User-Generated Content -Web 2.0 and Online Social Networks

• Author: David A. Potts
• Profession: Barrister, Bar of Ontario
• Pages: 357-367

357

 : User-Generated Content —

Web . and Online Social Networks

A. INTRODUCTION

Due to the rapidly changing character of web-based digital technology, this

section may become obsolete in the near future. It is nonetheless importa nt

to explore the charac ter and implications of the currently available technol-

ogy, which continuously evolves to facilitate the production of user-generated

content through varied web-based cha nnels and within increasingly diverse

digital environments.

B. WEB .

e now ubiquitous term “Web .” refers to the sec ond generation of the

Web and was rst dened by Tim O’Reilly in an industr y newsletter:

Web . is the network as platform, span ning all connected devices; Web

. appl ications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages

of t hat platform: delivering sowa re as a continually-updated service that

gets better the more people use it, consuming and remi xing data from mul-

tiple sources, including individual users, whi le providing their own data and

services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network eects

through an “architectu re of participation,” and going beyond the page meta-

phor of Web . to deliver rich user experiences.

Although there is an a rgument that Web . is not at all a shi to second

generation technology, but rather a shi in the cultura l interpretation of and

 Tim O’Reilly, Oreillynet.com newsletter ( September ), cited in Ravi Kumar Jain B,

ed., Web .: An Introduction (Hyderabad, Ind ia: e Icfai University Press, ) at .