Web 1.0 witnessed a tiny group of writers building Web pages for a huge number of users. It led people to obtain information by moving straight to the source. For instance, readers used Adobe.com for graphic and design related issues, Microsoft.com for all the issues related to Windows and CNN.com for worldwide news and views. As time rolled on, increasingly people began writing content apart from reading it. This resulted in an exciting effect. Out of the blue there was in excess of information to keep pace with! We did not possess adequate time for everybody who sought our awareness and visiting all sites with appropriate content merely was impossible. As personal and customized publishing caught up with the people and went majority, it became evident that the Web 1.0 pattern had to alter for the betterment.

Then Web 2.0 arrived in the picture. In this revelation of the Web information is divided into microcontent units that can be distributed over a number of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer dependent on the same aged sources for information. At the moment people are using a new bunch of tools to cumulate and remix microcontent in novel and valuable ways. These tools and the interfaces of Web 2.0, will lead the way for design modernization.

The confirmation is already here through the use of RSS feeds, search engines, websites, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Web services. Google Maps (in beta) offers the same way of functioning as similar rival services but includes a far superior interface. The interface of Flickr is among the most spontaneous and favorite around. Del.icio.us provides social and personal aspects of functionality and spreads its feet further than its own site. These interfaces are changing the way we store, access and share information. It is hardly of any importance what domain content it comes from.

Web 2.0 has popularly been defined as the Web as platform and if we think it in the same way for interacting with content, we start to view how it makes impact on design. You can think of a situation where a group of stores of content provided by dissimilar parties like companies, individuals, governments upon which we can make interfaces that unite the information in a way no solitary domain ever can. For instance, Amazon.com makes its database of content available to the outside world. Anybody can design an interface to substitute Amazon’s that well-satisfies particular needs. The influence of this is that content can be tailored or remixed with other information to generate much more helpful tools.

As an effect of the remixing aspects of Web 2.0, most content will be first bumped away from the domain in which it locates. Thus, much of the navigation that is used to arrive at a particular point might be far removed from the navigation purposely designed for it. This distributed navigation might come in various forms like a feed reader, a search engine, a link on a blog or some other content aggregator.

The influence of Web 2.0 is comprehensive. Like all prototype change, it involves the people who use it culturally, socially and even politically. One of the severely influenced groups is the designers and developers. They will be building it, not just because their technical expertise will revolutionize, but also because they will need to take care of content as part of an integrated whole.

Tags: Trends of Web 2.0 Revolution