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Independent Research
Established Web 2.0 Technologies Effectively Encouraging Active Collaboration
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Progress Report #1 - Example
of Web 2.0 technologies explored:
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Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.com)
Wikipedia-
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia in the form of a
wiki. This generally means that it is an online encylopedia that may be
edited by it's users at any time. There are some basic administrators to
watch over things, with the ability to block users and protect certain
articles. They do not, however, have the ability to edit articles because
this is done by Wikipedia's users.
Statistics:
English-Language Wikipedia articles: 1,674,446
Total Edits: 117,398,323
Average Edits Per Page: 14.97
Registered Users: 3,764,684
A great video showing the development of an article on Wikipedia over a time
span of a couple years:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html
This video does a great job of showing how a relatively
unimportant article on Wikipedia grows quite large over a couple years, and
turns into a great knowledge resource. The article is edited a couple
hundred times, all by users of Wikipedia. People constantly use the wiki's
technology to correct small pieces of the content already part of the article,
and also to add new content in order to make the article cover a larger area.
Overall, Wikipedia does a great job of showing how Web 2.0
technologies (a wiki in this case) can provide a very beneficial tool. In
this case Wikipedia fosters an environment of collaboration which has an end
result of providing an encyclopedia of knowledge to the world. The fact
that all of it's articles are edited by users allows Wikipedia to continue to be
a free service, further increasing its popularity.
Wikipedia also talks about their common objections, such as statements that
declare Wikipedia can never be high quality. Some people have doubts about
the motivation required to get individuals to participate in creating and
editing articles. Wikipedia explains that academics usually get their jobs
because they like learning/teaching, and that this same sort of environment is
provided. Plus, there is the joy of contributing and creating something of
quality.
Progress Report #2 - Web 2.0 technologies by example
of Web 2.0 technologies explored:
Web 1.0 Web 2.0
DoubleClick --> Google AdSense
Ofoto --> Flickr
Akamai --> BitTorrent
mp3.com --> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation --> search engine optimization
page views --> cost per click
screen scraping --> web services
publishing --> participation
content management systems --> wikis
directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness --> syndication
Source
"Web 1.0 was commerce. Web 2.0 is collaboration"
- Digg (http://www.digg.com)
- Upcoming.org (http://www.upcoming.org)
- Chipin.com (http://www.chipin.com)
Digg-
Information on digg.com
Upcoming.org-
Information on upcoming.org
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