Search Engine Meets Web 2.0

       Web search engines have emerged into vital tools for our successful navigation of the growing online information circle. Google says, "the goal is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" and to create the "perfect search engine" that provides only intuitive, personalized, and relevant results. In the meantime, Web 2.0 has blossomed that is largely based on the faith in power of the networked masses to capture, process, and mashup someone's personal information in order to make them more useful, social and meaningful. Michael Zimmer states that the combining of Google's large amount of information-seeking products with Web 2.0 infrastructures is called "Search 2.0-which intends to capture the best of both technical systems for the touted benefit of users. I think it's the best of both worlds don't you think??

       With the information that Web 2.0 provides, search engines can better predict the world wide web's users needs and wants, and also send out more meaningful results.

       In 2004, Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty of O'Reilly Media went out to describe the common features of various Web companies that survived the "dot-com burst" of the late 1990's. For the companies that survived, they were arguing that they all had certain things in common: they were all collaborative, interactive, dynamic, user-centered, network based, and data rich. The term they used to describe this emerging trend was "Web 2.0." Popular sites such as Flickr, Facebook and Myspace are all part of the new second-generation Internet phenomenon, featuring user-generated content, opportunities to collaborate with photos and friends, and modify or share content.

       Web 2.0 has sparked a revolution in the way people use the internet. The users of the world have shifted from 1-way data to 2-way community collaboration and interactivity. However, with the doors of web-bound word processing and Wikipedia opened, people have to wonder, what is going to happen to these search engines? Yeah the algorithims of yesterday hold value, but if information is changing all the time, I do not see what the big deal is with changing the way we look at it. Search today is undoubtedly much better than it was in the 90's. But internet search still has lots of room for improvement and waiting to see what will happen in the future is exciting!