Web 2.0 technologies are most sought after in today’s web world. Everybody starting from web developers and designers to business professionals and web surfers has been quite appreciative about Web 2.0. The term which was coined by O’Reilly in the year 2003 has come a long way. Web 2.0 is basically a network that includes all the connected devices. Many Web 2.0 applications take advantage of that network as a platform. As a result, these applications have been able to provide updated software to be used by a large number of users.

The whole concept of Web 2.0 is based on using and blending information from various sources. Most importantly, common people contribute a lot to this pool of information and at the same time, presenting a form that lets others to add their own information. So you can call it a structure of participation. But there are many dissimilar definitions around for Web 2.0 which complicate things further.

For some people, Web 2.0 is a collection of tools and websites that encourage participation and collaboration from all quarters. Flickr, MySpace, YouTube and Wikipedia are some of the burning examples of this idea. These sites never offer any thing to purchase from them. You can share your virtual assets and make links with other people. The more you contribute in terms of leaving comments, tagging photos, editing and modifying entries to these sites, the better it serves your purposes. So there is nothing wrong in calling Web 2.0 as a platform made for people.

For web developers, Web 2.0 is all about languages and software that help in building powerful features of these collaborative websites. Ajax, wikis and tag clouds are well-known constituents of many websites. Web 2.0 tools are openly and freely available, easy to grasp and master and above all, easy to interconnect with many applications to enrich user experiences.

Evaluating how well a site matches users’ underlying needs may be a new viewpoint but the usability tools for this analysis are familiar. It is just the perspective of their application that is novel. We are familiar with the basic usability test where a single user carries out tasks for a moderator over the course of an hour or so. Laboratory testing in this way, though, does not accurately reflect people’s social environments.

Instead of the traditional interview method where users are asked to think carefully about their set tasks, data is collected using storytelling techniques to persuade discussion amongst users. In conjunction with eye tracking technology and heat mapping to measure where people’s attention is drawn on the screen, body language, facial expressions and other slight emotional responses are monitored to assess the triggers and blocks to conversion.

The main objective behind all these words is to transmit the meaning of Web 2.0 to all those concerns. But saying Technorati a Web 2.0 search engine sounds good, but it describes nothing. You can define it in a powerful manner by calling it a search engine for blogs that makes use of tags. That’s all. There is no need to mention Web 2.0 here. Web 2.0 is nothing but the Internet. That is the only way to let everybody know what it really means.

Tags: Realities of Web 2.0