Tuesday August 07, 2007

Some people think of Web 2.0 only in terms of an advanced collection of web interface technologies and consider web applications with a pop-up calendar, a rich text editor, or drag-and-drop functionality as being all there is to Web 2.0. But when these capabilities are joined with the idea of the read/write web, then the true power of Web 2.0 emerges.

For example, the pop-up calendar is the user interface for an online calendar that is shared with other members of a group, and clicking on the date checks the availability of the other people in the group to make meeting scheduling easier. The rich text editor is the user interface for a wiki that enables users to quickly and easily publish documents that can be shared with other members of a group.

Today I read an interresting blog entry from Matt Rogers about how Web 2.0 affects users. As this is a great summary please find the main points in following. Matt sees three topics which are important:

"Personal expression – It gives users a greater ability to express their personalities to others
Efficient connections – It makes meeting new like-minded people more efficient
Information discovery – It changes how people discover information"

Sure, so far nothing new and not really rocket science, as Matt admits. But:

...”none of these dynamics are new or unique to Web 2.0 – they represent some of the core motivators of most humans – all Web 2.0 has done is make achieving these human objectives online easier.

From its aggregation capabilities to community support, self-publishing features, and collaboration services, a portal implemented using Sun Java System Portal Server gives you access to better web technologies to build the read/write web.

Tom Mueller, a colleague at Sun, has written an excellent article at developers.sun.com about Web 2.0 and Sun's Portal server, where he points to many other sources. Have a look on it!