What *is* Web 2.0??

The cynical (dot bom surviving) side of me says that Web 2.0 is a marketing term that means nothing, but while that might be ever so slightly true, this term is actually a catch all for a shift in the nature of web publishing away from unidirectional information flow towards a more bidirectional flow supported through the medium of the Internet. Web 2.0 is about community, collaboration and sharing.

Through web based applications such as:

• wikis
• weblogs (blogs)

People are able to communicate with one another and directly affect the content that is being generated.

Standards such as:

• XHTML
• HTML
• XML
• CSS

Allow for the separation of content from presentation/display. In Web 1.0 days, information was not organized separately from how it was presented. In Web 2.0 development, information can be kept separate from display information by using XML. An XML document can provide another level of information about the type of data contained within its tags. In order to display the content or create an organized display structure, a combination of any of the following standards can be used HTML, XHTML and CSS.

Other features of Web 2.0 include:

• folksonomy (user generated tags for the organization of user generated content)
• syndication, aggregation and RSS (or Atom) feeds which allow for greater sharing of content between individuals and sites
  

So maybe it isn't just a marketing buzz word...