Web 2.0 refers to the proliferation, starting in the late 90s/early 2000s, of more interactive, technologically advanced websites, as opposed to the static text pages (with an occasional image) that had previously dominated the net. In a technical sense it means that JavaScript support in mainstream browsers has finally gotten good enough for companies like Google to build services such as Gmail, GoogleDocs and other Javascript applications, and that XML has finally moved out of the lab and into real applications like RSS.
Example technologies sometimes referred to as Web 2.0:
- Collaborative, user-edited websites (like Wikipedia, which began in 2001, based on the wiki technology which began in 1994),
- Blogs and other online communication tools (like LiveJournal, which began in 1999),
- Style sheets, separating content from format (CSS, 1998),
- Syndication systems (RSS, late 90s)
