Sometimes you need to step back and read instead of simply involving yourself in order to realize that things like this are happening–

If you haven’t noticed, the WWW has been changing over the past years. Remember the days when you (or at least I) had personal websites? It was the era of Web 1.0.

We’ve now (mostly) shifted to Web 2.0, and that’s not just a buzzword. It’s been happening and developing. The WWW has been called a resource, but it’s now more than that. Web 2.0 is a term that symbolizes the gradual online movement to a more social experience. Once when you had a personal website (”homepage”) you displayed information and cool things that you wanted people to see. Generally the only way for the visitor to give the webmaster feedback was through email. Blogging, the Web 2.0 counterpart of a simple personal website, encourages visitors to give feedback frequently. Trackbacks allow other blogs to easily continue the topic discussed on one blog at other blogs. The development of this blogosphere has (probably) spearheaded this Web 2.0 movement.

del.icio.us and Flickr are good examples of other types of Web 2.0 sites. Both are community-based and encourage interaction. With del.icio.us you can easily see who else has bookmarked certain sites that you’ve bookmarked and what other bookmarks they have. In the Flickr community, anyone can comment or add notes on your photos. These Web 2.0 sites are dynamic, encouraging participation, contrasting with static Web 1.0 sites that encourage people to simply read.

Accessibility is another facet of Web 2.0. The promotion of XHTML 1.0 and 1.5 W3C standards has enabled websites to be rendered more easily and by more browsers. The growth in usage of feeds like RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom allows readers of blogs or other online publishing mediums to read articles elsewhere, using Mozilla Thunderbird, Bloglines, or even the new Google Reader. Greater accessibility nicely complements specific parts of Web 2.0.

Easy access and contribution of thoughts disseminated across the web– that’s Web 2.0.

Read more at the Wikipedia article on Web 2.0 or Tim O’Reilly’s article on Web 2.0.