ABC of Web 2.0

Buzz word of geeks in the modern era of technology. I happened to read book on web2.0 while downloading e-Book. It is not a single technology like .NET or Java. It is collection of technologies to give a beautiful look to Web and be able to create rich applications. The following are the three layers that constitute the Web2.0

1. Social Layer
   
2. Architectural Layer
3. Technical Layer

1. Socal Layer: The social layer of Web 2.0 is about making the Web a read/write web again. For some, this goal is motivated by philanthropic or political reasons: everyone should be able to express his or her ideas. For others, the motivation is financial: if the growth of the number of web readers is deemed to slow down, the growth of the Web can only be fueled by the growth of the number of people that create content on the Web. The business models of Web 2.0 sites differ on the way to convert content into actual revenues, but they share the fact that their content is created by their users, and this is the most distinctive characteristic of a Web 2.0 site.
2. Architectural Layer: The ability of using the Web as a platform can be seen as the architectural layer of web2.0. This is the consequence of the Social Layer; if you want to give write access to all your users you can’t rely on anything that isn’t installed (or installable) on any platform they might be using. That limits the prerequisite for Web 2.0 applications to a relatively recent version of a web browser. Furthermore, due to most needed security constraints, web applications have very limited access to files and data stored ontheir users’ computers. That means that Web 2.0 applications have not much alternative to considering that the platform on which they run is the Web! This has made Web2.0 to deliver everything throught browser (Web). Examples of them are Google Docs, Live Office, YouOS etc...
3. Technical Layer: This layer of web2.0 decides the richness of your application on the web. This layer mainly consists of three parts. First thing is about client side programming, nothing but the browser where most of your web applications are visible. The second part is nothing but the underlying protocols that makes it possible to communicate with the others on the web. The third part is the server side processing, ultiamately this is where client requests are processed :). HTML, XHTML, DHTML, CSS, Javascript and AJAX constitute first part of the technical layer in web2.0. SOAP, REST, HTTP-PUT are second part of technical layer. Creating webservices, mashups, serving XML over HTTP etc constitute third part of technical layer of web2.0.

This is just an overview of what I understood about Web2.0.