The Characteristics and Design of Web 2.0

As the Internet world is changing very swiftly, now the users look for more than a web site instead of simple text and picture based website. They want to be more interactive to the world by sharing their views; they want to show their talents in terms of their new creation to the global world. For fulfilling these necessities, a new concept was born that have all-in-one technology in itself and it is called Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 was coined by Tim O'Reilly in O' Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. This concept was evolved and developed from the need of web based communities and hosted service. Web 2.0 is now-a-days is the most common keyword on the internet. It has the characteristics of social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies etc.

Definition and Uses

Tim O'Reilly, the father of Web 2.0 has defined, ?Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. ?

In short we can say that Web 2.0 is the improved form of the World Wide Web that contains the technologies like weblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, social software, web application programming interfaces (APIs), and online web services. It allows users not only to manipulate data, but also to retrieve. It provides a wide range of software and services, which attracts the web users. Most of the times, it does not disappoint the user, that's why this technology is being so popular.

Effective Web 2.0

Web 2.0 has given the new definition to the web in which human and machine both participate for successfully operation of the web. It can be differentiate by the following themes:

Read/Write Web: Read/Write web is the two-way medium where the people are readers and the writers and share their views to one another like social software.

Web as Platform: This is the different type of theme for web 2.0 in which software programmes communicate one another using Application Programming Interface. The developer develops the software that runs on this platform.

The characteristics of Web 2.0 have forced the software giant firms to use these technologies in their services. e.g. Google offers the Blogger, Adsense, Search, Base, GTalk, Reader, and Statistics that provide the users flavour of both themes, while Yahoo's most of the services like Email, Maps, Shopping, Music Downloads, Yahoo local, Flickr and Del.icio.us are based on Web 2.0 technique.

Another very popular web giant Amazon, which is famous for its affiliates program has also been used Web 2.0 technologies. Latest Mechanical Turk service is the latest example of this. World's top auction site ebay, also use this technique, which has provide it the strength to widen the greater participation services.

Here, we discuss the fundamental phases of Web 2.0 and its technologies.

Web 2.0 Logo

Any branded website needs a unique logo (the pictorial or graphical icon that reflects the brand and Characteristics of the company), so that net surfers can identify the exact company from its pictorial representation. The importance of logo is extremely high in the marketing as only for representing specific and unique logo, many companies spends million of million dollar on it.

The Web 2.0 technology is also not the exception of it. Every branded company illustrates a unique logo for easy recognition. But, there are few similarities in illustrating the logos of the Web 2.0 based website. Here are the basic characteristics:

• Basic characteristics:
  In the basic characteristics of the logo of Web 2.0 website, usually gradients and bright colors are used to draw the logo because it represents the freedom of new media. The font style has been changed and no use of serif font in the logo like earlier versions of website logo. The use of shadows, reflection of image and emboss of the logo has been common in Web 2.0, the trend of glossy effect has also been increased. It is generally made by logo generator tools and the prepared logo represents the reflection of the website.
   
• Secondary characteristics:
  The above describe characteristics are very common in Web 2.0 based websites, but besides these some less common characteristics are also being used for making a logo.

Most of the community websites use speech bubble shaped logo containing rounded corner. Spheres and 3d shapes are also being used. The shiny and 3 dimensional logos are being popular as the users like these types of logo. Adding ?beta' with the logo has been trends now, many websites stick ?Beta' with the logo pictures. The size of icons has been reduced and many time the designer use strange or lesser-known word in the logos. Some designers or website also uses + mark to look younger generation website.

Web 2.0 Templates

Web 2.0 Templates are different in design and pattern from traditional website templates in terms of everything from content fonts to background colors. Web 2.0 Templates are easy to manage and users can identify the websites that use these templates.

These templates are rich in graphical and navigational tools like icons and bright color choices as well as all the contents are subdivided into special blocks that make it easy for surfers to search the site and to grasp the close image of the site as the visitors enter in the site.

The popularity of Web 2.0 template proves that these templates have changed the trend of old and boring designs. Now, the webmasters can also purchase the readymade templates for using in their website as several web companies are selling these services on the net.

Content of Web 2.0

With the changing trends in web, the pattern and style of the contents have also been changed. The fundamental of the writing has not been widely changed but the way of inputting the contents have been changed widely. In this new technology, the readers and visitors can also submit, add or edit the content on the participatory basis. The content can also be shared, add in the favourite and send to others. The editors, developers and administrators are responsible for the available contents.

In the new technology, the contents can also been read and use by the machines using API and syndication (RSS) tools, e.g. Google Maps that spread quickly using API while news websites uses RSS feed to spread the news quickly.

Games culture changes in Web 2.0