Participatory Web 2.0 for development in short Web2forDev is a way of employing web services, in order to improve information sharing and collaborative production of content in the context of development work. In this context actors in development can easily relate to other stakeholders, have selective access to information, produce and publish their own content and redistribute pieces of content released by others. They can integrate, combine, aggregate, generate, moderate and mediate content. In a typical Web2forDev scenario data and/or functionalities from a number of free/low cost online applications are combined and served as mashups thus ensuring a wide range of online services at low cost.

Usage

Web 2.0 applications are used in the development sector for a number of purposes and by different actors. Examples are …

• Internet/SMS gateways are being used to distribute development-related information to people with access to mobile phones but without access to internet. Similarly, these gateways enable mobile phone users to make their presence on the internet by posting to blogs and online databases via sms, etc.
• Tagging systems and content aggregation enable users with access to only low-bandwidth to find quickly the information they are searching for, without having to navigate through many bandwidth-demanding websites.
• Users with old computers can take advantage of some online applications which can process their computing tasks the way their computers never could (eg. online version of Adobe Photoshop)
• Users who don’t own their own PCs are using online services to store all their data, such as emails, documents, photos, etc, thus having access to them from any computer connected to internet. That way, online storage spaces and related services substitute physical hard drive spaces (PCs) which in many regions are shared by many users.