Web 2.0

What Is Web 2.0 http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html
Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software - by Tim O'Reilly (09/30/2005)
Web 1.0 --- Web 2.0
DoubleClick --- Google AdSense
Ofoto --- Flickr
Akamai --- BitTorrent
mp3.com --- Napster
Britannica Online --- Wikipedia
personal websites --- Blogging
page views --- cost per click
screen scraping --- web services
publishing --- participation
content management systems --- wikis
directories (taxonomy) --- tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness --- syndication

http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html
I feel that O’Reilly has helped many people like me in understanding what web 2.0 is and how it differs from web 1.0.

I browsed through number of sites to understand the term Web2.0 better and below are the results of what I found and thought was relevant
According to http://www.designlaw.org/ Web 2.0 generally refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate, and share information online. In contrast to the first generation, Web 2.0 gives users an experience closer to desktop applications than the traditional static Web pages. The term was popularized by O'Reilly Media and MediaLive International as the name for a series of web development conferences that started in October 2004. Web 2.0 applications often use a combination of techniques devised in the late 1990s, including public web service APIs (dating from 1998), Ajax (1998), and web syndication (1997). They often allow for mass publishing (web-based social software). The term may include blogs and wikis. To some extent Web 2.0 is a buzzword, incorporating whatever is newly popular on the Web (such as tags and podcasts), and its meaning is still in flux.

According to http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2006/july/5.html
- Layout- Old HTML sites were assembled in square tables and were full of boxes whereas, the new sites are more about rounded corners and curves.
- Bold Text- Important words/messages are oversized (I adopted the same idea for my personal site http://www.nimrajavaid.com/about.html. I feel highlighting/enlarging some words give an idea of what the paragraph/story is about and if user is interested they will stay on the site to read it fully.)
- Gradient- Web 2.0 sites usually have a gradient background rather than one bold colour background
- Colour- There isn’t must I think I can write about when it comes to colour; old sites also used bright and bold colours. I think the difference is of addition of reflections, drop shadows, effects and harmonies of colours