Web 2.0 Glossary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
A
Architecture of participation
A phrase coined by Tim O’Reilly in 2003 to describe a scenario where a community of users build a system and is a critical part of Web 2.0.
Atom
Extensible Markup Language (XML) used for web feeds.
B
Blog
Originally short for “weblog”, a blog is a web page that contains entries in reverse chronological order, with the most recent entry on top. It is usually updated more frequently than a website with static content, and often solicits and displays comments from readers.
Blogosphere
A common term used to describe the large and diverse community of people who contribute to blogs. Some bloggers are very influential and reach a large audience, allowing news to travel quickly among this community. This is the factor causing many companies to monitor and reach out to the blogosphere to protect and promote their brand identity.
Blogroll
A list of recommended sites that appears in the sidebar of a blog. These sites are typically sites that are either on similar topics, sites that the blogger reads regularly, or sites that belong to the blogger’s friends or colleagues.
C
Categories
One of two primary methods for organizing content stored in Web 2.0 applications and environments, the other is tags. Categories are generally serve to organize content at a higher level than tags and are used to group pages, blog posts, files, events, or other data into groups. This organizational tool makes discovery of content and navigation easier.
Comments
The most commonly used method for generating information within a group or community is through comments. In most cases commenting allows an audience to provide feedback for a blog or wiki posting. Depending on the specific site, comments can be anonymous or tied to a user’s identity.
Creative Commons
An organization that has defined an alternative to copyrights by filling in the gap between full copyright, in which no use is permitted without permission, and public domain, where permission is not required at all. Creative Commons’ licenses let people copy and distribute the work under specific conditions, and general descriptions, legal clauses and HTML tags for search engines are provided for several license options.
Crowdsourcing
Act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call.
D
del.icio.us
A social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. Users can create individual feeds which then aggregate the most popular items to prominent status on the site’s front page.
Digg
A community-based popularity website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system.
E
F
A popular social networking website originally aimed at college students, but beginning to be more widely used by the general population.
Feed
The most common type of web content syndication. Feeds are generally done via RSS or ATOM. By subscribing to a feed, a user can consume content from blogs, wikis, websites, or other frequently updated content through their “feed reader” without having to constantly visit the content source online. Depending on the type of reader a user chooses, RSS and ATOM feeds can be consumed in a browser, via email, or on a mobile device.
Flickr
An online community platform built around users uploading, sharing, tagging, and commenting on photos taken by users.
Folksonomy
The practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content.
G
Google Earth
A version of Google Maps that offers a three-dimensional view of maps and terrain along with some enhanced functionality.
Google Maps
A free application and development platform that provides online maps. It offers street maps, a route planner, and an urban business locator for numerous countries around the world.
H
I
Instant Messaging
A form of real-time communication between two or more people in which typed text is conveyed via computers connected over a network such as the Internet.
J
K
L
A business-oriented social networking site used mainly for professional networking.
M
Mashup
A web service or software tool that combines two or more tools to create a whole new service. A leading example is ChicagoCrime, which merges Google Maps with the Chicago police department’s crime tracking web site to offer a map of crime in different parts of Chicago.
MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service)
A version of SMS that allows for the conveyance of media such as sounds, videos, and still images.
Moblogging
Short for mobile blogging, moblogging refers to posting blog updates from a cell phone, camera phone or PDA (personal digital assistant). Mobloggers may update their web sites more frequently than other bloggers, because they don’t have to be at their computers in order to post.
MySpace
A popular social networking website known for allowing users to customize their homepages with elaborate design elements, multimedia content, and photos of other friends in their myspace social network.
N
O
Open Source
A type of software for which the source code is available to the general public to build on or modify.
P
Permalink
Short for “permanent link”, a permalink is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to become irrelevant or broken.
Pingback
A method for web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents or web pages. Pingsbacks are used primarily to facilitate communication between blogs.
Podcast
A media file that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers.
Plaxo
An online address book service that relies on social networking to maintain and distribute current contact, schedule, and other types of information.
Q
R
RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
A format for storing online information in a way that makes that information readable by lots of different kinds of software. Many blogs and websites feature RSS feeds: a constantly updated version of the site’s latest content, in a form that can be read by a news reader or aggregator.
S
Second Life
An Internet-based virtual world launched in 2003, which users can access via a downloadable client program called the Second Life Viewer. It enables its users to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of social networking, and residents can explore, meet other users, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade items (virtual property) and services with one another.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
An important component of an overall web marketing strategy. It is the process of improving the quantity and quality of traffic to a website from search engines. Typically, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks,” the more users will select the corresponding links.
SMS (Short Message Service)
A platform for sending short text messages of no more than 160 characters between mobile telephony devices such as cell phones.
Social Bookmarking
The collaborative equivalent of storing favorites or bookmarks within a web browser, social bookmarking services let people store their favorite web sites online. Social bookmarking services also let people share their favorite web sites with other people, making them a great way to discover new sites or colleagues who share your interests.
Social Networking
Social networking sites help people discover new friends or colleagues by illuminating shared interests, related skills, or a common geographic location. Leading examples include Facebook and MySpace.
Syndication
In general, the supply of material for reuse and integration with other material.
T
Tags
Keywords that describe the content of a web site, bookmark, photo or blog post. You can assign multiple tags to the same online resource, and different people can assign different tags to the same resource. Tag-enabled web services include social bookmarking sites (such as del.icio.us), photo sharing sites (like Flickr) and blog tracking sites (like Technorati). Tags provide a useful way of organizing, retrieving and discovering information.
Technorati
A site that provides a search engine specifically for blog content, relying on social bookmarking and tagging to promote popular items to the site’s front page.
The Long Tail
A phrase coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article to describe the niche strategy of businesses, such as Amazon.com, that sell a large number of unique items, each in relatively small quantities.
Trackback
A method for web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents or web pages. Trackbacks are used primarily to facilitate communication between blogs. The downside is that it could be perceived as spam (especially if the trackback is not relevant to the blog).
A free social networking and moblogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via SMS, Instant Messaging, or a third-party application.
U
User Generated Content (UGC)
UGC refers to various kinds of media content that are produced or primarily influenced by end-users vs. traditional content publishers.
V
Videocast
A version of a podcast in which video content, rather than audio content, is broadcast.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
A protocol optimized for the transmission of voice through the Internet or other packet switched networks. VOIP is increasingly taking the place of traditional land-line telephony services.
W
Web 2.0
A trend in web design and development towards a second generation of web-based communities and hosted services, which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users. These interactions generate content that is published, managed and used by these communities and the general public.
Widgets
Portable & reusable pieces of software code that can be embedded within a web page.
Wiki
A collaboratively edited web page. The best known example is wikipedia, an encyclopedia that anyone in the world can help to write or update.
Wikipedia
A free online encyclopedia created, edited, and maintained by users in a collaborative fashion.
X
Y
YouTube
A video sharing website where users can upload, view, share, and comment and vote on video clips.
Z
References