What is Web 2.0?
The first web was mostly read-only. Companies and enthusiasts published pages; everyone else visited them. Web 2.0 describes the shift that followed, in which the people visiting became the people publishing: blogs, wikis, reviews, comments, photo sharing, video uploads and the social networks that tied them together. The phrase was coined in 1999 and popularized in 2004 by Tim O'Reilly and the conferences his company ran, and by 2006 the shift was mainstream enough that Time named its Person of the Year as You.
It was a change in technology as well as culture. Pages began updating parts of themselves without reloading, so websites could behave like applications. Open APIs let sites pull in each other's data. RSS let content travel. Tagging, ratings and recommendations turned millions of small contributions into something useful. Most of what the web is today, from social media to marketplaces to the comment box under an article, grew out of this period.
Why it matters
Why Web 2.0 matters
The term is dated, but its consequences are not. Web 2.0 created the model most brands still live inside: audiences that talk back, platforms that own the relationship with them, and content as likely to be made by customers as by companies. Reviews, user-generated content, communities and social channels all come from it, and so does the problem of building a brand on platforms whose rules can change overnight. Understanding Web 2.0 is understanding why owned channels, a brand's own site, email list and feed, still matter as much as they do.
In practice
How Web 2.0 works in practice
- 01
For a brand, Web 2.0 shows up as participation designed into its presence. Product pages carry reviews and questions from customers. Campaigns invite people to make something, a photo, a video, a remix, and share it. Communities, forums and comment sections are moderated and answered rather than left alone. The brand's own content is built to be shared, with proper preview cards and open formats, so that every share carries it further.
- 02
Underneath sit the technologies the era made standard. Feeds and APIs move content between the brand's site, social platforms and partners automatically, and pages load fresh data without a full reload. Above all, the site remains the hub that ties the platforms together: the one place where the brand controls the design, the data and the relationship, whatever happens to the algorithms around it.
Watch out
What people get wrong about Web 2.0
Treating it as a style. In the late 2000s Web 2.0 also meant glossy buttons, reflections and starburst badges, and some people still use the term for that look. The style faded quickly; the participatory model did not. Second, assuming participation happens by itself. Comment sections, communities and user content need moderation and response, or they become a liability. Third, mistaking platforms for audiences. Followers on someone else's platform are borrowed, a fact Web 2.0 made very easy to forget and that every algorithm change has since been happy to remind brands of.
