Week 8 - Web 2.0 and Beyond

The web has changed quite a bit since it first came into the picture back in the early 90’s.  Some of the things that I have really noticed is, the ability to purchase online.  Whether it is a book or your groceries, you can purchase many items from the comfort of your computer desk.  And another one that I have really noticed is social media, before you can send an e-mail to someone with an e-mail address but because of the demand to reach further places and higher speeds social media has really taken off.  You can have a flat out conversation with someone across the world and it almost is like you are talking with that person in the same room.  Something that I really did not know is that when the world made the transition from web 1.0 to 2.0, that it was really the social movement that really pushed that move forward.  This was something that I was not aware of but now it makes sense to me.  Now I am  able to see all the different social network outlets that are out there for people to use, also, observing the fact that the people that do use these social networks as a major mean of communication use them quite often.  Gaming has really become a popular tool for social media, before if you had a second controller for your game console and someone to play with, you were good.  Now, I can sit in my room and play my friends who are at their house playing the exact same game together.  For Online applications we now have online dictionaries, and thesauruses and other tools.  Before you needed to go to the store and buy these books in order to use them but now with a click you can use these tools on your computer screen.  And another example of online applications is school.  Before you needed to actually show up to a class in some building, now if you desire, you can choose to take online courses and receive an education from the comfort of your home.  An example of harnessing collective intelligence is when I go onto ESPN.com, it gives you stories, news and scores based on your favourite teams and players.  For user contribution, blogs have become quite important to the evolution of social media as now anybody can voice their opinion about whatever subject matter they feel they need to speak on.  Now on its way in full force is web 3.0, it probably won’t take long for this take the world by storm.  It will become important soon considering people may not want to take the time to search around for things they are not interested in.