Participation Literacy

When I write Web site I mean a place on the Web represented by an URL. Consequently both blogs and wikis are Web sites. But in another sense a Web site is not a blog and it is not a wiki. A Web site is thus a superior term while blog and wiki are subordinate terms, and still there is the “ordinary” Web site which actually is on the same level as wikis and blogs. This strange relation is illustrated in the figure below.

There is a lot of wiki software. Practically all of these are open source. You just need to download the software to your computer, upload it to a server (Web host or your own server) and install it. Most of them are very easy to install and do not need any programming skills. After it is installed on the server it has to be customized. The Mediawiki software, for example, has to be transformed into the form you had in mind: Wikimedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote and Wikibooks – all these wikis or Web sites are based on the Mediawiki software. PHPWiki and Openwiki are also examples of wiki software.

If we look at the right side of the figure, we have blog software. Movable Type and Wordpress are both open source software you can install on your Web host’s server. The installation process is even simpler than for the wiki software. When it comes to Wordpress, it is both software and a Web service. On www.wordpress.org you can download the software and find all kinds of information about installation and maintenance. On the URL www.wordpress.com we find a blogging service which has the Wordpress software preinstalled, which means that you only have to create an account (it is free), choose a layout and start to blog. The most well known service of this kind is Blogger. Blogger is owned by Google.

In the middle part of the illustration, under “ordinary Web pages”, I have written CMS (Content Management Systems). The nature of the CMS software is the same as the wiki and blog software. Many CMS are open source, but there are also commercial ones. A commercial CMS is chosen by many companies due to better support. A CMS is a framework for creating Web pages in a more ordinary fashion, which makes it easier to position details on the screen in a relatively simple way. Every document is also connected to the menu in a way rarely found in blogs and wikis.

With a custom Web site I mean a Web Site created from scratch in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). This can be done either by coding directly or using editors such as Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver. These kinds of Web sites are becoming rarer as CMS, Blogs and Wikis make it easier to publish on the Web.

The last circle on the illustration is about Web services. A Web service is a Web site, which allows you to use some part of it, either free of charge or for a fee. An example is Flickr, one of the earliest Web 2.0 sites. At Flickr, you can create an account, load up pictures and share them. The basic service is free, but it is also possible to get a more advanced service if you pay a yearly fee. Another example is Delicious bookmarks, which let you create bookmarks you can reach from every computer, and share them with the world. Other Web services are the shopping community Ebay, the money transfer service PayPal and the phone service Skype.

A special kind of service which has been possible in recent times is called Mashups. A mashup is a Web service hybrid, created on top of other Web services.

A simple example is Daily Mashup, the Figure. The Web site displays photos from Flickr in the left column, Bookmarks - or links – in the middle column and news from Yahoo in the right column. This is a very simple example, but there are a lot of more complex hybrids and we are only at the beginning of this trend. A mashup is possible because the services it is built on top of have an API (Application Programming Interface). A system, application or service with an API has a programmable connection to the outer world. Daily Mashup uses the APIs form Delicious, Flickr and Yahoo to create something new. More and more mashup services will be launched as more and more Web 2.0 services are born.