web 2.0

web 2.0, as most ZDNet readers will know,

“..refers to what is perceived as a second generation of web development and web design. It is characterized as facilitating communication, information sharing, interoperability, User-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. It has led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and web applications. Examples include social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies…”

…according to the quintessential Web 2.0 browser based collaborative app Wikipedia.

As Battelle & O’Reilly say in their recent post:

“the network as platform” means far more than just offering old applications via the network (”software as a service”); it means building applications that literally get better the more people use them, harnessing network effects not only to acquire users, but also to learn from them and build on their contributions.