What is Web 2.0

Just recently we've bombarded with the presence of web 2.0. And till this now, yet I still figured otu what it's all about, and this is what I can summarize based on my reading.

The bursting of the dot-com bubble in the fall of 2001 marked a turning point for the web. Many people concluded that the web was overhyped, when in fact bubbles and resulting shakeouts appear to be a common feature of all technological revolutions. Shakeouts typically mark the point at which an ascendant technology is ready to take its place at center stage. The pretenders are given the bum's rush, the real success stories show their strength, and there begins to be an understanding of what separates one from the other.

This article is an attempt to clarify just what we mean by Web 2.0.
In our initial brainstorming, we formulated our sense of Web 2.0 by example:

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

The list went on and on. But what was it that made us identify one application or approach as "Web 1.0" and another as "Web 2.0"? (The question is particularly urgent because the Web 2.0 meme has become so widespread that companies are now pasting it on as a marketing buzzword, with no real understanding of just what it means.

The question is particularly difficult because many of those buzzword-addicted startups are definitely not Web 2.0, while some of the applications most of us can identified as Web 2.0, like Napster and BitTorrent, are not even properly web applications!).