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Web 2.0 is among the popular buzzwords in Blogosphere and Social Media today. Still, nobody has yet been able to define “Web 2.0″ in a standard manner. According to us, its not a single line definition but rather a set of several characteristics that collectively represent the actual meaning of Web 2.0.

We have described below, the most significant characteristics that a core ‘Web 2.0 service’ does follow :

User-centered Design

A web design which is created in a way that it fulfills every possible need of the end user and empowers the user to perform certain customizations within the design. User-centered designs are cleaner, often ajax based and easy to navigate. The appearance of the design is given a special preference while creating such a design. iGoogle, a customizable Google homepage is one of the most appropriate examples of a User-centered design.

Crowd-sourcing

Every small unit of contribution is important to a Web 2.0 service. Millions of such contributions eventually lead the website to state of higher relevance. For instance, any conventional Media company (employing hundreds of reporters) has today been easily beaten by blogging platforms like Blogger and WordPress in producing extremely frequent and relevant content as millions of users are acting as a contributor, building up a large resource within much lesser span of time

Web as Platform

Gone are those days when one had to heavily rely on the desktop for accessing various web applications.Today’s Web 2.0 services don’t require a client download condition.Nor is the dependency on a particular OS for accessing the web services.Whatever be the method of internet access(Windows,Mac or Mobile OS),the web 2.0 applications are nowhere affected with it

Collaboration

Wikipedia takes the first place when it comes to proving the power of collaboration. Before 2001 (year of Wikipedia’s inception), there used to exist only driven information sources such as Britannica Encylopedia, About.com and similar other sources, where collaboration was never implemented. Today, Wikipedia stands way ahead in terms of content quantity as well as quantity.

Power Decentralisation

Earlier,most of the services used to be administered and not automated.But Web 2.0 services follow a self-service model rather than being a adminstrator dependent.For instance,Google Adsense is a self service platform for Ad publishing.There is no adminstrator for allowing/rejecting the requests from the users.The users get to have a self-service system by Google which helps them deploy Ads on their site/blog quite easily.Same is the case with social bookmarking services such as Digg,Reddit,Stumbleupon etc.

Dynamic Content

In a generation where blogosphere has overpowered the conventional mainstream media, Web 2.0 services have to be highly dynamic and proactive.If crowdsourcing is there then dynamicity follows by default.

SaaS

With Cloud computing on a roll,more and more web services are taking the route of SaaS(Software as a Service). Softwares are available as a web service with no platform dependency at all.

Rich User Experience

Use of XHTML,CSS 2.0,Ajax,flex and simlar other rich media producing technologies have potencially helped making web services lighter,faster,less cluttered and more appealing to the end user.A great user experience plays a big role today,in making users come back again to the web service.

Here’s a recommended ebook on Web 2.0 applications for starters and web development community

It’s worth noting that high end smartphones have become so advanced these days that web 2.0 experience on mobile phones is at par with desktop experience. So web 2.0 developers have less things to bother about while building sites for cross-platform compatibility. Here’s are some of the new phones for 2011 that are sure to provide best web experience on mobile phone.

Recommended: Download Full version of Microsoft Office 2010 a.k.a.  Office 2010

Prashant Sharma

Prashant Sharma is a Delhi based Entrepreneur who spent most of his college days polishing his marketing skills and went for his first business venture at 19. Having tasted failure in his entrepreneurial debut, he turned a Tech-enthusiast, specializing in web technologies later. Today, he heads AQR8 Media, a Digital Marketing and Technology firm and writes at TechPluto as well. Join him on Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook