Web 2.0

American  

noun

1. a second generation in the development of the World Wide Web, conceived as a combination of concepts, trends, and technologies that focus on user collaboration, sharing of user-generated content, and social networking.

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Web 2.0 British  

noun

1. the internet viewed as a medium in which interactive experience, in the form of blogs, wikis, forums, etc, plays a more important role than simply accessing information

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Etymology

Origin of Web 2.0

First recorded in 2000–05

Example Sentences

It is a question informed by having lived through Web 2.0, an era of technology fueled by user data.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 14, 2026

The corporatization of Vimeo was also off-putting because Vimeo’s whole image, from jump, was to be something different from the other video platforms popping up in the transition to Web 2.0.

From Slate • Jan. 23, 2026

The network infrastructure that was built during the dot-com boom became the backbone of Web 2.0.

From Barron's • Dec. 12, 2025

At the tail-end of the technooptimist spike brought by President Barack Obama, this was the last gasp of Web 2.0.

From Salon • Nov. 7, 2025

Web3 has been billed, often in vague and utopian terms, as an online ecosystem where users will wrest power from the tech behemoths that dominate the current phase of the internet, Web 2.0.

From New York Times • Mar. 10, 2022