1. Community.
This is the most obvious one. Community is basically interaction between members, between websites, and between the website admins and its members. In the old days, we had the BBS and then IRC and then forums. Now it's more of the same, but also extended in one crucial way: we are happy to share without claiming ownership. The best example is Wikipedia: no one claims copyright control over it, and so we are breaking the traditional authorship rights. When we contribute to Wikipedia, anyone can read our contribution, anyone can copy it, anyone can edit, and dang it, anyone can delete it. This is very new.
The other new thing is voting. Now we have popularity contests of our contributions. Our forums have reps, delicious has the popular lists, and of course digg is the ultimate voting system. If you think hard, you
can also convince yourself, Google's PageRank is essentially an algorithm that measures social popularity (link = vote).
2. Technology.
Here we talk about XML, APIs, new content management systems like blogs and wikis, and if you're that inclined, sure, AJAX. The new technologies support the formation of communities and the interactions I explained above. XML gives us RSS and AJAX. APIs are a more general term that gives us mashups, and arguably, everything else. Basically, it's the use of standard technologies everyone agrees on. This, IMHO, is the biggest "technological" breakthrough: actually agreeing on a technical standard!!!
3. Architecture.
This is best described by the Cluetrain Manifesto as:
The Web has become the new corporate infrastructure, in the form of intranets, turning massive corporate hierarchical systems into collections of many small pieces loosely joining themselves unpredictably.
Essentially, we're talking about a more modular way to build applications. The (re)rise of Ruby on Rails and MVC model, along with other frameworks like CakePHP, is testament to this aspect of Web 2.0
4. Look.
Every movement has a look: the 60s, the 80s, and now Web 2.0. Long gone are square boxes with plain boring color. No man, bring on the colors. Give me some jive. Don't be square. Lively and fresh is what we are. Why be something else? And yes, white space is great.
And, with a bit of humour, the history of the Web...
Web 1.0: Programming model equivalent to that of a slightly up-market 3270 terminal. Forms are filled in with the sequence: tab tab tab tab tab tab bonk.
Web 1.00001: The beginning of the rich web experience: the first ever, primitive Javascript code fragment is written. It generates an unwanted popup, and snaffles your credit card details.
Web 1.1: No visible difference from Web 1.0, apart from IE showing the text 'Javascript error' in its status bar.
Web 1.2: Standard buttons are upgraded with smart 3D-looking GIFs. These react to mouseover events by bobbing up and down politely over their drop shadows. Remember when we were excited by this sort of scriptery?
Web 1.3: When you get to the home page of a V1.2 site with FireFox, it displays badly. When you go to a V1.3 website such as www.fdms.com with FireFox, it tells you to eff off and get IE. (These traditionalists in fact would seem to prefer it if you used IE4.) The age of 'you aren't good enough for our website' has begun, reaching full fruition at Web 1.5, see below.
Web 1.4: Basic client-side validation added. Forms are filled in with the sequence: tab tab tab tab tab What do you mean 'invalid post code' you bloody thing? The dread phrase 'next generation of 3d smileys' is encountered for the very first time.
Web 1.5: Home page preceded by Flash animation designed by the man who thought he should have been asked to do the title sequence for the next Bond movie. In practice, this means the user stares at an animated 'Please wait' sign for half a minute, then goes somewhere else.
Web 1.6: Date fields come with a little popup calendar to help you enter a valid date. Because of the differences in the box model as implemented by IE4, the Ok button is position beyond the edge of calendar's window, and it is impossible to use it to enter a date.
Web 1.7: The presence of extra code interferes with the standard function of browser controls. Clicking the back button, instead of taking you back to the previous phase on the corporate workflow site so that you could point out the bug to your team leader, abruptly dumps you on the money-shot page of the gentleman's entertainment website that Porno Pete from accounts was showing you earlier on. You say.
Web 1.8: Web pages at this level cannot be made to run on Windows Server 2003, no matter how many 'trusted zones' you add them to, nor how much you attempt to override Internet Explorer's Enhanced Security Configuration.
Web 1.9: You stumble upon Desktop Tower Defense one lunchtime, and are surprised when you look up from the screen with tired, gummy eyes to notice that it has suddenly become tomorrow. But at least you have got your world ranking up to 912,417.
Web 2.0: At last! You can get a fully fledged mail client in your browser. Now, wherever you are in the world, whatever time of day, without the need for your own PC, you are no more than a few minutes away from a screen that reads "Oops, something has gone wrong; we're sorry, try again in a few minutes".
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