Tom Upton’s Blog

Essay Two

.

Web-based communities such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies have become synonymous with Web 2.0. Using two or more examples explain the Web 2.0 phenomenon and how it differs from Web 1.0.

.

With the recent paradigm shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, there has been a growth in the amount of web based applications such as Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube. Web 1.0 provided users with static pages with set content placed on the site by its owner, whereas with a Web 2.0 site users visit and interact with dynamic pages whilst they themselves provide the content. This user provided content may be in the form of video footage in the case of “YouTube”, or a text or image based entry in the case of “Wikipedia”.

A typical example of a Web 1.0 based site would be the “Encyclopaedia Britannica”[i], which is one of the oldest print based resources and has also had an online version since 1994[ii]. Typically for this type of service it requires a yearly subscription of £39.99[iii]. It is updated by a board of 12 editors[iv] with distinguished backgrounds, meaning that the content is the highest quality possible. An example of a Web 2.0 encyclopaedia is Wikipedia, launched in 2001[v], Wikipedia is an ongoing project run by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation[vi]. Unlike the Web 1.0 website, Wikipedia has the advantage of being free to use. Wikipedia is free is because users provide content. User provided content has both negative and positive points. A disadvantage is that any user is free to post or modify content and therefore the integrity of the article is not necessarily guaranteed, however, the advantage is that people with specialist knowledge are more likely to use the resource and therefore post an article. Articles on Wikipedia are updated more often than Encyclopaedia Britannica due to the fact that all of the sites users are effectively editors. There are currently 7,125,183 “Wikipedians”[vii] whereas there are only 4,411 contributors to the Encyclopaedia Britannica[viii]. The main disadvantage with Wikipedia is that it lacks formal, academic writing.

The method by which companies distribute files to users has evolved considerably between the Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. The delivery method for Web 1.0 was a “client – server” method whereby the client, the user on their computer, requests the data from the server, where the information that the user wants is stored. A typical Web 1.0 download service is provided by Akamai who have been providing download services for ten years[ix]. The company has a large client list including car manufacturers Audi and BMW, technology companies including Apple, Microsoft and Adobe, along with providing the hosting for News Corporation’s popular social networking site “MySpace”[x]. The Web 2.0 distribution method uses the “P2P” (peer-to-peer) system like BitTorrent. Using BitTorrent requires the user to download a small file from the server with information about the data they are going to download and the tracker’s configuration settings, this is the computer that organises the transfers of files between users. The user opens this file with their client, such as µTorrent[xi] or Azureus[xii] , which requests the data from other uses in a non-sequential order, unlike the typical HTTP file transfer carried out by Akamai system. The BitTorrent “file sharing” system has advantages over HTTP file transfers as it cuts down on the bandwidth costs for companies, allowing them to distribute larger content at a lower cost. The disadvantage however is that if there are few users uploading the information, known as “seeding” then other users download speeds are slow. BitTorrent also comes under a lot of scrutiny as it is often used to distribute illegal pirated music, movies and computer programs[xiii][xiv], although it does have many legitimate uses. The Canadian television company CBC announced earlier this year that they would be distributing the programme “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” using the BitTorrent protocol, after they successfully used Facebook and YouTube to distribute podcasts and videos of the previous series[xv]. Many open source software providers favour the BitTorrent delivery method and it is especially useful for Linux operating system disc images which can be between 700MB and 4.7GB[xvi] as they would require a huge amount of bandwidth if distributed using the HTTP protocol.

The Web 2.0 phenomena is not simply revolutionising applications on the internet, it is also changing those that are based on users computers. Google are at the forefront of online applications with the “Google Apps” suite[xvii]; including “Gmail”, which offers users up to 25GB of storage for emails, “Talk” for instant messaging, voicemail and file sharing and “Calendar”. The “Docs” application allows users to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations. These are browser based applications, with free versions available to all users of the internet, allowing them to be accessed anywhere with an internet connection and with all of the user’s data and documents available. This removes the necessity to purchase programs such as Microsoft Office. Adobe has recently announced the release of their online-only version popular Photoshop Lightroom image editing tool: Photoshop Express[xviii]. This online application gives users 2GB of free storage for their photographs with an interface similar to that of the full program. This service also ties in with other Web 2.0 applications, including Facebook, Photobucket, Picasa and Flickr. This is an excellent application for amateur photographers, giving them the ability to easily and proficiently edit and share their photographs on the internet, however more advanced users would find the application limited in comparison to its desktop-bound relative. The online version it is much slower as images have to be uploaded before they can be edited and the quality is not as high due to the fact that the compression is used to keep the size of the file minimal. These online applications share one common problem; the possibility of being hijacked, meaning that the users data would be compromised, with the possibility of them losing sensitive data or memorable photographs and being susceptible to fraud like identity theft or credit card abuse.

Web 2.0 has many advantages over Web 1.0 for the users with few draw backs. It means that there are now many free, globally accessible programs with complimentary storage for user’s documents and images. The majority of these sites also allow users to easily share their content with one another, thus fulfilling one of the prime principals behind Web 2.0. Many of the new technologies like the BitTorrent protocol have helped in the decentralisation of the internet and sites like Facebook have helped make participation in the web a user’s priority.

…………………………………………………………………………………..