Web 2.0 Applications and Citizen Relations through E-Government Websites

Background

Recently, the term Web 2.0 has become one of the most frequently used buzzwords. The term, first presented by Tim O’Reilly in 2004, has clearly taken hold, with more than 140 million citations in Google. Web 2.0 has largely been popularized by IT professionals, business, and Web users to name a quickly growing set of Web-based applications. However, despite the huge popularity of the term, there is still disagreement about what Web 2.0 means. Most people believe that Web 2.0 is the next generation of the Web, but there is no exact universally accepted definition. Disagreement exists mainly because the term Web 2.0 is too nebulous and broad to be summarized in a specific, uniform concept. Web 2.0 covers a wide array of Web applications that share little in common, from advanced search engines, syndication technologies, and social networking to virtual reality.

Thus, instead of a uniform definition, the core tenets of broadly defined Web 2.0 technologies should be found, and both technological and sociological aspects of Web 2.0 should be considered to define what Web 2.0 stands for. To find the shared tenets of various Web 2.0 technologies, this section first explores the concepts related to the use of Web 2.0 tools, in particular comparing the technological differences with its predecessor, Web 1.0. We then move to a discussion of the challenges and opportunities of Web 2.0 for governments to interact with their citizens through the Internet.