We have been running at top speed with this blog in an attempt to keep up with the dizzying amount of info that comes out daily. Today, we take a breath.

Many of our clients are just getting exposed to what Web 2.0 can do. As part of getting comfortable with these new technologies and new marketing, we have begun to put together a Web 2.0 boot camp. As part of this program we would like to provide a glossary of terms that will serve as a reference.

We probably should have put a wiki together for this task. What, we’d like your help with is in filling out this list. Leave your comments if there is a term missing from the list or if you have a better way of defining. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Web 2.0 Glossary

Atom Feed:

An XML file that encodes web content - usually from blogs. A user can subscribe to an Atom feed and read updated content from a newsreader, web site or handheld device. The process is known as syndication.

Blog / Weblog:

User generated website where people can publish comments on a webpage via a browser. Content entries are sorted by date (with the most recent at the top of the page). The content may be organized based on categories and tags (which are often listed on the right-side of the page). According to Technorati.com, there are more than 55 million blogs.

Blog Aggregator:

A web site that keeps track of blog posts.

Blogosphere:

A common term used to describe the large and diverse community of people who contribute to blogs.

Comments:

Web 2.0 technologies are enabling a more participatory environment on the Internet. The most commonly used method for generating information within a group or community is through comments.

Content:

Information and experiences created by individuals, institutions and technology to benefit audiences in contexts that they value.

Creative Commons:

A nonprofit organization that promotes free public licenses to content (http://creativecommons.org/). Creative Commons provides specific conditions through which content can be reused, such as attributions, links or other notification methods to correctly identify the original source.

Feed:

The most common type of web content syndication. Feeds are generally done via RSS or ATOM (see definitions). By subscribing to a feed, a user can consume content from blogs, wikis, websites, or other frequently updated content through their “feed reader” without having to constantly visit the content source online.

Instant messaging (IM):

Instant Messaging or “chatting” is a popular method of exchanging text messages in real-time.

Mashup:

Mashup refers to a new breed of Web application where content, data, or other services are combined from more than one source into an integrated experience.

Peer to peer (P2P):

Peer to Peer (P2P) applications rely primarily on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network vs. having to provision large centralized data centers.

Podcast:

Podcasts are simply MP3 files that have been uploaded to the Internet. Podcasting began when bloggers started posting audio into their entries. The name came from the Apple iPod, but the IPod is not necessary to the technology. Any MP3 (and increasingly, video) file delivered via the Internet can be considered a podcast. The ability to ’subscribe’ to a particular podcasts are delivered via an RSS application automatically to your computer.

Read-Write Web:

The primary difference between the initial static Internet implementations and Web2.0 is the ability for users to generate content via simple “Read-Write” website applications.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication):

A form of syndication that lets users “subscribe” to receive new or updated content from blogs, news, or other frequently updated online content sources. RSS is a simple format which can be easily implemented by website administrators and easily consumed by its consumers. RSS feeds are typically received by a “newsreader” inside a user’s browser or email program - some applications can also send RSS feeds to mobile devices.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS):

Software that users purchase based on a subscription model (such as every quarter or every year). In most cases, SaaS involves software that is delivered via the Internet (also known as hosted software).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

SEO is the process of improving the quantity and quality of traffic to a website from search engines.

Social Bookmarking:

Social bookmarking systems enable users to store lists of Internet resources that they find useful. These lists are either accessible to the public or a specific network, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category and tags. This sharing of this tagged content can create a grassroots popularity rating of a site by users. There are several websites such as digg or del.icio.us that operate consumer oriented social bookmarking services.

Social Networking:

This is using the web to communicate with friends, colleagues and even strangers. Social-networking sites have been in existence since the early days of the Internet. Many of the sites involve personal activities, however there are business social networks as well.

Tags:

Tags are an informal approach of using keywords to classify content for later retrieval. They are usually chosen personally by the author/creator or the consumer of the item vs. being part of a formally defined classification scheme

The Long Tail:

Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired Magazine, as part of his book ‘The Long Tail’ has applied this statistical concept to web businesses (the long-tail represents the outer parts of a bell-curve). For example, a brick-and-mortar retailer could not justify stocking products that have minimal demand (at the long-tail). However, etailers like Amazon.com can essentially have unlimited shelf-space and thus benefit from long-tail market opportunities.

The term is also increasingly applied to SEO as a method for looking beyond common keywords for optimization opportunities.

Trackback:

Trackback is a method for web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents or web pages. Trackbacks are used primarily to facilitate communication between weblogs.

User Generated Content(UGC):

UGC refers to various kinds of media content that are produced or primarily influenced by end-users vs. traditional content publishers. This is a broad term that describes online tools that allow users to share and express content.

Web 2.0:

Commonly used to refer to the next generation of the Web. Web 2.0 borrows from software version naming systems to get its 2.0 moniker. This second edition of the web is loosely defined as the movement from brochureware, sites that simply display information, to sites that have a level of interactivity between the visitor and the site.

Widgets:

A widget is anything that can be embedded within a web page. It is not intended to be a complete application but rather provides a specific feature that can be re-used by other applications.

Wiki:

Wikis are websites that allow users to simply create, edit and collaborate on content. The word Wiki is a Hawaiian word meaning “quick”. A wiki’s ease of interaction and operation make it a great collaborative authoring tool for non-technical users.