Whether you think it’s a hype or the second coming, Web 2.0 is everywhere: But exactly what is it and what is a typical Web 2.0 project?

Web 2.0 is generally understood to be online services facilitating communication and collaboration between Internet users, including social networking sites, wikis, open content management systems like blogs with comments and bookmarking sites.

Web 2.0 spawns an enormous amount of more or less innovative start-ups. Here are a couple of suggestions if you want to explore the jungle of services that make up Web 2.0.

Go2Web20
Go2web2.0 is is a catalog of Web 2.0, consisting of little icons representing hundreds of web sites. It is pretty, but rather confusing at first.

You click the purple tabs on the left side of the window to scroll up and down. You can sort the entries alphabetically or by date added. You can also filter by tags, to view entries regarding e.g. bookmarks, wikis, blogging and much more. Many of these tags are not very informative, unfortunately.

When you click on an icon, a short text describing the service appears, along with a link to the web site.

Go2Web2.0 also has a blog.

I want to
“I want to…” or “I need to” or “How do I?” These are all questions we all ask all the time. Phil Bradley is maintaining a neat collection of resources called I want to, that will help to answer those questions.

Web 2.0 is not mentioned on the site. None the less, many of the sites and services listed are typical for Web 2.0. The design is not, though :). Your standard Web 2.0 site has pretty pastel colors and often Ajax design. “I want to” is a black and white HTML page with a search box and a table holding categories for you to browse. It is not sexy, but it is very easy to navigate.

There is also a blog, containing the same information. It sports some additional colors and you can browse the entries either by date added or by category. And there is an RSS stream.

We also recommend Phil Bradleys blog on Internet searching, web design, search engine developments and more.

If you want to know more about Web 2.0 — what it is what it isn’t, Wikipedia has an extensive article.