It took 25 years for television technology to mature into a mainstream thing. That happened at warp speed with the Internet, from the first Mosaic browser in 1993 to Netscape going public in 1995; you know the rest. Any of you remember the pre-Internet world just 15 years ago?
Recently I attended the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, co-produced by O’Reilly Media and TechWeb. It was a real eye-opener into what’s happening in Web-land. Here’s the scoop: the Web is evolving into something even more powerful and profound than before—Web 2.0.
What is Web 2.0, anyway? No, it’s not a software upgrade, and you can’t download it. But examples are the best way to explain what Web 2.0 is all about. And why not check out the very sites that Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O’Reilly Media, thinks are the best examples?
• Wikipedia: is the best example to date. A complete, encyclopedic knowledge base created by expert users, amended by expert users, available to everyone. Wikipedia has dispatched the Encyclopedia Britannicas of the world to the dust bin of history.
• EBay (EBAY): Buy and sell anything and everything you can possible think of—but without the people that make up the EBay community, there is no EBay. This site makes garage sales totally passé.
• Flickr: Owned by Yahoo! (YHOO): Flickr is the online equivalent of a photo album. Not only that, it also unites shutterbugs from around the world to discuss, tag, and share their work—regardless if it’s a professional picture or a baby making a funny face.
• Skype (owned by EBay): Talk about uniting people, Skype literally brings people together on the Internet. By using the ubiquity of fast online access, you can basically call anywhere in the world without paying a cent. Now you can meet that pen pal in Timbuktu without feeling like you have to hurry the call.
Web 2.0 is basically about sharing, only on a massive scale. So why not check out WeSeed.com and share your knowledge with the global group? You’ll not only help other people, you’ll help yourself understand how stocks and the companies behind them work.
Jennifer Openshaw, author of "The Millionaire Zone", is co-founder and president of WeSeed.com, whose mission is to help real, everyday people use what they know and love to learn about stocks, make smarter money decisions and ultimately take control of their financial destinies. You can reach her at jopenshaw@weseed.com.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of LendingTree, LLC.
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