• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, October 5, 2006

Everyone's heard of "Web 2.0." But many--even the people who use the term most often--are hard-pressed to articulate how "Web 2.0" differs from the Internet before 2004, when the term was coined.

This morning, the Pew Internet Project, using data from research company Hitwise, had an answer. The Pew report examined exactly what, if anything, has changed. The conclusion: not much.

Many use the term "Web 2.0" to refer to the explosion of consumer-generated media--including blogs, MySpace pages, photo-sharing sites and collaborative news sites, like digg.com. But, the report notes, consumers have been creating content since the earliest days of the Web--in chatrooms, user groups and on message boards. "Would usenet groups, which rely entirely on user-generated content, but are not necessarily accessed through a Web client, be considered 1.0 or 2.0?" Pew asked.

Answering its own question, Pew states that to some extent, the terminology is irrelevant. "It doesn't really matter that this bright line has been so elusive, or that some savvy marketers simply use the label to distance themselves from the failures of Web 1.0 companies," states the report.

In fact, according to Pew, the major change is that some businesses and companies, like Flickr and Wikipedia, have made easier for consumers to contribute to collaborative sites. But that more people are doing so now than in the past doesn't change the nature of the Web.

"Whatever language we use to describe it, the beating heart of the Internet has always been its ability to leverage our social connections," states the report. "Social-networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Friendster struck a powerful social chord at the right time with the right technology, but the actions they enable are nothing new."