lauri@imke

Since we’re living in the internet era, web applications and services have been growing rapidly. It all has given a perfect environment for the birth of new and powerful web – the web 2.0.

For the last years web 2.0 has been the mystical keyword – it’s hot and attractive. According to alexa.com, basicly all the highest ranking websites in the TOP 10 are web 2.0 applications. In some case it’s also logical, because in order to stay popular and ensure the growth of the site, you have to follow the latest trends.

So, what actually stands behind web 2.0? There are three major aspects that identify web 2.0: the content, usability and technologies. The most important is the content – it’s usually generated by the members and commented and rated by other members of the site making the web interactive. Most of the popular web 2.0 sites have a very certain target group – the members share their experiences about fixing a bike, listening to classical music, baking a chocolate cate etc. That makes the members feel like they belong to a community and this community-feeling makes them to come back to the site.

The other important factor is the usability of the web. By usability I mean the design of the use cases and also the design of the interface. All new web applications must keep their sites simple and usable. The functionality and how it’s achieved plays a big role and it’s essential to make the visitors to join the community. Nobody wants to spend time on a web, that has a blinking background and requires 15 minutes to complete the registration form.

The new technologies (ie AJAX) help us to build websites, that are easy and fun to use. The technolgies have made possible some sites to grow big - YouTube would be the best example. Thanks to the fast internet connection and modern technologies, it’s one of the fastest growing sites. AJAX is essential in building interactive sites – it‘s easy to add an AJAX chatroom or phorum to a website.

But what about the future? The amount of information in the web is growing fast – it’s essential to keep it usable. This is the place where metadata and tagsonomy join the show. We’ll move to the stage, where we bind all this information in the web together, so all this information could be useful and understandable for computers.

At the moment we have videos about the pyramides in YouTube, the photos in Flickr, articles in NYTimes.com, plane tickets to Egypt in TravelOCity.com, reviews in NationalGeographic.com and so on.. But what if I would like to get all this information from one place? That would be cool.

Most probably the next big step would be locative media, especially mobile locative media. At the moment most of the information is only usable at the desk or at good wireless internet coverage. But I guess that’s just not possible, when you’re camping somewhere in North-Norway. It would be great to read reviews about the hiking trails over there, choose the closest camping place or food store. So, all the information should have some kind of connection (tags) with the place I’m staying at. And when uploading the photos to Flickr with a GPS equipped phone/camera during the camping, the photos should be placed automatically on Google Maps.

When moving forward, the situations could also have relations with the data in the net. For example in a situation of camping in the middle of nowhere, one of the sensors aims that it’s going to rain hard in 10 minutes - you would instantly receive articles and videos about building a shelter and the map with the nearest shops, where you could find dry socks…

One thing is sure – the future of web (2.0) will be interesting. I couldn’t imagine Flickr and MySpace in the year 2012. I guess nobody could, because of the fast development of modern technologies. And that makes this industry very interesting.