Final answer:
The main innovation of Web 2.0 is the shift towards an interactive, user-generated web experience, away from static web pages of Web 1.0. It emphasizes participation, social media, and e-commerce involvement by users. Bi-directional linking, an earlier hypertext concept, isn't implemented in Web 2.0 but underscores its developmental roots.
Step-by-step explanation:
The main innovation attributed to Web 2.0 is accredited to a shift from static websites to a participatory and interactive web experience, emphasizing user-generated content, ease of use, and interoperability for end users. Web 2.0 focuses on user participation rather than passive consumption of content. This is underscored by the proliferation of social media platforms, user-content driven sites and participation in e-commerce.
The World Wide Web was conceptualized by Tim Berners-Lee who, on a NeXT computer at CERN, developed the three foundational technologies.These advances laid the groundwork for the first phase of the web, now known as Web 1.0. With the introduction of Web 2.0, the internet experienced a transformation from a collection of static web pages to a dynamic, collaborative platform. This shift enabled people to not only consume content but also to create, share, and interact with it.
Interestingly, the early internet's commercial nature, such as subscription services like AOL, contrasted with Web 2.0's participatory nature. However, commerce remained integral to the web's evolution, exemplified by the explosion of e-commerce sites like Amazon. Although linked to the advancement of web technologies, the concept of hypertext can be traced back to computer scientist Ted Nelson's ideas in the 1960s. His envisioned hypertext included bi-directional links, a concept more complex than the one-way hyperlinks that became standard on the web.
The internet's transformation during the 1990s, accelerated by important developments like the MOSAIC browser and Netscape Navigator, has dramatically influenced societal changes and facilitated new forms of participation through technologies such as crowdsourcing.