Defining Web 2.0 And a Rocking Dictionary!

Well! What a funny story! I was on the internet, trying to see if there was a story behind ‘profic’, the scheduled name for the little logos that are soon to be appearing in our profiles, here at Profy. What do I come across? A funny little Web 2.0 site called ‘Urban Dictionary‘.

Over the past day or two, using the site, I’ve become rather fond of its Digg style definition feel. I think it’s rather cool, how you can, without an account, instantly give a definition, the thumbs up, or thumbs down, expressing how you feel about the phrasing of a word, or whatever. Admittedly, some of the content on the site is completely useless rubbish, but with a page listing all the newest words on the street, you’re bound to learn something new, even if it’s not useful. When searching, you’ll be shown a bunch of relevant search tags related to what you typed in, letting you find anything from a related book, to another form of a swear word. It’s entirely dynamic.

The site is so comprehensive, it even has two results for Web 2.0! The two definitions are both different, but based on the same thing.

The first, rather short, simply stating that Web 2.0 is, ‘Interactive media theory where an infrastructure focusing on content creation, management, and dissemination is built for the user to generate that content in a community framework.’ Of course, this isn’t necessarily always the case, but is a fairly short, simple description giving a reasonably accurate description of the term. Of course, nobody really knows what Web 2.0 is at all, other than ‘next-gen web’!

The other description is longer and, in different words, says pretty much the same thing, but also states that blogging, vlogging, podcasting, open-source, RSS and XML are also things that make up the Web 2.0 community. Quite right of course.

I thought this was a rather interesting, unexpected and useful find, the whole dictionary I mean.  It’s become an invaluable source of online information for me, with almost every imaginable thing listed and rated. Of course, some people are just out to wreck the site and turn it into a political battleground. Running a search for ‘Dick Cheney’ lists a number of controversial descriptions, with not a single one of the thirty posts about him, actually giving any information. Rather disappointing that such a promising site can be vandalized so easily. But, that’s Web 2.0. Freedom & power to the people! Define your world with Urban Dictionary.