The social web represents a fundamental change in how we use the Internet. Instead of using it as a tool to look up information or purchase merchandise online, we are inserting ourselves into the web and using it to connect with other people.
This change has had a far reaching effect that has touched a number of different areas from the use of social networks to create our own special place on the web to the use of wikis to collaborate and create a global collective intelligence and repository of knowledge.
Think about this: Wikipedia is many times larger than the full set of Encyclopedia Britannica books, is completely free, and according to a 2005 study by Nature, is just as accurate. This demonstrates the power of the social web.
This social web guide will cover the different areas of the social web such as the basics of Web 2.0, social networking, social news, widgets, wikis and more.