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Web 2.0 and Social Media
Web 2.0 and Social Media
Web 2.0 and Social Media
No mass medium has come to replace another. Instead, some came to expand the operation, reach
and even user participation of the other. This is the case between the old (conventional) and the
new media. The new media, which is often regarded as interconnected links and tools available on
the Internet is also evolving. While the rest of the conventional mass media of radio, television,
newspaper and magazine are referred to as old media. Notwithstanding, these conventional media
are also evolving into other forms and adopting new faces on the internet. Therefore, internet, as a
converging point, brings together, different media channels. And so, one is expanding the others
and never to replace. An instance is Web2 .0 and social media. Before Web 2.0, there was and there
is still web 1.0. The latter helped the former to expand and birthed what is now known as social
media. On this note, this paper intends to discuss the contributions of Web 2.0 to the emergence
of social media.
studies, there is hardly to say this or that definition is the universal one. And so, there is no
generally acceptable definition of what Web 2.0 and social media, because of their nature of
evolvement, users, reasons why they are used and level of interactivity.
Wide Web (WWW); a subset of the Internet, which consists of different pages or links that can be
accessed using a web browser by anyone (Yasar, 2023). To get a web, someone must have to design
it. In the past, it was web 1.0. A kind of web or pages in which one cannot alter its contents. Web
1.0, according to Kenton (2022), is used to describe the first stage of the Internet. At this point,
there were few content creators; most of those using the Internet were consumers. Static pages
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were more common than dynamic HTML, which incorporates interactive and animated websites
with specific coding language. Content in this stage came from a server’s file system rather than a
database management system. Users were able to sign online guestbooks, and HTML forms were
sent via email. Examples of Internet sites that are classified as Web1.0 are Britannica Online,
personal websites that does not allow user interaction but just to view content and go out, and
mp3.com used to download music in which users cannot alter a content. In general, these websites
are static and have limited functionality and flexibility (Kenton, 2022),
Yasar (2023), defines Web 2.0 as websites and applications that make use of user-generated content
for end users. Web 2.0 is characterised by greater user interactivity and collaboration, more
pervasive network connectivity and enhanced communication channels and by implication, Web
2.0 has improved the way internet is used and has also increased the number of people who access
and use the internet on daily basis. The term Web 2.0 was coined by information architecture
consultant Darcy DiNucci in 1999 to differentiate the post-dot-com bubble. It was later popularized
by O'Reilly Media during the Web 2.0 Conference in 2004. Yasar (2023) further affirms that Web
2.0 reflects the new age of the internet, which puts greater emphasis on social networking, cloud
computing, higher participation levels and sharing information between internet users. While Web
2.0 does not signify a technical upgrade, it does reflect a shift in the way the internet is consumed.
Social media sites, web apps and self-publishing platforms -- such as Facebook and WordPress --
Social media
Social media is emerging as the most vital tool of different kinds of communication which is
equipped with the ability to share information, mould opinion, connecting individuals and
communities and tool of active participation. In fact, it would be needless to say, life almost
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revolves around social media these days. Except few people in rural communities and those who
may not have financial capacity to buy internet enabled gadgets, social media has become a
household name. Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they
create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks (Ahlqvist,
Kiran (2016) also defines social media as a group of Internet-based applications that are built on
the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange
of user generated content. Furthermore, social media is available on mobile and web-based
technologies to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals and communities
share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content. It introduces substantial and
examples of social media are but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp,
Theoretical perspective
As usual, discussions about communication and media studies may not be totally comprehensive
without the adoption of theories. There are many of these theories that are quite related to this
paper’s discourse like technology determinism theory, mediamorphosis theory, among others. By
most relevant, this paper adopts the latter. The Mediamorphosis is a theory developed Roger Fidler
that simply translates to media undergoing morphisms, which he published in his Book,
way of thinking about the technology evolution of communication media. Fidler derives his
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The thrust of his position is that as new media forms evolve, and develop such as web and social
media, they influence overtime and to varying degrees, the development of other existing media
such that rather than the emergent media displacing the existing one, the existing one converges
The essence of mediamorphosis is the idea that the media are complex adaptive systems. That is,
the media, as other systems, respond to external pressures with a spontaneous process of self-
organization. (Asemah, Nwammuo, & Nkwam-Uwaoma, 2017). This theory is relevant to the
discussion of this paper because it helps to understand the day-to-day features and activities of
Web 2.0 and social media sites. And as stated earlier, no mass medium has come to replace or
extinct the other, instead they keep evolving and expanding into interesting, interactive and
wholesome forms. Before, we had just conventional media channels. Today, those channels have
evolved into another form of interactive media channels like podcasting, webcasting, streaming,
email broadcasting, and so on. Today, with HTML, CSS, people can mediamorphose one form of
media to another and still link them with the internet and social media sites. Therefore, the
evolvement of Web 2.0 led to the contribution in the advancement of social media networking
Discussion
Indeed, Web 2.0 contributed to the emergence of social media networking sites. There came a time
when people could only access the web to get information about anything without altering or
giving feedback. At that time, it was one-way communication flow. From businesses, organisations
to individuals and it stops there. That was the era of Web 1.0. According to Techopedia (2017),
Web 1.0 was seen as a one-to-many online platform where a few businesses, organizations and
individuals held a one-way dialog with people over the internet. They could pass on information
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in a variety of ways like videos and fill the web with user-generated content. Due to popular
demand, necessity, knowledge and innovation, in 1999, the idea of Web 2.0 started coming and by
2004 O'Reilly Media during the Web 2.0 Conference made the development of Web 2.0 popular
to the entire world. The basic features that came with Web 2.0 such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft
Silverlight and JavaScript, in addition to Ajax, RSS and Eclipse, HTML, CSS, interactivity, user
generated content, easy access, decentralisation, flexible and multipurpose, all motivated
technocrats, inventors, engineers, technologists, and even business minded persons to start
thinking of social and interactive platforms to create that can be linked to the Web 2.0. Thus, in
the same 2004, Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovits and Chris Hughes, founded
one of the most interactive and user generated content social media platforms known as Facebook.
It will be safe to say that social media is an innovation of Web 2.0 among other innovations. Social
media would later become the most unique and popular innovation of Web 2.0 (Kenton, 2022).
According to Sfetcu (2017), social media, which fits neatly under the whole Web 2.0 evolution in
that it centers around easy-to-use platforms that allow users to generate content, emerged from the
idea of Web 2.0, which specifically gave rise to interactivity on the Internet. What makes social
media unique among Web 2.0 innovations is the introduction of web-based sharing. Prior to the
creation of Twitter or Facebook, one could always email an interesting piece of content to friends.
Social media, however, simplified this process right down to the click of a button. As such, social
media is a Web 2.0 innovation not only because it encourages user-generated content, but also
because it extends the focus to the users by allowing them to curate or select other content to share
among their networks. Web 2.0 was first and social media has grown out of Web 2.0 and the
creation of the user-generated web. You can refer to social media as a Web 2.0 innovation but
referring to Web 2.0 as social media is incorrect because it ignores all its fewer social aspects, such
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as blogs, YouTube and so on. Therefore, the emergence of social media was made possible by the
It will also be noted that Web 2.0 does not refer to any specific technical upgrades to the internet.
It simply refers to a shift in how the internet is used in the 21st century. In the new age, there is a
higher level of information sharing and interconnectedness among participants. For example, Web
2.0 came with certain features like HTML, CSS, which allows individuals to design websites on
their own without necessarily relying on bots as it was in Web 1.0. These features, therefore helped
the likes of Mark Zukerberg, Jack Bawal, and others to apply the sense of coding, both in App
creation and websites creation, which then led to the emergence of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
This new version allows users to actively participate in the experience rather than just acting as
passive viewers who take in information. As the Internet has become a more interactive medium,
a new term has come into use to describe it: Web 2.0. This new version of the Internet gives web
users the opportunity to generate content and connect with other users. Many sites that fit the Web
2.0 model are developed through an interactive community of users. Prominent examples include
Wikipedia, Facebook and Second Life. What Web 2.0 tools have in common is the ability to
aggregate knowledge and overcome the limitations of borders and space in social media. Most of
the technologies used to deliver Web 2.0 are rich web technologies, such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft
Silverlight and JavaScript, in addition to Ajax, RSS and Eclipse. Web 2.0 applications are often
based on the decentralized download methodology that made BitTorrent so successful, in which
each downloader of content is also a server, sharing the workload and making heavily demanded
content more accessible than it would be in the centralized model, where demand can lead to
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Web 2.0 and its features such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, CSS, HTML and JavaScript,
equipped individuals, businesses and even organisations to design their Apps and websites
separately. These apps and websites can be further linked to social media networking sites with
icons on their platforms, where visitors to these personal and corporate websites are further moved
from home pages to different social media sites and same thing happens in reverse order. One
could assume that the whole idea of Web 2.0 is social media emergence.
Conclusion
Web 2.0 is not a cure-all for development problems, nor will it have a use in every project. But it
is an exciting and flexible resource that should be added to any development practitioner's toolbox.
However, it should also be noted that Web 2.0 contributed to the emergence of social media
platforms. In the past, audience was passive and communication on the Internet was one-way. But
since its invention in late 1990’s, Web 2.0 gave Internet usage another face. That is, with certain
features like Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, CSS, HTML and JavaScript (which are all user-
generated and interactive), founders of social media platforms used these features to advance the
design of their social media networking sites, which till today, has enhanced the way and manner
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References
Asemah, E. S., Nwammuo, A. N., and Nkwam-Uwaoma, A. O. (2017). Theories and Models
of Communication, Jos: University Press.
Kenton, W. (2022). “What Is Web 2.0? Definition, Impact, and Examples”. Retrieved from
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Kiran, B. (2016). “Social Media And Changing Communication Patterns”. Global Media Journal-
Indian Edition. Retrieved from www.caluniv.ac.in on June 2, 2023.
Sfetcu, N. (2017). “Web 2.0 / Social media / Social networks”. Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338345786 on June 2nd, 2023.
Techopedia (2017). “What is the difference between social media and Web 2.0”? retrieved from
https://www.techopedia.com/topic/102/internet on June 2, 2023.
Yasar, Z. (2023). “What is Web 3.0 (Web3)? Definition, guide and history”. Retrieved from
https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/Web-20-or-Web-2# on June 2, 2023.