The term was coined by Dale Dougherty of O’Reilly Media brainstorming with Craig Cline of MediaLive to develop ideas for a conference that they could jointly host. Dougherty suggested that the Web was in a renaissance, with changing rules and evolving business models. Dougherty gave examples — “DoubleClick was Web 1.0; Google AdSense is Web 2.0. Ofoto is Web 1.0; Flickr is Web 2.0.” — rather than definitions. He recruited John Battelle for a business perspective, and O’Reilly Media, Battelle, and MediaLive launched the first Web 2.0 Conference in October 2004. The second annual conference was held in October 2005.
In their conference opening talk, O’Reilly and Battelle summarized key principles they believe characterize Web 2.0 applications: The Web as platform; data as the “Intel Inside”; network effects driven by an “architecture of participation”; innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers; lightweight business models enabled by content and service syndication; the end of the software adoption cycle (“the perpetual beta”); software above the level of a single device: leveraging the power of “the Long Tail.”
