Jeff Bridgforth :: Webcraftsman

Web 2.0 is about empowering the user

February 8, 2006

Design (Web) · User Experience

See Dave Rogers’ arti­cle, Web 2.0: Mis­tak­ing the For­est for the Trees? It helped me to make another step in under­stand­ing and being able to explain this con­cept that has been termed “Web 2.0.” Web 2.0 is the appli­ca­tion of the real­ity that most design­ers and com­pa­nies have been slow to embrace. The Web is about the user or the reader. It needs to be designed for users and empower him or her to achieve a spe­cific goal or dream with greater ease than has been true in the past. This arti­cle was a good com­pli­ment to another arti­cle that I recently blogged about, Tech.Memeorandum’s Fil­ter­ing Illus­trates Web 2.0’s Most Impor­tant Skill. Joshua Porter pointed out that rec­om­men­da­tions help users to fil­ter to the good stuff, the con­tent that they want, con­tent that is use­ful and can be trusted.

Web 2.0 has empow­ered me to get the con­tent I want with­out hav­ing to go browse for it. Using RSS feeds, I can “sub­scribe” to a blog or web­site. My RSS reader goes out and finds the new con­tent and “deliv­ers” it to me. Sites like Flickr empow­ers me to share pho­tos with oth­ers or use other people’s work to enhance my own. Using this blog, I can share with oth­ers things that I have learned or tools that I have found help­ful. That empow­ers oth­ers as I have been empow­ered through many of the blogs that I read.

So Web 2.0 is really about cre­at­ing bet­ter user expe­ri­ences that that users can eas­ily accom­plish their end goal whether it would be to find good con­tent, share a pic­ture, con­nect with their friends, find an apart­ment, pur­chase some­thing or become more pro­duc­tive in their work.