It sounds like some kind of software upgrade. While Web 2.0 has become the latest buzzword, many people really don’t have any idea what is meant by the term.  Don’t feel bad – a lot of people throw the phrase around without knowing what it means. Read on to get a handle on what Web 2.0 is all about.

Tim O’Reilly (founder of the well known O’Reilly series of books focused on the IT industry) gets credit for coining the term, which he brought up at an industry conference. The term and the ideas behind it quickly took off, with these ideas being adopted into the design of social networking websites. Web 2.0 is essentially a platform which can bring new functionality to social networking sites and other web based services.

Social networking can be illustrated by tinker toys; people can be represented by the wooden blocks, the connections between them by the sticks.

Web 2.0 provides an improved model for building these connections between people by offering another venue for people to meet each other. People can create their own “blocks” in the form of profile pages on social networking sites – and the Web 2.0 technology provides the “sticks”. These sites offer more than simply profile pages, with the ability to add multimedia, blogs, RSS feeds, message boards and other functionality. The connection between two individuals can grow to become a large network of people, many of whom would never have met were it not for this new technology.

Many social networking sites (and sites which are not geared towards social networking per se) are based on Web 2.0 technology. These sites include:

•    Facebook
•    YouTube
•    Twitter
•    LinkedIn
•    Wikipedia
•    MySpace
•    WordPress
•    Blogger
•    Flickr

There are many others, but odds are that you are already familiar with many of these. If you have ever used these sites, you have already experienced the Web 2.0 platform. These sites include user-generated content which is indexed and ranked by search engines. Good content brings the creator a following, which may translate into popularity or for businesses, exposure.

Web 2.0 platforms are in use by families, educational institutions and businesses alike. These applications offer communication capabilities which are easy to use and to manage by the user. One especially useful Web 2.0 technology is the RSS feed, which keeps subscribers notified when you make changes to your page. This is a technology which has been used for a while by news services, but is now extremely common in the world of blogging.

Google Groups and Yahoo Groups are both examples of Web 2.0 technologies which are commonly used by businesses. Employees join these groups and are kept up to date on projects or company wide agendas. These groups can be started by anyone whether for social or business purposes.

Web 2.0 offers a variety of useful tools to business owners as well as those who use the technology strictly for social networking. Thanks to the Web 2.0 platform and social networking sites, businesses and individuals have yet another way to drive traffic to their website, blog or anything else they want to share with the world.

Andrea Kalli
Certified Internet and Social Marketing VA

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Tags and Categories: business productivity, networking sites, social networking, web 2.0

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