posted on 2013-01-17, 08:52authored byMartin D. Sykora
There has been much hype in vocational and academic circles surrounding the emergence of
web 2.0 or social media; however, relatively little work was dedicated to substantiating the
actual concept of web 2.0. Many have dismissed it as not deserving of this new title, since the
term web 2.0 assumes a certain interpretation of web history, including enough progress in
certain direction to trigger a succession [i.e. web 1.0 → web 2.0]. Others provided arguments in
support of this development, and there has been a considerable amount of enthusiasm in the
literature. Much research has been busy evaluating current use of web 2.0, and analysis of the
user generated content, but an objective and thorough assessment of what web 2.0 really stands
for has been to a large extent overlooked. More recently the idea of collective intelligence
facilitated via web 2.0, and its potential applications have raised interest with researchers, yet a
more unified approach and work in the area of collective intelligence is needed.
This thesis identifies and critically evaluates a wider context for the web 2.0 environment, and
what caused it to emerge; providing a rich literature review on the topic, a review of existing
taxonomies, a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the concept itself, an investigation of
the collective intelligence potential that emerges from application usage. Finally, a framework
for harnessing collective intelligence in a more systematic manner is proposed.
In addition to the presented results, novel methodologies are also introduced throughout this
work. In order to provide interesting insight but also to illustrate analysis, a case study of the
recent financial crisis is considered. Some interesting results relating to the crisis are revealed
within user generated content data, and relevant issues are discussed where appropriate.