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Content derived from Wikipedia article on Web 2.0

Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004[1], refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. O'Reilly Media, in collaboration with MediaLive International, used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences and since 2004 it has become a popular (though ill-defined and often criticized) buzzword amongst certain technical and marketing communities.

Contents

1 Introduction

2 Characteristics of Web 2.0

3 Technology overview

4 Innovations associated with "Web 2.0"

4.1 Web-based communities

4.2 Web-based applications and desktops

4.3 Rich Internet applications

4.3.1 Server-side software

4.3.2 Client-side software

4.4 RSS

4.5 Web protocols

5 Criticism

6 Trademark controversy

7 See also

8 References

Introduction

Alluding to the version-numbers that commonly designate software upgrades, the phrase "Web 2.0" hints at an improved form of the World Wide Web, and some people have used the term for several years.

In the opening talk of the first Web 2.0 conference, Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle summarized key principles they believed characterized Web 2.0 applications:

the Web as a platform

data as the driving force

network effects created by an architecture of participation

innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers (a kind of "open source" development)

lightweight business models enabled by content and service syndication

the end of the software adoption cycle ("the perpetual beta")

software above the level of a single device, leveraging the power of The Long Tail.

Earlier users of the phrase "Web 2.0" employed it as a synonym for "Semantic Web," and indeed, the two concepts complement each other. The combination of social-networking systems such as FOAF and XFN with the development of tag-based folksonomies, delivered through blogs and wikis, sets up a basis for a semantic-web environment. Although the technologies and services that make up Web 2.0 lack the effectiveness of an internet in which the machines can understand and extract meaning (as proponents of the Semantic Web envision), Web 2.0 may represent a step in that direction.

As used by its proponents, the phrase "Web 2.0" refers to one or more of the following:

The transition of web-sites from isolated information silos to sources of content and functionality, thus becoming computing platforms serving web applications to end-users

A social phenomenon embracing an approach to generating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and "the market as a conversation"

A more organized and categorized content, with a far more developed deeplinking web architecture than hithertofore

A shift in economic value of the Web, possibly surpassing that of the dot com boom of the late 1990s

A marketing-term used to differentiate new web-based firms from those of the dot-com boom, which (due to the bust) subsequently appeared discredited

The resurgence of excitement around the implications of innovative web-applications and services that gained a lot of momentum[citation needed] around mid-2005

Many[citation needed] find it easiest to define Web 2.0 by associating it with companies or products that embody its principles. Tim O'Reilly gave examples in his description of his "four plus one" levels in the hierarchy of Web 2.0-ness:[2]

Level-3 applications, the most "Web 2.0", which could only exist on the Internet, deriving their power from the human connections and network effects Web 2.0 makes possible, and growing in effectiveness the more people use them. O'Reilly gives as examples: eBay, craigslist, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype, dodgeball, and Adsense.

Level-2 applications, which can operate offline but which gain advantages from going online. O'Reilly cited Flickr, which benefits from its shared photo-database and from its community-generated tag database.

Level-1 applications, also available offline but which gain features online. O'Reilly pointed to Writely (now Google Docs & Spreadsheets) (gaining group-editing capability online) and iTunes (because of its music-store portion).

Level-0 applications would work as well offline. O'Reilly gave the examples of MapQuest, Yahoo! Local, and Google Maps. Mapping applications using contributions from users to advantage can rank as level 2.

non-web applications like email, instant-messaging clients and the telephone.

Examples of Web 2.0 (other than those cited by O'Reilly) include digg, Shoutwire, last.fm, and Technorati.

Time bar of Web 2.0 buzz words.[3] This image shows the age of some buzzwords claimed for Web 2.0 or its dependencies.Commentators see many recently-developed concepts and technologies as contributing to Web 2.0, including weblogs, linklogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds and other forms of many-to-many publishing; social software, Web APIs, Web standards, online Web services, and many others.

Proponents of the Web 2.0 concept say that it differs from early Web development (retrospectively labeled Web 1.0) in that it moves away from static web-sites, the use of search engines, and surfing from one website to the next, towards a more dynamic and interactive World Wide Web. Others argue that later developments have not actually superseded the original and fundamental concepts of the WWW. Skeptics may see the term "Web 2.0" as little more than a buzzword; or they may suggest that it means whatever its proponents want it to mean in order to convince their customers, investors and the media that they have begun building something fundamentally new, rather than continuing to develop and use well-established technologies [4].

On September 30, 2005, Tim O'Reilly wrote a seminal piece neatly summarizing the subject. The mind-map pictured above (constructed by Markus Angermeier on November 11, 2005) sums up the memes of Web 2.0, with example sites and services attached.Earlier web applications or "Web 1.0" (so dubbed after the event by proponents of Web 2.0) often consisted of static HTML pages, rarely (if ever) updated. They depended solely on HTML, which a new Internet content-provider could learn fairly easily. The success of the dot-com era arguably depended on a more dynamic World Wide Web (sometimes labeled Web 1.5) where content-management systems served dynamic HTML web-pages generated on-the-fly from a content database more amenable than raw HTML-code to change. In both senses, marketeers regarded so-called "eyeballing" as intrinsic to the experience of the web, thus making page-hits and visual aesthetics important factors.

Proponents of the Web 2.0 approach believe that web usage has started increasingly moving towards interaction and towards rudimentary social networks, which can serve content that exploits network effects with or without creating a visual, interactive web-page. In one view, Web 2.0 sites act more as points of presence or user-dependent web-portals than as traditional web-sites. They have become so internally complex that new Internet users cannot create analogous web-sites, but remain mere users of services provided by specialist professional experts.

Access to consumer-generated content facilitated by Web 2.0 brings the web closer to Tim Berners-Lee's original concept of the web as a democratic, personal, and DIY medium of communications.

Characteristics of Web 2.0

While interested parties continue to debate the definition of a Web 2.0 application, some suggest that a Web 2.0 web-site may exhibit some basic characteristics. These might include:

"Network as platform" — delivering (and allowing users to use) applications entirely through a browser[5] [6].

Users owning the data on the site and exercising control over that data[7][5].

An architecture of participation and democracy that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it[5][1].

A rich, interactive, user-friendly interface based on Ajax[5][1] or similar frameworks.

Some social-networking aspects[7][5].

The concept of Web-as-participation-platform captures many of these characteristics. Bart Decrem, founder and former CEO of Flock calls Web 2.0 the "participatory Web"[citation needed], and regards Web-as-information-source as Web 1.0.

Technology overview

The complex and evolving technology infrastructure of Web 2.0 includes server-software, content-syndication, messaging-protocols, standards-based browsers with plugins and extensions, and various client-applications. These differing but complementary approaches provide Web 2.0 with information-storage, creation, and dissemination capabilities that go beyond what the public formerly expected of web-sites.

A Web 2.0 website typically features a number of the following techniques:

Ajax-based rich Internet application techniques

Non-Ajax-based rich Internet application techniques

CSS

Semantically valid XHTML markup and/or the use of Microformats

Syndication and aggregation of data in RSS/Atom

Clean and meaningful URLs

Extensive use of folksonomies (in the form of tags or tagclouds, for example)

Weblog publishing

Mashups

REST or XML Webservice APIs

Innovations associated with "Web 2.0"

Web-based communities

Some web-sites that potentially sit under the Web 2.0 umbrella have built new online social networks amongst the general public. Some of these sites run social software where people work together. Other sites reproduce several individuals' RSS feeds on one page. Other ones provide deeplinking between individual web-sites.

The syndication and messaging capabilities of Web 2.0 have fostered, to a greater or lesser degree, a tightly-woven social fabric among individuals. Arguably, the nature of online communities has changed in recent months and years. The meaning of these inferred changes, however, has pundits divided. Basically, ideological lines run thusly: Web 2.0 either empowers the individual and provides an outlet for the "voice of the voiceless"; or it elevates the amateur to the detriment of professionalism, expertise and clarity.

Web-based applications and desktops

The richer user-experience afforded by Ajax has prompted the development of web-sites that mimic personal computer applications, such as word processing, the spreadsheet, and slide-show presentation. WYSIWYG wiki sites replicate many features of PC authoring applications. Still other sites perform collaboration and project management functions. Java enables sites that provide computation-intensive video capability. Google, Inc. acquired one of the best-known sites of this broad class, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, in early 2006.

Several browser-based "operating systems" or "online desktops" have also appeared. They essentially function as application platforms, not as operating systems per se. These services mimic the user experience of desktop operating-systems, offering features and applications similar to a PC environment. They have as their distinguishing characteristic the ability to run within any modern browser.

Numerous web-based application services appeared during the dot.com bubble of 1997–2001 and then vanished, having failed to gain a critical mass of customers. In 2005 WebEx acquired one of the better-known of these, Intranets.com, for slightly more than the total it had raised in venture capital after six years of trading.

Rich Internet applications

Main article: Rich Internet application

Recently, rich-Internet application techniques such as Ajax, Adobe Flash, Flex and OpenLaszlo have evolved that can improve the user-experience in browser-based applications. Flash/Flex involves a web-page requesting an update for some part of its content, and altering that part in the browser, without refreshing the whole page at the same time.

Server-side software

The functionality of Web 2.0 rich Internet applications builds on the existing Web server architecture, but puts much greater emphasis on back-end software. Syndication differs only nominally from the methods of publishing using dynamic content management, but web services typically require much more robust database and workflow support, and become very similar to the traditional intranet functionality of an application server. Vendor approaches to date fall under either a universal server approach, which bundles most of the necessary functionality in a single server platform, or a web-server plugin approach, which uses standard publishing tools enhanced with API interfaces and other tools..

Client-side software

The extra functionality provided by Web 2.0 depends on the ability of users to work with the data stored on servers. This can come about through forms in an HTML page, through a scripting language such as Javascript, or through Flash or Java. These methods all make use of the client computer to reduce the server workload.

RSS

Main article: RSS (file format)

The first and the most important step (according to one point of view) of evolution towards Web 2.0 involves the syndication of site content, using standardized protocols which permit end-users to make use of a site's data in another context, ranging from another web-site, to a browser plugin, or to a separate desktop application. Protocols which permit syndication include RSS (Really Simple Syndication — also known as "web syndication"), RDF (as in RSS 1.1), and Atom, all of them flavors of XML. Specialized protocols such as FOAF and XFN (both for social networking) extend functionality of sites or permit end-users to interact without centralized web-sites. (See microformats for more specialized data formats.)

Due to the recent development of these trends, many of these protocols remain de facto (rather than formal) standards.

Web protocols

Web communication protocols provide a key element of the Web 2.0 infrastructure. Major protocols include REST and SOAP.

REST (Representational State Transfer) indicates a way to access and manipulate data on a server using the HTTP verbs GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE

SOAP involves POSTing XML messages and requests to a server that may contain quite complex, but pre-defined, instructions for the server to follow

In both cases, an API defines access to the service. Often servers use proprietary APIs, but standard web-service APIs (for example, for posting to a blog) have also come into wide use. Most (but not all) communications with web services involve some form of XML (eXtensible Markup Language).

See also Web Services Description Language (WSDL) (the standard way of publishing a SOAP API) and the list of web service specifications for links to many other web service standards, including those many whose names begin 'WS-'.

Criticism

Given the lack of set standards as to what "Web 2.0" actually means, implies, or requires, the term can mean radically different things to different people. For instance, many people pushing Web 2.0 talk about well-formed, validated HTML; however, not many production sites actually adhere to this standard.[citation needed] Many people will also talk about web-sites "degrading gracefully" (designing a web-site so that its fundamental features remain usable by people who access it with software that does not support every technology employed by the site); however, the addition of Ajax scripting to web-sites can render them completely unusable to anyone browsing with JavaScript turned off, or using a slightly older browser. Many have complained that the proliferation of Ajax scripts, in combination with unknowledgeable webmasters, has increased the instances of "tag soup": web-pages where coders have apparently thrown <script> tags and other semantically useless tags about the HTML-file with little organization in mind, in a way that occurred more commonly during the dot-com boom, and which many standards-proponents have tried to eschew.[citation needed] Some critics also object to cluttered, arcane navigation structures in Web 2.0 web-sites.[citation needed]

Many of the ideas of Web 2.0 already featured on networked systems well before the term "Web 2.0" emerged. Amazon.com, for instance, has allowed users to write reviews and consumer guides since its inception, in a form of self-publishing. Amazon also opened its API to outside developers in 2002[8]. Prior art also comes from research in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning and Computer Supported Cooperative Work and from established products like Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino.

Conversely, when a web-site proclaims itself "Web 2.0" for the use of some trivial feature (such as blogs or gradient boxes) observers may generally consider it more an attempt at self-promotion than an actual endorsement of the ideas behind Web 2.0. "Web 2.0" in such circumstances has sometimes sunk simply to the status of a marketing buzzword, like 'synergy', that can mean whatever a salesperson wants it to mean, with little connection to most of the worthy but (currently) unrelated ideas originally brought together under the "Web 2.0" banner. The argument also exists that "Web 2.0" does not represent a new version of World Wide Web at all, but merely continues to use "Web 1.0" technologies and concepts.

Other criticism has included the term "a second bubble", suggesting that too many Web 2.0 companies attempt to develop the same product with a lack of business models. The Economist magazine has written of "Bubble 2.0".

Some venture capitalists have noted that the second generation of Web applications has too few users to make them an economically-viable target for consumer applications. Josh Kopelman noted that Web 2.0 excited only 53,651 people (the then number of subscribers to TechCrunch, a Weblog covering Web 2.0 matters).

Trademark controversy

In November 2003, CMP Media applied to the USPTO for a service mark on the use of the term "WEB 2.0" for live events[9]. On the basis of this application, CMP Media sent a cease-and-desist demand to the Irish non-profit organization IT@Cork on May 24, 2006[10], but retracted it two days later[11]. The "WEB 2.0" service mark registration passed final PTO Examining Attorney review on May 10, 2006, but as of June 12, 2006 the PTO has not published the mark for opposition. The European Union application (which would confer unambiguous status in Ireland) remains pending (app no 004972212) after its filing on March 23, 2006.

See also

Library 2.0

Office 2.0

Service-oriented architecture

Crowdsourcing

Web operating system

Social bookmarking

References

^ a b c Paul Graham (November 2005). Web 2.0. Retrieved on 2006-08-02.

^ Tim O'Reilly (2006-07-17). Levels of the Game: The Hierarchy of Web 2.0 Applications. O'Reilly radar. Retrieved on 2006-08-08.

^ Jürgen Schiller García (2006-09-21). Web 2.0 Buzz Time bar. Retrieved on 2006-10-29.

^ Jeffrey Zeldman (2006-01-16). Web 3.0. A List Apart. Retrieved on 2006-05-27.

^ a b c d e Tim O'Reilly (2005-09-30). What Is Web 2.0. O'Reilly Network. Retrieved on 2006-08-06.

^ Web operating system

^ a b Dion Hinchcliffe (2006-04-02). The State of Web 2.0. Web Services Journal. Retrieved on 2006-08-06.

^ Tim O'Reilly (2002-06-18). Amazon Web Services API. O'Reilly Network. Retrieved on 2006-05-27.

^ USPTO serial number 78322306

^ O'Reilly and CMP Exercise Trademark on 'Web 2.0'. Slashdot (2006-05-26). Retrieved on 2006-05-27.

^ Nathan Torkington (2006-05-26). O'Reilly's coverage of Web 2.0 as a service mark. O'Reilly Radar. Retrieved on 2006-06-01.

External links

Supportive

Dion Hinchcliffe (2006-04-02). The State of Web 2.0. Web Services Journal. Retrieved on 2006-08-06.

Martin LaMonica (2006-03-14). Google deal highlights Web 2.0 boom. CNET. Retrieved on 2006-08-06.

Paul Graham (November 2005). Web 2.0. Retrieved on 2006-08-02.

Tim O'Reilly (2005-09-30). What Is Web 2.0. O'Reilly Network. Retrieved on 2006-08-06.

Kevin Kelly (August 2005). We Are the Web. Wired Magazine. Retrieved on 2006-08-06.

Richard MacManus and Joshua Porter (2005-05-04). Web 2.0 for Designers. Digital Web Magazine. Retrieved on 2006-08-06.

Critical

Nate Anderson (2006-09-01). Tim Berners-Lee on Web 2.0: "nobody even knows what it means". Retrieved on 2006-09-05.

The Enzyme that Won. The Economist (2006-05-11). Retrieved on 2006-08-06.

Paul Boutin (2006-03-29). The new Internet "boom" doesn't live up to its name. Slate.com. Retrieved on 2006-08-06.

Russell Shaw (2005-12-17). Web 2.0? It doesn't exist. ZDNet. Retrieved on 2006-08-06.

Andrew Orlowski (2005-10-21). Web 2.0: It's ... like your brain on LSD!. The Register. Retrieved on 2006-08-06.

Nicholas G. Carr (2005-10-03). The amorality of Web 2.0. Retrieved on 2006-08-06.

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2

Content derived from Wikipedia article on Social Networking Web Sites

List of social networking websites

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a list of notable social networking websites.

Name Description/Focus User count Registration

43 Things Tagging 627,000[1] Open

ActiveRain Real estate professionals 5,374[2] Open

Adoos Latin America and Spain classifieds, personals 1,000,000 Open

AIM Pages AOL Instant Messenger Unknown Open

aSmallWorld European jet set and social elite 75,000[3] Invite-only

BlackPlanet.com African-Americans 18,000,000[4] Open

Babbello Australian teenagers 30,000[5] Open

Bebo Schools and colleges 22,000,000[6] Open

Blogger Blogging 16,000,000[7] Open

Blurty Blogs, based on LiveJournal 947,169[8] Open

Bolt General (music and video) 4,000,000[9] Open

CarDomain Car enthusiasts 1,600,000[10] Open

Care2 Activists, Green Living, Socially Conscious 6,600,000[11] Open

Classmates.com School, college, work and the military 40,000,000[12] Open

Connect.ee Estonia 39,000[13] Invite-only

Consumating "Consumeetings" 21,000[14] Open

Cyworld South Korea 15,000,000[15] Open

Dandelife Collective narratives or "shared biographies" unknown Open

DeadJournal "Dark" blogs, based on LiveJournal 490,310[16] By invite or payment

Dodgeball.com Mobile location-based service unknown[17] Open

Doostang Online career community 53,000[18] Invite-only

DowneLink LGBT Unknown Open

Draugiem.lv Latvia 731,652[19] Invite-only

Ecademy Business 100,000[20] Open

Eons People over 50 Unknown Open to people over 50

Facebook General 11,100,000[21] Open

Facebox General 1,046,696[22] Open

Faceparty British teens and 20-somethings 5,900,000[23] Open

Flickr Photo sharing 2,500,000[24] Open

Friendster General 29,100,000[25] Open

Frühstückstreff General 10,100[26] Open

Gaia Online General 5,000,000[27] Open

Gazzag General Unknown Open

GhettoSoul Writing, Poetry, and Music unknown[28] Open

Goldmic Hip-Hop 58,000[29] Open

GoneGothic Alternative Community 11,600[30] Open

GoPets Virtual pets 400,000[31] Open

GreatestJournal Uses LiveJournal code 1,514,865[32] Open

Grono.net Poland 830,000[33] Invite-only

Hi5 Worldwide. 50,000,000[34] Open

Hyves Dutch people, but translations available (UK, GE, FR, SP) - many students 2,311,790[35] Open

imeem media-centric social network with instant messaging functionality Unknown[36] Open

Inked Nation Body modification aficionados Unknown[37] Open

IMVU 3D chat software 1,000,000[38] Open

IRC-Galleria Finland 350,000[39] Open

iWiW Hungary 1,000,000[40] Invite only

Janglo Jerusalem & Tel Aviv (Taanglo) English speakers 14,300 [41] Open

Joga Bonito Football (soccer) Unknown Open

Last.fm Music Unknown[42] Open

LibraryThing Books 82,374[43] Open

LinkedIn Business 7,500,000[44] Open

LiveJournal Blogging 10,921,263[45] Open

LunarStorm Sweden 1,200,000[46] Open

Match.com Dating 12,000,000[47] Open

MiGente.com Latinos 3,600,000[48] Open

Mixi Japan 5,000,000[49] Invite-only

MOBANGO Cell phones 1,000,000[50] Open

MOG Music Unknown Open

Multiply "Real world" networking with definable relationships 3,000,000[51] Open

Music Forte Music 37,000[52] Open

myGamma Cell phones 1,300,000[53] Open

MySpace General 26,700,000[54] Open

myYearbook General 950,000[55] Open

Neurona Spanish businesses and Italy 690,000[56] Open

Nexopia Canada 866,000 Open

Newscloud News and Media Not reported Open

OkCupid Dating 500,000[57] Open

orkut Owned by Google 33,729,146 [58] Open

Passado General (business) 4,700,000[59] Open

Piczo Teenagers, Canadians, photo sharing 10,000,000[60] Open

Playahead Swedish teenagers 2,000,000[61] Open

ProfileHeaven British teens 100,000[62] Open

Rediff Connexions India 1,400,000[63] Open

Reunion.com Locating friends and family 25,000,000[64] Open

Ryze Business 250,000[65] Open

Sconex American high schools 500,000[66] Open

Studybreakers High school students 34,000[67] Open

Stumbleupon Websurfing 1,200,000[68] Open

TagWorld General (tagging) 1,850,692[69] Open

TakingITGlobal Social action 116,000[70] Open

The Student Center Teens and colleges 800,000[71] Open

Threadless General 364,474 Open

Tribe General 554,993[72] Open

Vampire Freaks Gothic industrial culture 650,000[73] Open

VietSpace A social network of Vietnamese 20,000[74] Open

Vox Blogging Unknown Open

WAYN Travel & Lifestyle 7,000,000[75] Open to people 18 and older

WebBiographies Genealogy & Biography 3,500[76] Open

Windows Live Spaces Blogging (formerly MSN Spaces) 30,000,000[77] Open

Xanga Blogs and "metro" areas 40,000,000[78] Open

XING Business 1,000,000[79] Open

Xuqa Colleges 1,000,000[80] Open

Yahoo! 360° Linked to Yahoo! IDs 4,700,000[81] Open to people 18 and older

Yuku part of ezboard Unknown Open

Zaadz Social consciousness 17,627[82] Open

See also

Online dating category - articles on a number of dating sites.

Hospitality service and Hospitality service category

References

^ 43things, [1]. October 7, 2006.

^ ActiveRain Real Estate Network, [2]. September 15, 2006.

^ International Herald Tribune article, Join? Well, if you have to ask.... 29 August 2005.

^ BlackPlanet, BlackPlanet homepage. April 13, 2006.

^ Mashable! review, [3]. 10 March 2006.

^ BBC News article, Teen craze over networking sites. 23 March 2006.

^ Web 2.0 Summit article, Web 2.0 Summit

^ Blurty's stat page as of 10 August 2006.

^ Bolt acquires UK SMS text messaging company Fonepark

^ http://www.cardomain.com/

^ Care2 statistics, [www.care2.com]. 13 November 2006.

^ The View article, Take a Second Chance with that First Love. February 1, 2006.

^ Connect.ee, Connect.ee homepage. 3 July 2006.

^ Consumating.com, [4]. 10 August 2006.

^ Business Week article, E-Society: My World Is Cyworld. September 26, 2005.

^ DeadJournal, DeadJournal.com statistics. 10 August 2006.

^ http://www.dodgeball.com/

^ http://www.doostang.com/

^ http://draugiem.lv/

^ Ecademy announcement, [5]. 20 October 2006.

^ USA Today newspaper article, [6]. 8 January 2006.Figure as of November 2005.

^ Facebox, Facebox homepage. 11 November 2006.

^ Faceparty, Faceparty homepage. 13 April 2006.

^ Newsweek article, The New Wisdom of the Web. April 3, 2006.

^ Friendster, Friendster overview, 2006.

^ Frühstückstreff, [7], 2006.

^ http://www.gaiaonline.com/ as of 5 November 2006.

^ GhettoSoul, GhettoSoul Poetry Homepage, 2006.

^ http://www.goldmic.com/

^ http://gonegothic.com/

^ http://www.gopetslive.com/

^ http://www.greatestjournal.com/ as of 10 August 2006

^ Usercount is available to logged-in members

^ http://www.hi5networks.com/

^ http://hyves.nl/ as of 13 September 2006

^ http://www.imeem.com/

^ http://www.inkednation.com/

^ IMVU, IMVU Information. 2006.

^ http://irc-galleria.net/

^ Official iWiW blog. 19 July 2006.

^ Janglo Number of registered members listed by Yahoo on www.janglo.net and www.taanglo.net

^ https://www.last.fm/

^ LibraryThing "Zeitgeist" page, accessed 22 September 2006

^ https://www.linkedin.com/

^ http://www.livejournal.com/ (as of 15 August 2006).

^ PressBox.co.uk Press Release, LunarStorm launches new, fun, young adult and teen service in UK. 17 November 2005.

^ comdex score

^ http://migente.com/

^ Press Release by mixi, Inc. (in Japanese). 26 July 2006.

^ mobango.com, MOBANGO homepage. 22 June 2006.

^ Multiply.com company blog entry. 25 August 2006.

^ Music Forte Press Release Music and Artist Promotion reaches to the Far East . 21 March 2006.

^ mygamma.com, myGamma homepage. as of 27 November 2006.

^ http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-01-08-myspace-teens_x.htm?csp=34 8 January 2006. As of Nov. 2005.

^ Web generation preserves memories online. 25 June 2006.

^ http://www.neurona.it/

^ Lead Developer Position @ OkCupid.com, mailing list posting, 4 April 2005

^ Count based on number of people available in primary network as of 23 November 2006.

^ http://www.passado.com/index.aspx

^ Wall Street Journal, "Myspace's New Rivals Are Winning Friends", September 29, 2006.

^ CNET: Swedish flirts find a new home, 23 September 2006

^ ProfileHeaven Press Release, Profileheaven to Appoint Paul Myers to Board. March 18, 2006.

^ http://connexions.rediff.com/connexions/

^ http://www.reunion.com

^ Ryze, Ryze business networking. May 2006.

^ ClickZ article, Alloy Buys High School Social Networking Site. March 29, 2006

^ Studybreakers, forum post (registration required).

^ http://www.stumbleupon.com/about.html

^ http://tagworld.com/

^ http://www.takingitglobal.org/

^ http://www.student.com/mediakit.php

^ Tribe people page, open to members only

^ http://vampirefreaks.com/

^ VietSpace member list

^ Media Week article, Media Run wins travellers' website account. 27 April 2006.

^ Based on most recent profiles featured on http://www.webbiographies.com/ front page.

^ Trendwatching.com, Youniversal Branding. July 2006.

^ WPXI article, Warnings Issued For Popular Web Site. July 21, 2005.

^ openBC Press Release openBC hits the 1 million member mark. 31 January 2006.

^ Xuga, Xuga homepage. April 13, 2006.

^ In the Race With Google, It’s Consistency vs. ‘Wow’. New York Times, 24 July 2006.

^ Zaadz People, Zaadzsters page. 20 September 2006.

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking_sites

Content derived from Wikipedia article on Wikis

Wiki

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A wiki (IPA: [ˈwɪ.kiː] <WICK-ee> or [ˈwiː.kiː] <WEE-kee>[1]) is a type of Web site that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change some available content, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring. The term wiki also can refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a Web site, or to certain specific wiki sites, including the computer science site (an original wiki), WikiWikiWeb, and on-line encyclopedias such as Wikipedia.

Contents

1 History

2 Typical site operations

3 Key characteristics

3.1 Pages and editing

3.2 Linking and creating pages

3.3 Searching

3.4 Server-side versus client-side wiki

3.5 Web-based versus peer-to-peer

4 Controlling changes

5 Vandalism

6 Wiki communities

7 Wikis and content management systems

8 See also

9 Notes

10 References

11 External links

History

Wiki Wiki sign at Honolulu International AirportThe first such software to be called a wiki, WikiWikiWeb, was named by Ward Cunningham. Cunningham remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the so-called "Wiki Wiki" Chance RT-52 shuttle bus line that runs between the airport's terminals. According to Cunningham, "I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for 'quick' and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web." "Wiki Wiki" is a reduplication of "wiki", a Hawaiian-language word for fast. The word wiki is a shorter form of wiki wiki (weekie, weekie). The word is sometimes interpreted as the backronym for "what I know is", which describes the knowledge contribution, storage, and exchange function.

According to Cunningham, the idea of 'wiki' can be traced back to a HyperCard stack he wrote in the late 1980s. In the late 1990s, wikis were increasingly recognized as a promising way to develop private and public knowledge bases[citation needed], and this potential inspired the founders of the Nupedia encyclopedia project, which later became Wikipedia. In the early 2000s, wikis were increasingly adopted in the enterprise as collaborative software. Common uses included project communication, intranets, and documentation, initially for technical users. In December 2002, Socialtext launched the first commercial open-source wiki solution. Open-source wiki software was widely available, downloaded, and installed throughout these years. Today some companies use wikis as their only collaborative software and as a replacement for static intranets. There arguably is greater use of wikis behind firewalls than on the public Internet.

Typical site operations

A wiki is an editable Web site that does not require users to know HTML. Most have a system to record changes so that, at any time, a page can be reverted to any of its previous states. A wiki system also may include various tools and meta-content. These provide users with an easy way to monitor the constantly changing state of the wiki as well as a place to discuss and resolve inevitable issues such as disagreements over wiki content. Wiki content can sometimes be misleading, as users may accidentally or intentionally add incorrect information to the wiki.

Many public wikis will allow unrestricted access, so that people may contribute to the site without a preliminary registration process. This is frequently different from other types of interactive Web sites such as Internet forums or chat sites. Many users find this anonymity an attractive surprise.

Key characteristics

A wiki enables documents to be written collectively in a simple markup language using a web browser. A single page in a wiki is referred to as a "wiki page", while the entire body of pages, which are usually highly interconnected via hyperlinks, is "the wiki"; in effect, a wiki is actually a very simple, easy-to-use user-maintained database for searching or even creating information.

A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. Generally, there is no review before modifications are accepted. Most wikis are open to the general public without the need to register any user account. Sometimes session log-in is requested to acquire a "wiki-signature" cookie for autosigning edits. Many edits, however, can be made in real-time, and appear almost instantaneously online. This can lead to abuse of the system. Private wiki servers require user authentication to edit, sometimes even to read pages.

Pages and editing

It has been suggested that Edit summary be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

The source format, sometimes known as "wikitext'", is augmented with a simplified markup language to indicate various structural and visual conventions. An often used example of one such convention is to start a line of text with an asterisk ("*") in order to mark it as an item in a bulleted list. Style and syntax can vary a great deal among implementations, some of which also allow HTML tags.

The reasoning behind this design is that HTML, with its many cryptic tags, is not especially human-readable. Making typical HTML source visible makes the actual text content very hard to read and edit for most users. It is therefore better to promote plain-text editing with a few simple conventions for structure and style.

It is somewhat beneficial that users cannot directly use all the capabilities of HTML, such as JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets. Consistency in look and feel is also achieved: In many wiki implementations, an active hyperlink is exactly as it is shown, unlike in HTML where the invisible hyperlink can have an arbitrary visible anchor text. This goes along with some extra safety for the user: Permitting users to write in HTML might allow harmful or annoying code (for example, JavaScript code that prevents the reader from marking part of the text).

MediaWiki syntax Equivalent HTML Rendered output

"''Doctor''? No other title? A ''scholar''? And he rates above the civil authority?"

"Why, certainly," replied Hardin, amiably. "We're all scholars more or less. After all, we're not so much a world as a scientific foundation — under the direct control of the Emperor."

"Doctor? No other title? A scholar? And he rates above the civil authority?"

"Why, certainly," replied Hardin, amiably. "We're all scholars more or less. After all, we're not so much a world as a scientific foundation — under the direct control of the Emperor."

"Doctor? No other title? A scholar? And he rates above the civil authority?"

"Why, certainly," replied Hardin, amiably. "We're all scholars more or less. After all, we're not so much a world as a scientific foundation—under the direct control of the Emperor."

(Quotation above from Foundation by Isaac Asimov)

Some recent wiki engines use a different method: they allow "WYSIWYG" editing, usually by means of JavaScript or an ActiveX control that translates graphically entered formatting instructions, such as "bold" and "italics", into the corresponding HTML tags. In those implementations, the markup of a newly-edited HTML version of the page is generated and submitted to the server transparently, and the user is shielded from this technical detail. Users who do not have the necessary plugin can generally edit the page, usually by directly editing the raw HTML code. More recently, wiki engines are generating wiki syntax instead of HTML. This way, users who are comfortable editing in wiki syntax can carry on.

Although for years the de facto standard was the syntax of the original WikiWikiWeb, currently the formatting instructions vary depending on the wiki engine. Simple wikis allow only basic text formatting, whereas more complex ones have support for tables, images, formulas, or even interactive elements such as polls and games. At present there is no standard for wiki markup.

Linking and creating pages

Wikis are a hypertext medium, with non-linear navigational structures. Each page typically contains a large number of links to other pages. Hierarchical navigation pages often exist in larger wikis, often a consequence of the original page creation process, but they do not have to be used. Links are created using a specific syntax, the so-called "link pattern".

Originally, most wikis used CamelCase when naming program identifiers, produced by capitalizing words in a phrase and removing the spaces between them (the word "CamelCase" is itself an example). While CamelCase makes linking very easy, it also leads to links which are written in a form that deviates from the standard spelling. CamelCase-based wikis are instantly recognizable because they have many links with names such as "TableOfContents" and "BeginnerQuestions". Note that it is possible for a wiki to render the visible anchor for such links "pretty" by reinserting spaces, and possibly also reverting to lower case. However, this reprocessing of the link to improve the readability of the anchor is limited by the loss of capitalization information caused by CamelCase reversal. For example, "RichardWagner" should be rendered as "Richard Wagner", whereas "PopularMusic" should be rendered as "popular music". There is no easy way to determine which capital letters should remain capitalized. As a result, many wikis now have "free linking" using brackets, and some disable CamelCase by default.

Searching

Most wikis offer at least a title search, and sometimes a full-text search. The scalability of the search depends on whether the wiki engine uses a database; indexed database access is necessary for high speed searches on large wikis.

Server-side versus client-side wiki

By far, the most common wiki systems are server-side. In essence, the edit, display and control functions are provided on the server through the wikiengine that renders the content into an HTML-based page for display in a web browser.

A client-side wiki system requires only that the server "serve" wiki files in much the same way that a web server allows HTML files to be retrieved using HTTP. In this type of wiki system, all the execution required to convert the underlying wiki text into an onscreen formatted display page resides in the client browser. Likewise, the editing tools and functionality reside in the browser.

The client-side wiki system parallels HTML in that the page becomes a rendering instruction for the browser to interpret. Client-side wiki systems may be little more than a code plugin to a more traditional web browser.

Web-based versus peer-to-peer

Most wikis are based on a web server. The server can be open to everybody on the Internet, or part of a private LAN, with limited access. There is also a version of wiki that can be shared between peers, with no need for a web server. Such Peer-to-peer wiki system is integrated with a P2P version-control system that takes care of versioning and distribution of pages.

Controlling changes

History comparison reports highlight the changes between two revisions of a page.Wikis are generally designed with the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make them. Thus while wikis are very open, they provide a means to verify the validity of recent additions to the body of pages. The most prominent, on almost every wiki, is the "Recent Changes" page—a specific list numbering recent edits, or a list of all the edits made within a given timeframe. Some wikis can filter the list to remove minor edits and edits made by automatic importing scripts ("bots").

From the change log, other functions are accessible in most wikis: the Revision History showing previous page versions; and the diff feature, highlighting the changes between two revisions. Using the Revision History, an editor can view and restore a previous version of the article. The diff feature can be used to decide whether or not this is necessary. A regular wiki user can view the diff of an edit listed on the "Recent Changes" page and, if it is an unacceptable edit, consult the history, restoring a previous revision; this process is more or less streamlined, depending on the wiki software used.

In case unacceptable edits are missed on the "Recent Changes" page, some wiki engines provide additional content control. It can be monitored to ensure that a page, or a set of pages, keeps its quality. A person willing to maintain pages will be warned of modifications to the pages, allowing him or her to verify the validity of new editions quickly.

Vandalism

The open philosophy of most wikis—of allowing anyone to edit content—does not ensure that editors are well intentioned. Wiki vandalism is a problem for wikis. The approach of making damage easy to undo rather than attempting to prevent damage has been characterized as soft security. Many editors of wiki sites tend to have good intentions, although on larger wiki sites, vandalism can go unnoticed for a period of time. Another bothersome feature in wikis is trolling.

Wiki communities

Many wiki communities are private, particularly within enterprises as collaborative software. They are often used as internal documentation for in-house systems and applications. The democratic, all-encompassing nature of Wikipedia is a significant factor in its growth, while many other wikis are highly specialized. Today, the English-language Wikipedia is, by far, the world's largest wiki; the German-language Wikipedia is the second-largest, while the other Wikipedias fill many of the remaining upper slots. Other large wikis include the WikiWikiWeb, Memory Alpha, Wikitravel, World66 and Susning.nu, a Swedish-language knowledge base. The largest wikis as of July 3, 2004 were listed on the the Meatball wiki. Many public wikis are listed at WikiIndex which is a wiki of wikis.

There also exist WikiNodes which are pages on wikis that describe related wikis. They are usually organized as neighbors and delegates. A neighbor wiki is simply a wiki that may discuss similar content or may otherwise be of interest. A delegate wiki is a wiki that agrees to have certain content delegated to that wiki.

One way of finding a wiki on a specific subject is to follow the wiki-node network from wiki to wiki; another is to take a Wiki "bus tour," for example: Wikipedia's Tour Bus Stop. Domain names containing "wiki" are growing in popularity to support specific niches.

For those interested in creating their own wiki, there are many publicly available "wiki farms", some of which can also make private, password-protected wikis. PeanutButterWiki, Socialtext, Wetpaint, and Wikia are popular examples of such services. For more info, see List of wiki farms.

Wikis and content management systems

Wikis have shared, and encouraged, several features with generalized content management systems (CMS) which are used by enterprises and communities-of-practice. Those looking to compare a CMS with an enterprise wiki should consider these basic features:

The name of an article is embedded in the hyperlink.

Articles can be created or edited at anytime by anyone (with certain limitations for protected articles).

Articles are editable through the web browser.

Each article provides one-click access to the history/versioning page, which also supports version differencing ("diff") and retrieving prior versions.

Each article provides one-click access to a discussion page particular to that article.

The most recent additions/modifications of articles can be monitored actively or passively.

None of these are particular to a wiki, and some have developed independently. Still the concept of a wiki unequivocally refers to this core set of features. Taken together, they fit the generative nature of the Internet (as scholar Jonathan Zittrain has labeled it), in encouraging each user to help build it. It is yet to be studied whether an enterprise wiki encourages more usage, or leads to more knowledgeable community members, than other content management systems.

Sometimes, when an online translator is used to translate the language of the text in a Wiki, and somebody edits it, it can erroneously change the language of the text[1].

See also

Find more information on wiki by searching Wikipedia's sister projects:

Dictionary definitions from Wiktionary

Textbooks from Wikibooks

Quotations from Wikiquote

Source texts from Wikisource

Images and media from Commons

News stories from Wikinews

Learning resources from Wikiversity

Comparison of wiki farms

Comparison of wiki software

Bliki

List of wikis

List of wiki software

Massively distributed collaboration

Wiki farm

Wiki help

Semantic wiki

Social software

Content management

Content management system

Notes

^ according to Don Perrin

References

Aigrain, Philippe (2003). The Individual and the Collective in Open Information Communities. Invited talk at the 16th Bled Electronic Commerce Conference, Bled, Slovenia, June 11, 2003.

Aronsson, Lars (2002). Operation of a Large Scale, General Purpose Wiki Website: Experience from susning.nu's first nine months in service. Paper presented at the 6th International ICCC/IFIP Conference on Electronic Publishing, November 8, 2002, Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic.

Benkler, Yochai (2002). Coase's penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm. The Yale Law Journal. v.112, n.3, pp.369–446.

Choate, Mark (2006). What makes an enterprise wiki? CMS Watch. April 28, 2006.

Cunningham, Ward and Leuf, Bo (2001): The Wiki Way. Quick Collaboration on the Web. Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-71499-X.

Delacroix, Jérôme (2005): Les wikis, espaces de l'intelligence collective, M2 Editions, Paris, ISBN 2-9520514-4-5.

Ebersbach, Anja, Glaser, Markus and Heigl, Richard (2005): Wiki. Web Collaboration. Springer, ISBN 3-540-25995-3.

Jansson, Kurt (2002): "Wikipedia. Die Freie Enzyklopädie." Lecture at the 19th Chaos Communications Congress (19C3), December 27, 2002 intermot Berlin, Germany.

Klobas, Jane and others (2006): Wikis: Tools for Information Work and Collaboration. Oxford, UK, Chandos Publishing, ISBN 1-84334-179-4.

Lange, Christoph (ed., 2006). Wikis und Blogs – Planen, Einrichten, Verwalten. Computer- und Literaturverlag, ISBN 3-936546-44-4.

Mattison, David (2003). "QuickiWiki, Swiki, TWiki, ZWiki, and the Plone Wars: Wiki as PIM and Collaborative Content Tool." Searcher: The Magazine for Database Professionals, v. 11, no. 4 (April 2003): 32-48

Möller, Erik (2003). Loud and clear: How Internet media can work. Presentation at the Open Cultures conference, June 5 & 6, 2003 Vienna, Austria.

Möller, Erik (2003). Tanz der Gehirne. Telepolis, May 9–30. Four parts: (i) "Das Wiki-Prinzip", (ii) "Alle gegen Brockhaus", (iii) "Diderots Traumtagebuch", und (iv) "Diesen Artikel bearbeiten".

Nakisa, Ramin (2003). "Wiki Wiki Wah Wah". Linux User and Developer v.29, pp.42–48. sanyo

Remy, Melanie. (2002). Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Online Information Review. v.26, n.6, p.434

New Media: Who are the real winners now we've all gone Wiki-crazy?

Father of Wiki Speaks Out on Community and Collaborative Development, eWeek, March 20 [2006]

External links

Wikis at HowStuffWorks.

"Information Wants to be Liquid" — Wired magazine article

Wiki Engines

What's a Wiki?

Wiki Science

How to start a wiki (on Wikibooks) — help write the book on starting a wiki

WikiWikiWeb (the first wiki)

Science in the Web Age: Joint Efforts on wikis and the scientific community, from Nature magazine

www.wikimatrix.org: A side-by-side comparison of many different wiki installations.

New Media: Who are the real winners now we've all gone Wiki-Loopy? (subscription required to read beyond intro)

Operation of a Large Scale, General Purpose Wiki Website Book abstract

A online wiki for tutorials.

End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikis

Content derived from Wikipedia article on Folksonomy

Folksonomy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A folksonomy is an Internet-based information retrieval methodology consisting of collaboratively generated, open-ended labels that categorize content such as Web pages, online photographs, and Web links. A folksonomy is most notably contrasted from a taxonomy in that the authors of the labeling system are often the main users (and sometimes originators) of the content to which the labels are applied. The labels are commonly known as tags and the labeling process is called tagging.

The process of folksonomic tagging is intended to make a body of information increasingly easier to search, discover, and navigate over time. A well-developed folksonomy is ideally accessible as a shared vocabulary that is both originated by, and familiar to its primary users. Two widely cited examples of websites using folksonomic tagging are Flickr and Del.icio.us, although it has been suggested that Flickr is not a good example of folksonomy.[1]

Because folksonomies develop in Internet-mediated social environments, users can discover (generally) who created a given folksonomy tag, and see the other tags that this person created. In this way, folksonomy users often discover the tag sets of another user who tends to interpret and tag content in a way that makes sense to them. The result, often, is an immediate and rewarding gain in the user's capacity to find related content. Part of the appeal of folksonomy is its inherent subversiveness: faced with the dreadful performance of the search tools that Web sites typically provide, folksonomies can be seen as a rejection of the search engine status quo in favor of tools that are both created by the community and beneficial to the community.

Folksonomy creation and searching tools are not part of the underlying World Wide Web protocols. Folksonomies arise in Web-based communities where special provisions are made at the site level for creating and using tags. These communities are established to enable Web users to label and share user-generated content, such as photographs, or to collaboratively label existing content, such as Web sites, books, works in the scientific and scholarly literatures, and blog entries.

Contents

1 Benefits

2 Origin

3 Folksonomy and the Semantic Web

4 Folksonomy in the enterprise

5 Criticisms

6 Potential compromise between folksonomies and top-down taxonomies

7 References

8 See also

9 External links

Benefits

In contrast to professionally developed taxonomies with controlled vocabularies, folksonomies are unsystematic and, from an information scientist's point of view, unsophisticated; however, for Internet users, they dramatically lower content categorization costs because there is no complicated, hierarchically organized nomenclature to learn. One simply creates and applies tags on the fly.

Moreover, folksonomies are inherently open-ended and can therefore respond quickly to changes and innovations in the way users categorize Internet content. Like other commons-based peer production systems, such as open source software development and Wikis like Wikipedia, although the participating individuals possess varying levels of tagging sophistication, this production process can produce results that compare favorably to the best professionally designed systems.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of folksonomy is its relevance in the information retrieval sense of the term -- that is, the capacity of its tags to describe the "aboutness" of an Internet resource. Folksonomies are generated by people who may have spent a great deal of time interacting with the content they tag.

Folksonomic categories may strike those of a formal turn of mind as hopelessly idiosyncratic, but therein lies their value: a folksonomic category arises from an individual's engagement with the tagged content, such that the created category is simultaneously personal, social, and (to some degree) systematic, albeit in an imperfect and provisional way. Folksonomies therefore convey information on multiple levels, including information about the people who create them, and they therefore invite human engagement. If you agree with somebody's classification scheme, no matter how bizarre it might seem to others, you are subtly but strongly encouraged to explore other objects that this user has tagged.

Origin

The term folksonomy is generally attributed to Thomas Vander Wal[2], who created the word to describe a phenomenon that had already taken recognizable form; for example, the World Wide Web Consortium's Annotea project experimented with user-generated tags in 2002.[3] According to Vander Wal, a folksonomy is "tagging that works".

Folksonomy should be distinguished from folk taxonomy, a cultural practice that has been widely documented in anthropological work. Folk taxonomies are culturally supplied, intergenerationally transmitted, and relatively stable classification systems that people in a given culture use to make sense of the entire world around them (not just the Internet).[4]

The term folksonomy is a portmanteau that specifically refers to the tagging systems created within Internet communities. A combination of the words folk (or folks) and taxonomy, the term folksonomy literally means "people's classification management": "Taxonomy" is from the Greek taxis and nomos. Taxis means "classification" and nomos (or nomia) means "management," while "Folk" is from the Old English folc, meaning people.

Folksonomy and the Semantic Web

Folksonomy may hold the key to developing a Semantic Web, in which every Web page contains machine-readable metadata that describes its content. Such metadata would dramatically improve the precision (the percentage of relevant documents) in search engine retrieval lists. However, it is difficult to see how the large and varied community of Web page authors could be persuaded to add metadata to their pages in a consistent, reliable way; Web authors who wish to do so experience high entry costs because metadata systems are time-consuming to learn and use. For this reason, few Web authors make use of the simple Dublin Core metadata standard, even though the use of Dublin Core meta-tags could increase their pages' prominence in search engine retrieval lists. There are however other examples of metadata based web classification systems which are used in directories such as NetInsert. The NetInsert meta tag taxonomy is one working example of a classification system employed by web authors to categorize content on the web. In contrast to more formalized, top-down classifications using controlled vocabularies, folksonomy is a distributed classification system with low entry costs. If folksonomy capabilities were built into the Web protocols, it is possible that the Semantic Web would develop more quickly.

Folksonomy in the enterprise

Since folksonomies are user-generated and therefore inexpensive to implement, advocates of folksonomy believe that it provides a useful low-cost alternative to more traditional, institutionally supported taxonomies or controlled vocabularies. An employee-generated folksonomy could therefore be seen as an "emergent enterprise taxonomy". Some folksonomy advocates believe that it is useful in facilitating workplace democracy and the distribution of management tasks among people actually doing the work.

Criticisms

Critics suggest folksonomies are characterized by flaws that formal classification systems are designed to eliminate including polysemy (words which have multiple related meanings; for example, a window can be a hole or a sheet of glass); and synonyms, multiple words with the same or similar meanings (tv and television, or Netherlands/Holland/Dutch) and plural words (cat and cats).[5] In addition, folksonomies all but invite deliberately idiosyncratic tagging, called meta noise, which burdens users and decreases the system's information retrieval utility. Those who prefer top-down taxonomies/ontologies argue that an agreed set of tags enables more efficient indexing and searching of content. At least different word inflections could be avoided, if there was a lemmatization engine behind the tag entry forms.

Potential compromise between folksonomies and top-down taxonomies

This article or section does not cite its references or sources.

You can help Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations.

A possible solution to the shortcomings of folksonomies and controlled vocabulary is a collabulary, which can be conceptualized as a compromise between the two: a team of classification experts collaborates with content consumers to create rich, but more systematic content tagging systems. A collabulary arises much the way a folksonomy does, but it is developed in a spirit of collaboration with experts in the field. The result is a system that combines the benefits of folksonomies -- low entry costs, a rich vocabulary that is broadly shared and comprehensible by the user base, and the capacity to respond quickly to language change -- without the errors that inevitably arise in naive, unsupervised folksonomies.

References

↑ Vanderwal, T. (2006). "Folksonomy Research Needs Cleaning Up."

↑ Vanderwal, T. (2005). "Off the Top: Folksonomy Entries." Visited November 5, 2005.

↑ M. Koivunen, Annotea and Semantic Web Supported Annotation.

↑ Berlin, B. (1992). Ethnobiological Classification. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

↑ Golder, Scott A. Huberman, Bernardo A. (2005). "The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems." Information Dynamics Lab, HP Labs. Visited November 24, 2005.

See also

Other Topics & Books

Social Impact

Infotainment & Celebrity

'Infotainers' & Personalities

News Management

Distortion & VNRs

PR & Propaganda Model

'Yellow' Journalism

Press freedom

News media

Newspapers & Magazines

News Agencies

Broadcast Journalism

Online & Blogging

Alternative Media

Roles

Journalist, Reporter, Editor, News presenter, Photo Journalist, Columnist, Visual Journalist

For other uses, see Blog (disambiguation).

A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.

The term "blog" is derived from "Web log." "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

As of November 2006, blog search engine Technorati was tracking nearly 60 million blogs.[1]

Contents

1 History

1.1 1994 – 2001

1.2 2001 – 2004

1.3 2004 – present

2 Types of blogs

3 Business models

4 Anatomy of a blog entry

4.1 Comments

5 Blog popularity

6 Blogging and the mass media

7 Legal issues

8 See also

9 References

10 Further reading

11 External links

History

Chronicles, commonplaces, diaries, and perzines can all be seen as predecessors of blogs.

Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, e-mail lists and bulletin board systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with "threads". Threads are topical connections between messages on a metaphorical "corkboard".

1994 – 2001

Main article: Online diary

Brad Fitzpatrick, an early blogger.The modern blog evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. A few called themselves escribitionists. The Open Pages webring included members of the online-journal community. Justin Hall, who began eleven years of personal blogging in 1994 while a student at Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earliest bloggers.[2]

Other forms of journals kept online also existed. A notable example was game programmer John Carmack's widely read journal, published via the finger protocol. Websites, including both corporate sites and personal homepages, had and still often have "What's New" or "News" sections, often on the index page and sorted by date. One example of a news based "weblog" is the "Drudge Report" founded by the self styled maverick reporter Matt Drudge, though apparently Drudge dislikes this classification. Another is the Institute for Public Accuracy which began posting news releases featuring several news-pegged one-paragraph quotes several time a week beginning in 1998. One noteworthy early precursor to a blog was the tongue-in-cheek personal website that was frequently updated by Usenet legend Kibo.

Early weblogs were simply manually updated components of common websites. However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and maintenance of web articles posted in said chronological fashion made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical, population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online publishing that produces blogs we recognize today. For instance, the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging". Blogs can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, or they can be run using blog software, such as WordPress, blogger or LiveJournal, or on regular web hosting services, such as DreamHost.

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999.[3][4][5] This was quickly adopted as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog").

After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity: the site Xanga, launched in 1996, had only 100 diaries by 1997, but over 20 million as of December 2005. Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools:

Open Diary launched in October 1998, soon growing to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could add comments to other writers' blog entries.

Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal in March 1999.

Andrew Smales created Pitas.com in July 1999 as an easier alternative to maintaining a "news page" on a website, followed by Diaryland in September 1999, focusing more on a personal diary community.[6]

Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan (Pyra Labs) launched blogger.com in August 1999 (purchased by Google in February 2003)

Blogging combined the personal web page with tools to make linking to other pages easier — specifically permalinks, blogrolls and TrackBacks. This, together with weblog search engines enabled bloggers to track the threads that connected them to others with similar interests.

2001 – 2004

Several broadly popular American blogs emerged in 2001: Andrew Sullivan's AndrewSullivan.com, Ron Gunzburger's Politics1.com, Taegan Goddard's Political Wire and Jerome Armstrong's MyDD — all blogging primarily on politics (two earlier popular American political blogs were Bob Somerby's Daily Howler launched in 1998 and Mickey Kaus' Kausfiles launched in 1999).

By 2001, blogging was enough of a phenomenon that how-to manuals began to appear, primarily focusing on technique. The importance of the blogging community (and its relationship to larger society) increased rapidly. Established schools of journalism began researching blogging and noting the differences between journalism and blogging.

In 2002, Jerome Armstrong's friend and sometime business partner Markos Moulitsas Zúniga began DailyKos. With up to a million visits a day during peak events, it has now become one of the Internet's most trafficked blogs.

Also in 2002, many blogs focused on comments by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Senator Lott, at a party honoring U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, praised Senator Thurmond by suggesting that the United States would have been better off had Thurmond been elected president. Lott's critics saw these comments as a tacit approval of racial segregation, a policy advocated by Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign. This view was reinforced by documents and recorded interviews dug up by bloggers. (See Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo.) Though Lott's comments were made at a public event attended by the media, no major media organizations reported on his controversial comments until after blogs broke the story. Blogging helped to create a political crisis that forced Lott to step down as majority leader.

The impact of this story gave greater credibility to blogs as a medium of news dissemination. Though often seen as partisan gossips, bloggers sometimes lead the way in bringing key information to public light, with mainstream media having to follow their lead. More often, however, news blogs tend to react to material already published by the mainstream media.

Since 2002, blogs have gained increasing notice and coverage for their role in breaking, shaping, and spinning news stories. The Iraq war saw bloggers taking measured and passionate points of view that go beyond the traditional left-right divide of the political spectrum.

Blogging by established politicians and political candidates, to express opinions on war and other issues, cemented blogs' role as a news source. (See Howard Dean and Wesley Clark.) Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts blogged, making blogs a source of in-depth analysis. (See Daniel Drezner and J. Bradford DeLong.)

The second Iraq war was the first "blog war" in another way: Iraqi bloggers gained wide readership, and one, Salam Pax, published a book of his blog. Blogs were also created by soldiers serving in the Iraq war. Such "warblog" gave readers new perspectives on the realities of war, as well as often offering different viewpoints from those of official news sources.

Blogging was used to draw attention to obscure news sources. For example, bloggers posted links to traffic cameras in Madrid as a huge anti-terrorism demonstration filled the streets in the wake of the March 11 attacks.

Bloggers began to provide nearly-instant commentary on televised events, creating a secondary meaning of the word "blogging": to simultaneously transcribe and editorialize speeches and events shown on television. (For example, "I am blogging Rice's testimony" means "I am posting my reactions to Condoleezza Rice's testimony into my blog as I watch her on television.") Real-time commentary is sometimes referred to as "liveblogging."

2004 – present

In 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as political consultants, news services and candidates began using them as tools for outreach and opinion forming. Even politicians not actively campaigning, such as the UK's Labour Party's MP Tom Watson, began to blog to bond with constituents.

Minnesota Public Radio broadcast a program by Christopher Lydon and Matt Stoller called "The blogging of the President," which covered a transformation in politics that blogging seemed to presage. The Columbia Journalism Review began regular coverage of blogs and blogging. Anthologies of blog pieces reached print, and blogging personalities began appearing on radio and television. In the summer of 2004, both United States Democratic and Republican Parties' conventions credentialed bloggers, and blogs became a standard part of the publicity arsenal. Mainstream television programs, such as Chris Matthews' Hardball, formed their own blogs. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary declared "blog" as the word of the year in 2004.[7]

Blogs were among the driving forces behind the "Rathergate" scandal, to wit: (television journalist) Dan Rather presented documents (on the CBS show 60 Minutes) that conflicted with accepted accounts of President Bush's military service record. Bloggers declared the documents to be forgeries and presented evidence and arguments in support of that view, and CBS apologized for what it said were inadequate reporting techniques (see Little Green Footballs). Many bloggers view this scandal as the advent of blogs' acceptance by the mass media, both as a source of news and opinion and as means of applying political pressure.

Some bloggers have moved over to other media. The following bloggers (and others) have appeared on radio and television: Duncan Black (known widely by his pseudonym, Atrios), Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) , Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (Daily Kos), Alex Steffen (Worldchanging) and Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette). Hugh Hewitt is an example of a media personality who has moved in the other direction, adding to his reach in "old media" by being an influential blogger.

Some blogs were an important source of news during the December 2004 Tsunami such as Medecins Sans Frontieres, which used SMS text messaging to report from affected areas in Sri Lanka and Southern India. Similarly, during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and the aftermath a few blogs which were located in New Orleans, including the Interdictor and Gulfsails were able to maintain power and an internet connection and disseminate information that was not covered by the Main Stream Media.

In the United Kingdom, The Guardian newspaper launched a redesign in September 2005, which included a daily digest of blogs on page 2. Also in June 2006, BBC News launched a weblog for its editors, following other news companies.[8]

In January 2005, Fortune magazine listed eight bloggers that business people "could not ignore": Peter Rojas, Xeni Jardin, Ben Trott, Mena Trott, Jonathan Schwartz, Jason Goldman, Robert Scoble, and Jason Calacanis.

Types of blogs

A photo of Joi Ito's moblog.There are various types of blogs, and each differs in the way content is delivered or written.

By media type

A blog comprising videos is called a vlog, one comprising links is called a linklog,[9] or one comprising photos is called a photoblog[10]

By device

Blogs can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose it. A blog written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA is called a moblog.[11]

Genre

Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political blogs, travel blogs, fashion blogs or legal blogs (often referred to as a blawgs).

Legal status of publishers

A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes. Blogs, either used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or PR purposes are called corporate blogs.

Blog search engines

Several blog search engines are used to search blog contents (also known as the blogosphere), such as blogdigger, Feedster, and Technorati. Technorati provides current information on both popular searches and tags used to categorize blog postings.

Business models

While the great majority of blogs are non-commercial, full-time bloggers have struggled to find a way to make a profit from their work. The most common and simplest method is to accept targeted banner advertising. However, some bloggers have been hesitant to use this because of negative reader response to the ads. A more discreet form of advertising is for bloggers to promote merchandise from other sites, receiving a commission when a customer buys the item after following a blog link.

Others have tried a click-to-donate model. Prominent political blogger Andrew Sullivan claimed at one point that accepting voluntary donations to his blog was more lucrative than his magazine work for The New Republic. Following the practice of public television, Sullivan boosted donations with periodic "pledge drives," one of which was reported to net him $120,000. Sullivan's attempt at securing corporate sponsorship for his blog fell apart after strong negative reader response to the deal.

However, In the early twenty-first century, many magazines and newspapers began sponsoring personal blogs by their employees. The business model in this case is essentially the same as that of a traditional newspaper columnist. In a creative extension of the model, employees at other media companies began blogs focusing on the companies' products. For example, many actors in pornography blog about their work on company sites, creating a sense of personal connection between consumer and product.

Fairly new, and highly controversial, is the pay-per-blog model, in which the blogger writes a set number of words on a topic (usually a web page or product) provided by an advertiser. The post always includes at least one link to a web site relevant to the topic, as a way of creating "buzz" and helping the advertised page's rank in search engines. In return, the blogger receives a small amount of money, usually no more than 10 US dollars.

The reason for the controversy is that many bloggers do not reveal to their readers that they are being paid for a given post, leading to the impression that they are sincerely endorsing the product or service when in fact they're acting as writers of ad copy. In response, many bloggers denounce the practice of paid posting as "facilitating the pollution of the blogosphere[12]" and even "evil". Others claim that there is no ethical problem as long as the blogger discloses that he or she is being paid. This dispute seems unlikely to be resolved in the forseeable future.

Anatomy of a blog entry

A screenshot of a typical blog.A variety of different systems are used to create and maintain blogs. Dedicated web applications can eliminate the need for bloggers to manage this software. With web interfaces, these systems allow travelers to blog from anywhere on the Internet, and allow users to create blogs without having to maintain their own server. Such systems allow users to work with tools such as Ecto, Elicit and Blogger which allow users to maintain their Web-hosted blog without the need to be online while composing or editing posts. Blog creation tools and blog hosting are also provided by some Web hosting companies (Tripod), Internet service providers (America Online), online publications (Salon.com) and internet portals (Yahoo! 360° or Google). Some advanced users have developed custom blogging systems from scratch using server-side software, and often implement membership management and password protected areas. Others have created a mix of a blog and wiki, called a bliki.

A blog entry typically consists of the following:

Title, the main title, or headline, of the post.

Body, main content of the post.

Permalink, the URL of the full, individual article.

Post Date, date and time the post was published.

A blog entry optionally includes the following:

Comments

Categories (or tags) - subjects that the entry discusses

Trackback and or pingback - links to other sites that refer to the entry

Comments

Main article: Feedback comment system

Comments are a way to provide discussion on blog entries. Readers can leave a comment on a post, which can correct errors or contain their opinion on the post or the post's subject. Services like coComment aim to ease discussion through comments, by allowing tracking of them.

Blog popularity

Recently, researchers have analyzed the dynamics of how blogs become popular. There are essentially two measures of this: popularity through citations, as well as popularity through affiliation (i.e. blogroll). The basic conclusion from studies of the structure of blogs is that while it takes time for a blog to become popular through blogrolls, permalinks can boost popularity more quickly, and are perhaps more indicative of popularity and authority than blogrolls, since they denote that people are actually reading the blog's content and deem it valuable or noteworthy in specific cases.[13]

The blogdex project was launched by researchers in the MIT Media Lab to crawl the web and gather data from thousands of blogs in order to investigate their social properties. It gathered this information for over 4 years, and autonomously tracked the most contagious information spreading in the blog community. The project is no longer active.

Blogs are also given rankings by Technorati based on the amount of incoming links and Alexa Internet based on the web hits of Alexa Toolbar users. In August 2006, Technorati listed the most linked-to blog as that of Chinese actress Xu Jinglei and the most-read blog as group-written Boing Boing.[14]

It was reported by Chinese media Xinhua that the blog of Xu Jinglei received more than 50 million page views, claiming to be the most popular blog in the world.[15] In mid-2006, it also had the most incoming links of any blogs on the Internet.[14]

Blogging and the mass media

Many bloggers differentiate themselves from the mainstream media, while others are members of that media working through a different channel. Some institutions see blogging as a means of "getting around the filter" and pushing messages directly to the public. Some critics worry that bloggers respect neither copyright nor the role of the mass media in presenting society with credible news.

Many mainstream journalists, meanwhile, write their own blogs -- well over 300, according to CyberJournalist.net's J-blog list. The first known use of a Weblog on a news site was in August 1998, when Jonathan Dube of The Charlotte Observer published one chronicling Hurricane Bonnie.[16]

Blogs have also had an influence on minority languages, bringing together scattered speakers and learners; this is particularly so with blogs in Gaelic languages, whose creators can be found as far away from traditional Gaelic areas as Kazakhstan and Alaska. Minority language publishing (which may lack economic feasibility) can find its audience through inexpensive blogging.

Legal issues

The emergence of blogging has brought a range of legal liabilities. Employers have "dooced" (fired) employees who maintain personal blogs that discuss their employers.[17] The major areas of concern are the issues of proprietary or confidential information, and defamation. Several cases have been brought before the national courts against bloggers and the courts have r