Introduction to the Special Issue on Human-Computer Interaction in the Web 2.0 Era

Web 2.0, the “dynamic web,” is one of the most effective applications to date of information and communication technologies in the way it revolutionized how individuals interact with information. The term Web 2.0 is largely associated with Tim O’Reilley (Graham, 2005; O’Reilley, 2005), and is a loosely defined concept that represents a variety of technologies. Some of these are development platforms while others are applications used mostly for social computing and interaction. The latter group of technologies, also known as the Social Web (Rheingold, 2000) has arguably been in the core of the World Wide Web from its conception (Porter, 2008). Moreover, the developmental components of Web 2.0 that moved computing beyond desktops via the use of web-based “building blocks” such as web services not only made it possible to realize the true potential of the social web, but to a large extent made it synonymous with Web 2.0. Our use of the term Web 2.0 also treats it as identical to the social web.