresses.
Standing on this admittedly sketchy ground, the question is, where do we go next, and what does that mean for your business? The answer depends on which "Talking Head" has your ear.
Don't Miss: Part 2 -- Web 3.0: The Next Web
Don't Miss: Part 3 -- Web 3.0: The Risks and the Rewards
Keith Ferrell is the author of a dozen books and countless magazine and newspaper articles. The editor of OMNI Magazine from 1990-1996, he also is a frequent speaker to corporate and institutional audiences.
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