I would like to know the basic difference between web 2.0 sites and other sites.

Question

I would like to know the basic difference between web 2.0 sites and other sites. Today, a newish set of internet technologies and fresh philosophies on how to harness the interconnected nature of the network are gaining significant attention from consumers and venture capitalists. It’s the web, version 2.0, or Web 2.0 as it has been dubbed by many.

Answer 1

Technically no difference...

I think wikipedia has a very good explanation

The term Web 2.0 is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design,1 and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site gives its users the free choice to interact or collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumer) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumer) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social-networking sites, blogs, wikis, video-sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups and folksonomies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Answer 2

The difference was created by journalists and marketing people. I believe many startups used it primarily to avoid the negative conitations of the previous favourite "dot com" when describing their companies to investors. Ie, We're not like all those web companies that went broke in the 90's, we're Web 2.0 and that's a totally new thing.

I think these days it's generally expected that to call yourself Web 2.0 you need to be presenting yourself as more of an application or dynamic service.