Web 2.0 and women

In the early 2000s, the world witnessed crucial moment – the beginning of Web 2.0. This general term has been used to describe the second generation of the World Wide Web that is focused on the ability to share online information. Web 2.0 is the transition from static to dynamic HTML pages. There is still some disagreement concerning what Web 2.0 really means. In 2004 it was referred to as the concept of “Web as a platform,” that is, a platform where people could share user content. However, sometime later, Web 2.0 also began to refer to the programming tools used to create web pages. Later still, Web 2.0 started to mean the combination of technology that is still allowing customers to interact with the information.

In his article, What Is Web 2.0, Tim O’Reilly defines new media as media where a user can interact. Buyers’ reviews and ratings on Amazon help the website compete with others. An open source Wikipedia where users create content themselves is one of the top reference sites. A number of other websites work according to the same principle. Knowing the needs of the users helps to create the product targeted just for that user or group of users, and having “2.0-ness” helps to know and follow what these users need.

Web 2.0 has become a part of us now. Today, it is hard to imagine life without emails, social media websites and blogs and this is what excites me the most. It looks like yesterday we all could live our regular lives and today we cannot picture ourselves without our online identities. With the development of Web 2.0, our society started talking about blogs, micro-blogs, iReport, and WikiLeaks. These are the tools people now use to interact with media and change society. The most vivid example is blogging – writing online journal entries that are created by individuals or organizations. CNN news has gone one step further, creating iReport, a tool that allows users to publish videos, pictures or stories. With iReport, anyone can be a journalist since all the content is user generated. There are a number of websites that follow this same pattern. Users can upload their videos on sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and MyVideo. Anyone can post their photos on Flickr, Panoramio, Picasa, etc. I myself use all of these tools in my work – to enhance the meaning of what I am doing as a journalist and active community member.

All of these tools should be used by women in the empowerment movement. Getting attention and more members to the movement is so much easier with Web 2.0. Educating about the movement is also possible with it. one just has to know how to properly use it.