The Promise of Participation
Web 2.0 replaced the "read-only" web with the "read-write" web. Users were no longer just consumers; they were creators. Blogs, wikis, and social networking sites allowed anyone to publish without knowing code.
This lowered the barrier to entry but raised the walls of the garden. To participate easily, users traded sovereignty for convenience, moving from self-hosted sites to centralized platforms (Blogger, Facebook, Flickr).
The Mashup Culture
A defining feature of this era was the "Mashup"—combining data from multiple sources (e.g., Google Maps API + housing data) to create new tools. This relied heavily on open APIs, creating a fragile web of dependencies that would later collapse during "API Petrifaction."
Field Notes
The Bait and Switch: Web 2.0 lured users in with the promise of "sharing," but the business model was data extraction. "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product."