What is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0:
Is a trend in World Wide Web technology, and web design, a second generation of web-based communities and hosted services such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies, which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing among users. The term became notable after the first O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use webs.

Example of Web 2.0: www.podcast.net
This site uses Web logs,link logs, podcasts and other forms of publishing for a more dynamic interactive World Wide web. People can post content on an attractive web page distributed through RSS feeds. Also serves web applications to users, creates a more organized and categorized use of content.

Web 1.0:
Refers to the state of the World wide web before the Web 2.0 craze, and included most websites in the period between 1994 and 2004. It is important to note that "Web 1.0" has been retroactively named only after the introduction of the term "Web 2.0", and has very loosely defined boundaries. For the most part websites were a strictly one-way published media, similar to the Gopher protocol that came before it.

Example of Web 1.0: www.hotmail.com
This site uses static websites with search engines and surfing to one web site to the next under the control of so called specialized web designers. Content is flowed through email.