It is proved time and again that hype and marketing are some of the main keys to good business. Be it a movie or a hair gel, hype brings you the initial business. The quality and worth of the product is certainly taken under consideration, but not at first. Similarly, when the buzzing around on Web 2.0 started, it created a lot of hype. But later the idea, however, has faced both good and bad criticism. Before judging, its worth we understand what Web 2.0 is all about.

Web 2.0 is nothing but a vision. It doesn’t mean any upgraded technology in www (World Wide Web). The term rather suggests the new trends and possibilities in its usage. It aims to enhance the scopes in functionality, application, security in file sharing and collaboration of the web. We know that in spite of many earlier speculations, web world today is far from being crashed; rather it has now become more important than ever. Every now and then new sites and applications are popping up that are both exciting and immensely popular among the target users. Now, the companies who survived the dot.com collapse were in search of something that can turn the tide towards their business again and they felt that the term "Web 2.0" is a kind of call to action taking the web and its usage to the next level. The idea was proved to be right for in the next one and a half years, the term has clearly taken hold. There had been more than 9.5 million searches on "Web 2.0" in Google during this time.

The most revolutionary feature since the development of web 2.0 is certainly Blogging. Personal websites were there since the early days of web. In this process, an individual has to buy web hosting space and a domain name to host the site. Again he had to pay the web design company to create the website. Even if we keep these expenses apart, there were certain other limitations as well. The owners could not modify or update the site by themselves. The process was both expensive and time consuming. But in recent times, Blogging has made the job a lot easier. Of course, it doesn’t give you all the features that your own website could have given, but who cares! It’s all about making your voice heard and in blogs you can do it, for free off course! In fact, it has become so popular that even public figures like cine stars, players and politicians are now using blogs to raise their points and share their thoughts.

Actually Web 2.0 is combining technologies like AJAX to allow the customers to actually interact with the information. The use of such strong JavaScript tools is actually enabling anybody to contribute to and interact with the data. Trusting the users to provide the right information at the right time; it’s revolutionary but certainly not risky. We now have several examples that prove amateurs also can surpass professionals if they have the right kind of system to channel their efforts. Wikipedia is perhaps the most popular example. The experts don’t prefer Wiki but they always miss one critical point, it is not the best but it is good enough. The end users don’t read an article to become professionals or experts; they read them for the basic information and Wiki provides a lot more than that. There is another field where we can feel this freedom of choice, it’s reading news. Normally it’s the media who decide whether an event can be called news or not and until now, they decided for us what news is and what information is worth a reading. But today, with sites like Reddit, we can get information about absolutely any event happening in any corner of the globe. This reduces our dependence on newspapers and gives us an extra edge as readers. The choice is now ours! The term, however, sounds like a buzzword created for marketing. Nevertheless, the idea is tempting and brings new perspective in the usage of web.

We have mentioned earlier that Web 2.0 is nothing but a concept, an idea to make websites more user friendly. Each day new ideas and concepts are contributing to the development of the web. Compared to the earlier websites, the new ones look a lot more trendy and sleek. We are giving more importance to the accessibility and usability area so that physically challenged people can also use the web. Bold icons, simple navigation, W3C validation, bookmark links, fast loading – all are part of that gradual development. They would have definitely taken place along with the advancement of time, even if we haven’t coined it as "Web 2.0". The key concern is updating ourselves with the changing time. It’s good to see that we are making the web usable to all. The endeavor is certainly appreciable no matter whether it is Web 2.0 or Web 200.0. New ideas are always welcome as they pave the way for the next revolution.