Internet is one of the rapidly growing technologies, which has significantly affected the human life. Web 2.0 was formed to offer a virtual life for the people, as they spend a significant time for both personal and working purposes. However, many believe that the concept of web 2.0 has been exaggerated and it is just a vital evolution of internet. In fact, it is a controversial subject; but as a matter of fact, web 2.0 had nothing new to offer in the past years.
Two main features of web 2.0 are related to the design and user activities. A noticeable problem associated with the classical websites was simple page design comparable with printed materials; but the graphical design helped the webpages to look more dynamic with 3D perspectives. Overall, what caused the birth of web 2.0 was new behavior in the cyberspace, as the visitors were not only visitors, but also with the ability to act, and contribute to the content of the internet.
Social Networking
Although it can be considered as a significant example of web 2.0, social networking is indeed an advanced version of dating websites, which were popular from the beginning of modern internet (e.g. from 1997). The main feature of social networking sites is the network of friends, thus it is useful for people who are not interested in dating, but connection with other people.
A prototype of social networking was Orkut.com launched in 2002; but after 7 years, almost all social networking websites (including the most popular one, facebook.com) still have the same structure and features. Currently, the most important application of such social network is to share personal photos.
Video Sharing
After the launch of Youtube.com in 2005, several similar video sharing websites were formed; but all of them have the same features. This provided a great opportunity for people to see new videos on the internet. Many people started to create and share videos regularly, making video blogs.
File Sharing
Like the demand to upgrade from Floppy to CD and DVD, file sharing provided a possibility for sharing large files on the internet. The most common usage of this service, unfortunately, is to share illegal materials. Although all file sharing sites have a policy to remove illegal materials upon an official claim, it is impossible for the copyright owners to inspect any suspicious upload of their copyrighted materials and then claim the ownership.
All the file sharing sites have the same features for premium members (their revenue is mainly from membership fees), and the difference is their services to free users (e.g. limitation, wait time, popup ads, etc).
Forums
Several easy-to-use scripts for forums on the market made them so popular, as even an amateur webmaster can run a forum with a cheap web hosting service (no large files or heavy tasks). The rapid growth of professional forums in different subjects was a serious disadvantage for such communities, as decreased the number of active members in each forum. On the other hand, the structure of forums from a discussion medium changed to a question-answer opportunity.
These are just some evidences for the lack of creativity and repeating the oft repeated during this apparently last stage of web 2.0, and other forms of web 2.0 like social bookmarking, wiki-based websites (a detailed article can be found at Wikipedia Future) also have the same situation.
Conclusion
As discussed above, some brilliant ideas were introduced in the realms of web 2.0, but the most progress in the past years was to launch new replicas of these successful ideas. In other words, no new creative idea is on the way to provide new opportunity for the internet users. So much the worse, such replicas just make the internet environment complicated and hard-to-use. This calls for the need of a revolution, and probably the birth of web 3.0 or something like this.
