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Wasn't PHP a CGI script at first? The earliest use of the term "Web 2.0" was in 1999. This was way before what we associate today with "Web 2.0". Web 1.0 was r

Wasn't PHP a CGI script at first? The earliest use of the term "Web 2.0" was in 1999. This was way before what we associate today with "Web 2.0". Web 1.0 was retronymed in order to hype up how much better 2.0 was. And yes, web forms existed earlier but they define the difference between a web of hyperlinked documents and a web of services. On Web 1.0 if you wanted to create content you would create a website with any content you wanted on say GeoCities or just installed Apache on a computer and kept it running. The key word is "hyperlinked". On Web 2.0 if you wanted to create content you posted on a forum, commented on a comment section on someones blog, posted a video on YouTube, customized your page on MySpace later Facebook. Later this became far more centralized but even the early services that hosted user content were still 2.0. The key word is "interactive" All interactivity, even today, depends on form controls: buttons, text inputs, check-boxes, etc. . Web 3.0 was supposed to be the Semantic Web and allow all of the information on the web to be understandable by computers not just displayed. If this became a reality then there would be no need for APIs (the web would be the API), or for scraping. The key word is "machine-readable". Later Web3 was redefined to be about decentralization of some kind (even if many crypto-adjacent things rely on very centralized resources). Obviously, the key word is "decentralized". These are all very fuzzy marketing terms, buzzwords, and they don't really mean that much, but at least there is a vague theme that defines each one of them. All of these "versions" coexist so it isn't surprising that Web 2.0 services existed before the term was coined. Similarly, even if they are ignored, torrents are a Web3 like thing that predates Web3.

laurencerowe 3y ago
> Wasn't PHP a CGI script at first? According to https://www.php.net/manual/en/history.php.php https://www.php.net/manual/en/history.php.php it started as a set of CGI binaries in 1994. When I started using it around 2000 with PHP 4 I think there was still a CGI version but it wasn't recommended and most people used mod_php on Apache. > And yes, web forms existed earlier but they define the difference between a web of hyperlinked documents and a web of services. I do think there was a cultural change that came with wider adoption of social media, but I pretty sure I remember accessing web based message boards as a teenager from 1997 or so. WWWBoard seems to date back to 1995 http://www.scriptarchive.com/readme/wwwboard.html http://www.scriptarchive.com/readme/wwwboard.html I guess I'm too young to really remember the time before web services!
- alexvoda 3y ago
  There undoubtedly has been a cultural change. But I would argue that the cultural change happened gradually and somewhat later. Closer to 2010 than to 2000 and was probably caused by the "Endless September Syndrome" triggered by the rise of the smartphone and the influx of mobile users. What we have seen in this transition is a consolidation of services. News sites and blogs started to migrate to hosted comments systems like Disqus and eventually disabling comments entirely therefore the discussions moved to Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, HN, etc.. Plenty of companies merged so everything became a lot more centralized. And the structure of the public changed, the ratio of users compared to devs/creators/publishers/etc. grew very much. Services like Amazon, eBay, Yahoo Mail, predate de term Web 2.0 yet they are considered part of Web 2.0. So at least initially Web 2.0 coexisted with Web 1.0. Even today you can still publish static websites (and some people do) even if no one calls them Web 1.0. This just shows that these terms, which were invented after the DotCom bubble burst, were just buzzwords to try and drum interest. I would say the DotCom bubble itself and the mobile revolution were far more significant and statistically measurable than the impact of Web 2.0.

laurencerowe 3y ago

> Wasn't PHP a CGI script at first? According to https://www.php.net/manual/en/history.php.php https://www.php.net/manual/en/history.php.php it started as a set of CGI binaries in 1994. When I started using it around 2000 with PHP 4 I think there was still a CGI version but it wasn't recommended and most people used mod_php on Apache. > And yes, web forms existed earlier but they define the difference between a web of hyperlinked documents and a web of services. I do think there was a cultural change that came with wider adoption of social media, but I pretty sure I remember accessing web based message boards as a teenager from 1997 or so. WWWBoard seems to date back to 1995 http://www.scriptarchive.com/readme/wwwboard.html http://www.scriptarchive.com/readme/wwwboard.html I guess I'm too young to really remember the time before web services!

alexvoda 3y ago
There undoubtedly has been a cultural change. But I would argue that the cultural change happened gradually and somewhat later. Closer to 2010 than to 2000 and was probably caused by the "Endless September Syndrome" triggered by the rise of the smartphone and the influx of mobile users. What we have seen in this transition is a consolidation of services. News sites and blogs started to migrate to hosted comments systems like Disqus and eventually disabling comments entirely therefore the discussions moved to Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, HN, etc.. Plenty of companies merged so everything became a lot more centralized. And the structure of the public changed, the ratio of users compared to devs/creators/publishers/etc. grew very much. Services like Amazon, eBay, Yahoo Mail, predate de term Web 2.0 yet they are considered part of Web 2.0. So at least initially Web 2.0 coexisted with Web 1.0. Even today you can still publish static websites (and some people do) even if no one calls them Web 1.0. This just shows that these terms, which were invented after the DotCom bubble burst, were just buzzwords to try and drum interest. I would say the DotCom bubble itself and the mobile revolution were far more significant and statistically measurable than the impact of Web 2.0.