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The top 25 newsmakers of 2007 – Number 25: Web 2.0

Ever since the term “Web 2.0” was coined by O’Reilly Media a few years ago Web-users, including vendors, partners and customers alike, have been taking full advantage of what Tech Web Encyclopedia calls the “new Internet.”

According to the same Web site, “Web 2.0” was created to meet the ever-increasing demands of the Internet’s growing bandwidth and power. It refers to one of two ways in which users access the Internet either using user-generated content and/or thin client computing.

What has become extremely popular over the last little while have been social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace, blogs and wikis, where anyone with Internet access can post and publish anything they want via personal Web sites and/or blogs.

According to Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, social networking sites such as Facebook are quickly becoming the “norm.”

“We’ve spoken to some companies who found that something like 30 per cent of all of their Web traffic is Facebook related,” he said. “It’s staggering. Facebook is bigger than Google in terms of how often it’s getting accessed.”

In contrast, with the introduction of thin client computing, Internet users can access data from Web servers using any computer and any Web browser.

In short, Web 2.0 is the term used to describe the second generation of the World Wide Web as a platform where information can easily be collaborated and shared online with users anytime, anywhere.

Web 2.0 is a hot topic right now and it’s almost certain that it describes a high tech digital era that is here to stay.