Web 2.0 brought us many incredible advancements in the way we saw and interacted with the web. Gone were the days of static pages, and here to stay was the revolution of interaction, social media, user created content.
When I was younger, I watched in awe as my older cousins meticulously updated their MySpace profiles, hearing endlessly about the drama of their Top 8 friends lists. I grew up in the era of “viral” YouTube content landing you an interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show if you amassed 100,000 views, a number that sounds measly now. When Web 2.0 came about, it allowed a level of interaction with webpages and friends that hadn’t been seen before. For the first time you can see what your friends are engaging with online, what they like, and who else they talk to, an entirely new web of connection.
Today, this has exploded into something with many more layers of nuance. Social media operates as a stream of real time algorithms that feed content to anyone who will engage, pouring millions of dollars into creators, and now AI. As we advance more and more, the content we engage with and how it operates advances with us, for better or worse.