The main feature

A bigger bang

John Lanchester gets to grips with the virtual universe and Guardian writers interview the smartest and the luckiest entrepreneurs who demolished the old internet and built a brand new one.

Video: the web revolutionaries

Video

The web revolutionaries

What exactly is web 2.0? Does it even exist? Founders of some of the world's most successful websites talk to Ian Katz and Oliver Burkeman about how users reclaimed the web.

The interviews

Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales

People expect him to betray some sense of astonishment at the way that his website has reshaped the terrain of human knowledge. But actually, that's pretty much what Jimmy Wales had in mind all along.

Audio: Extracts from the interview with Jimmy Wales (7MB, 15:13)

Blogger/Odeo, Evan Williams

In 1999, Evan Williams and friends Meg Hourihan and Paul Bausch began writing blogs. They found the process rather cumbersome, so they wrote some code to make it easier and called it Blogger.

WordPress, Matt Mullenweg

Matt Mullenweg began tinkering with open source software to develop WordPress, a set of free, self-publishing software with clean typography and clever functions that soon attracted a blogging elite.

Writely, Sam Schillace

Taking an existing idea and improving upon it is a much more daunting task - especially when the leader in your area happens to be that lumbering behemoth of computer programs, Microsoft Word.

Digg, Kevin Rose

Kevin Rose, a strikingly laid-back 29-year-old, runs Digg, one of a handful of websites gambling on the hunch that editing the news might be a job best done by the readers.

Last.fm, Martin Stiksel

Started in 2002 by Stiksel and Felix Miller as an online radio station and music community website, the team heard about a project called Audioscrobbler, developed by computer science student Richard Jones, and joined forces to create today's all-round music service.

Feed Burner, Dick Costolo

Do you know what an RSS feed is? Well, Dick Costolo thinks you're going to be using them every day soon.