Examples of Web 2.0 Tools

As new developments in the internet occur on an ongoing basis, examples of Web 2.0 applications are continuously increasing in number. Such applications are grouped according to the type of service they provide. Below are descriptions of seven different Web 2.0 services which are currently popular on the internet.

Social networking sites

Several popular web sites specialize in helping people with similar interests meet and communicate, enabling users to develop and expand social networks. In general, social networking sites allow users to create and post information to a personal page. Through a series of communications and invitations with other users on the site, users link their personal page with the pages of others, building numerous page clusters or networks. Popular examples of social networking sites include MySpace (www.myspace.com) and Facebook (www.facebook.com).

Blogs

Blogs (web logs) allow users to repeatedly post text to a site for others to read and in many cases respond to. They are often used to chronologically publish personal diaries, articles and opinions. Because they are an immediate way of sharing information without censor, some blogs provide an alternative source for news and opinions. Recognizing the growing audience for blogs, some conventional news media organizations are increasingly crowdsourcing the gathering of information and writing of articles by sourcing from or directly publishing blogs.

In addition to text blogs, newer blog applications utilize MP3 feeds to create audioblogs or video feeds to create video blogs or vlogs (see Podcasting and vidcasting below).

Wikis

For the web user, information on traditional web pages is essentially static and unidirectional: static because information does not change unless or until the site owner updates it, and unidirectional because information flows only one way, from the site owner to the user. Wikis are fundamentally different from traditional pages because information on a wiki page is dynamic and multidirectional. Information on a wiki page changes much more regularly because users can edit its content if they have appropriate permissions. The most common and popular example of a wiki site is Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com). Such wikis are entirely collaborative, making intellectual property rights difficult if not impossible to determine.

Video and audio sharing

A series of web services that are quickly gaining in popularity allow users to post, view and provide comments about various multimedia. YouTube (www.youtube.com), a site that allows users to showcase and respond to short video clips, is a good example of how this form of Web 2.0 technology is transforming the way internet users communicate and access information. YouTube is commonly used to post and view video blogs, entertainment, instructional videos, personal opinions and responses.

Sites also allow users to share other forms of multimedia. As examples, Flickr (www.flickr.com) is one of many sites that host user-posted photography, and Odeo (www.odeo.com) hosts audio files.

Podcasting and video casting (vodcasting)

Podcasts and video casts (vidcasts) are audio and video files that anyone can record for playback on a computer or handheld MP3/video device. The content of podcasts and video casts varies significantly, from talk shows and radio rebroadcasts to interviews, personal journals and lectures. They are made by recording the desired content, converting the content to the desired digital format, uploading the content to a host server, and publicizing the new podcast or video cast on podcast databases or RSS feeds. For a list of example podcasts, visit Podcast.net (www.podcast.net).

Social bookmarking and tagging

When a web user visits a site, they may wish to add the site’s link to their browser’s bookmarks or favourites folder if they want to return to the site at a later date. Social bookmarking allows users to share their internet browser’s bookmarks or favourites with other users and categorize these bookmarks according to tags or word descriptions that they think are relevant to the site’s content. These category tags become clusters of hyperlinks to web pages that have similar content. Users of social bookmarking are therefore able to easily navigate to web sites that others have found useful within different categories.

As a means of navigating to web sites of interest, social bookmarking is an alternative to traditional search engines like Google, which use computer algorithms to determine the relevance of a web site to a particular search term. In contrast to the use of such algorithms, social bookmarking utilizes human users to generate the tags which categorize each site based on the site’s contents and significance, potentially making the search results more meaningful. For an example of a social bookmarking site, see del.icio.us (http:// del.icio.us).

RSS Feeds

RSS (Rich Site Summary) allows users to learn about new content on a web site without visiting it. If a user signs up to an RSS feed from a web site, they will receive text strings on their computer that link back to new content posted on the site. The user must have an application that reads RSS (an RSS aggregator) installed on their computer to view the feeds. RSS feeds are commonly used to syndicate news article and blog entry titles and descriptions. A web site can also include RSS aggregators in their own design, allowing it to host RSS feeds from other sites. This is commonly done in news sites that share content and visitors.

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		The Principles of Web 2.0 VIU Teaching and Learning Centre
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		Malaspina Web 2.0 Blog VIU Teaching and Learning Centre
The goal of this Blog is to introduce VIU Faculty and Staff to Web 2.0 tools, in order to develop skills and understanding of the use of these tools.