What is the Social Web?

The Social Web is currently used to describe how people socialize or interact with each other throughout the World Wide Web.
Such people are brought together through a variety of shared interests. There are different ways in which people want to socialize on the Web today. The first kind of socializing is typified by "people focus" websites such as Bebo, Facebook, and Myspace. Such sites promote the person as focus of social interaction. To do this a profile is constructed by each user. In many ways the profile is similar to a passport.

The Early Days of the Internet and Web 1.0:

When the Internet first became a household word, the World Wide Web was very one-sided with most websites providing static information. From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, the Internet remained fairly one-sided with primary offerings including informational and transactional (online shopping) websites.

The Internet Becomes Social with Web 2.0:

The second generation of the Internet came about in the early 2000s and was called Web 2.0 or the social web. No longer were people satisfied being talked at. Instead, they wanted to join the conversation and have a say in the World Wide Web. The evolution of the social web began with user-generated content. Personal websites, forums and online chats became just a few of the standard features of Web 2.0 and made way for blogs, social networking, social bookmarking and more.

Popular Tools of the Social Web:

• Blogs
• Social bookmarking: Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc.
• Social networking: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
• Groups: Google, Yahoo, etc.
• File sharing: YouTube, Napster, etc.
• Wikis: Wikipedia, Google's Knol
• Virtual worlds: SecondLife
• Instant messaging
• Online chat
• Forums
  
  

  Blogging and the Social Web:

  Blogging is an integral part of the social web. A blog's success relies heavily on its community of readers. That community is typically built through online networking and promotion through the various tools of the social web. From bookmarking important posts to participating in relevant forums, a blogger's online activities within the social web can make or break a blog's success.(saer)