Finally, The Internet As Intended.

It is hard to pinpoint the moment of Web 2.0’s emergence – because there was not one. The was no release of a single new technology. There was no single economic insight or business model that completely disrupted existing markets. There was no industry consortium that defined a new standard. If forced to pick a moment, perhaps Google’s IPO will serve historically as the marker – in the same way that Netscape’s IPO’s is often used to signify the birth of the dot com era. At any rate, at some point over the past 12 to 18 months several factors have aligned and a there is now recognition that the companies and web services that are moving the internet market today share many common characteristics.

Formally, “Web 2.0” as a label was first used by Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty of O’Reilly Publishing. The story goes that the two were brainstorming about the shared characteristics of today’s successful internet companies compared with the characteristics of the pre-dotcom bubble companies of 2000. Their brainstorming led to the birth of a conference – Web 2.0 (http://www.web2con.com/web2con/), which was held in October of 2004. The evolution of internet focused companies and services in the 13 months since that conference have helped to reinforce – and extend - their observations.