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WEB 2.0: WHAT'S ALL THE HYPE?
The 1990s sparked the advent of the web—and the economy was booming. "Dot-com" was sprinkled throughout virtually every conversation. Then came the infamous 2001 crash. Yet looking back in 2004, Tim O'Reilly, VP of O'Reilly Media, and web pioneer Dale Daugherty, didn't think the web had crashed, it had simply changed. O'Reilly noted that the companies who survived the collapse all had something in common. He coined the term "Web 2.0" to describe a new generation of Internet applications. Today, Web 2.0 communicates not a new version of the Internet, but rather a second-generation of web-based applications that use collective information and user-controlled data. While there is seldom consensus about where Web 1.0 ends and 2.0 begins, one thing is clear: People now have a whole new way of interacting with the web.
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Web 2.0 |
- Established, rigid site architecture
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- Loosely defined infrastructure populated by user-generated media and folksonomies
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- Company websites disseminating information and brand messaging
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- Company websites encouraging user reviews and feedback
- Corporate blogs to converse with consumers
- User/consumer blogs shaping brand messaging
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- Personal and community websites
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- Encyclopedia sites like Dictionary.com
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The early days of the web saw content fed lecture-style to the user from a (usually heavily branded) site. Today, users in many Web 2.0 online communities own the data and exercise control over it. These systems, designed for user contribution are described by the term "architecture of participation." That means:
- Providing a service, not a product (infoware vs. software). A book review, for example, that encourages user contribution or comments.
- Collective intelligence (folksonomies, interests or expertise) that make it easier to categorize and retrieve relevant data.
- User communities and ownership.
- Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) that introduce an intermediate layer of code (a.k.a. client engine) between the user and server to create a more responsive experience when building social networks.
The rapid popularity and growth of these networks is due to a change in the mindset of the culture. A new generation of adults in the U.S. has grown up learning computers right along with their ABCs. This, coupled with exposure to mobile technology, increasingly sophisticated video games and online multi-user role-playing games (called Massively Multiplayer Online games or MMOs and role-playing games or RPGs) has created a highly adept, extremely adaptable generation of Internet users. A recent national survey of teenagers conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that more than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17, use online social networking sites. The culture shift accelerates as we use the web to shop, get directions, participate in discussions and meet people. The Internet has grown up too, with web-compliant browsers, respectable standards, and bandwidth to access rich media content as commonplace.
So how does Web 2.0 affect your marketing efforts? It revolutionizes the way you interact with your customers. Think of it as a new way of doing business, characterized by customer participation and corporate transparency. Finding the right Web 2.0 touch points to add to your marketing channel mix could have a vast impact on the overall effectiveness of your marketing strategy. The opportunities are endless.
Terms to know about 2.0:
- Folksonomy
- Web pages, photos, links or other content categorized by users, in order to make it increasingly easy to search, discover and navigate over time.
- Podcast
- Digital media file(s), distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. Pod (container) + broadcasting = podcast.
- RSS feed
- (Really Simple Syndication) is a web technology that allows users to subscribe to content from a particular blog, newsfeed or podcast, and receive new content directly whenever it's published.
- Social bookmarking
- Web-based services or sites that allow users to share, store, classify and search Internet bookmarks.
- Social software
- Enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate via two or more computers, through computer-mediated communication (instant messages, e-mails, chat rooms, etc.).
- Web API
- An Application Programming Interface (API) provides the means for one software application (in this case, a web page) to easily and seamlessly use the functionality of another software application or system, such as a backend CRM or e-commerce system.
- Blog
- A blog, a.k.a "weblog," is literally, a log of the web: a diary-style site, in which the author (a "blogger") posts entries in reverse chronological order.
- Web standards
- Associated with endorsing a set of standardized best practices, the term describes formal standards and technical specifications of the World Wide Web.
- Wiki
- A website that allows visitors to add, remove, edit and change content, typically without the need for registration. Wikis, such as the well-known online encyclopedia, "Wikipedia," include links to other pages.
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