White Paper 01 | June 08
Web 2.0:
Friend, foe
or just fad?
Firstly, before we address
the premise of this document,
what do we mean by Web 2.0?
The internet was arguably ‘created’ in the ‘60s by Tim
Berners Lee and the World Wide Web which effectively
popularised its use in 1984, see Figure one. The rush
to create corporate web sites in the 1990’s led to a
raft of new business models, many of which revolved
solely around traffic, or more simply, web users looking
at a website.
The excitement around the rush to the web led to what
became known as the dot com boom, which was, with
the benefit of hindsight, obviously likely to be followed
by the dot com bust or the significant downgrade of
internet based stocks.
It was a boom that was unlikely to be seen again, yet
a few short years later News Corp buys MySpace
for US850million quickly dwarfed by the sale of a
small fraction of Facebook for US$1.6billion1 with the
assessed value of Google nudging US$200 billion.
Whilst in fairness these sites have business models
which do generate revenue, the former were still
acquisitions based on valuations that businesses
in traditional industries can only dream about and
were paid for businesses which are currently creating
‘negligible’ revenues for their new parent organisations2.
Web 2.0: Friend, foe or just a fad?
This new resurgence in the fortunes of the web has
been coined Web 2.0 a title which implies firstly that
there was a Web 1.0 but also a technological change,
almost as if the web has been upgraded, much like a
software package.
The phrase Web 2.0, coined by Tim O’Reilly, in effect
refers to websites that have embraced the power of
the web to harness collective intelligence – not just sell
things3. It does not allude to new technology, nor is it
really a new way of doing things on the web given that
sites have been using these techniques for years, so
what is it really and what does it mean for most normal,
old world organisations?
Web 2.0 is in effect the participative web or the shift
from a wide area network of unrelated largely static
and content filled sites, to a conjoined virtual world of
interactive conversation, conducted in real time by real
people on issues which have real value.
So is the participative web just a fad?
Is Web 2.0 nothing more than the web
dressed up in the emperors’ new clothes?
Or is it something which organisations
should address and review more seriously?
Is it something which marketers and
business managers should begin to
embrace as a communications and
reputation management tool?
1
Stephen Ellis, The Australian, 23 October 2007
2
News Corp 2008/09 Results Announcement
3
Tim O’Reilly Web 2.0 Compact Definition: Trying Again,
20 January 2007
Figure One
Innovation Timeline
> Atanasoff–Berry Computer – electronic digital
computer – 1939
> Z3 – first general-purpose digital computer –
1941
> ENIAC general purpose electronic digital
computer – 1946
> Earliest form of the Internet – 1969
> Personal computer – late 1970s
> Email – 1971
> World Wide Web – 1989
> Laptop – 1990’s
> Cellular phones –1984, mainstreamed late 1990s
and early 2000s
> Webcams 1990s mainstreamed 2000s
> Digital Television 1990s mainstreamed 2000s
> Broadband mainstreamed 2000s
> Wireless networking – early 2000s
> Wireless Headphones – early 2000s
> Online gaming communities 2000s
> GPS mainstreamed mid-2000s
> Satellite radio – circa 2003
> Bluetooth – early-to-mid 2000s
> DAB – Digital Radio 2004
> Digital Audio Player – mainstreamed early 2000s
> Digital Video Recorders (c. 1999) mainstreamed
early-to-mid-2000s
> HDTV mainstreamed early-to-mid 2000s
Source: Wikipedia.com April 2008
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 The following paper will hopefully answer these
questions for you and if nothing else, raise the debate
around the use of and development of Web 2.0
applications as well as their relevance and importance
for organisations that use the web to communicate.
Finally, this paper will seek to set out a simple check
list through which you can review the potential impact
and value of involvement in the participative web for
your organisation.
First of all, Web 2.0 has coined a number of new phrases
that are very quickly becoming mainstream colloquialisms: Which can only really lead to one
conclusion, that Web 2.0 is in actual
fact the original idea behind the internet
without all the hype? In effect, Web 2.0 is
Web 1.0 without Web 1.5 (or the dot com
bubble) jammed in between!
Quite possibly. It is a reasonable assumption that the
participative web, or Web 2.0 is in effect the concept
that Tim Berners Lee had for package switching when
he ‘invented’ the internet, but either way, it doesn’t
really matter. What matters to organisations today is
that the participative web has genuinely captured the
imagination of web users the world over, which at 1.3
billion and counting, is a decent target audience by
Interestingly, however, many of the ‘new’ Web 2.0
anyone’s standards.
applications have origins and routes that stretch back
over a decade, for example wiki, or weblog. Indeed, So is the participative web a fad? No,
arguably two of the better known and indeed more
commercially successful websites that have used and it’s not going away anytime soon,
and embraced the inclusive techniques espoused by although as with all things web, it will
exponents of Web 2.0 are EBay and Amazon. Neither morph, develop and constantly throw
are new, both were ahead of their time and both have
withstood the boom bust economics of the early internet. up new challenges and opportunities.

Web 2.0: Friend, foe or just a fad? www.daemondigital.com | 2

 As at May 2008, there are 15.3 million internet users
in Australia, or nearly 75% of the population. Of these,
1 in 5 has a Facebook profile and they are not all
from Generation Y, see Figure two, with 69% of these
over the age of 18 years. Welcome to Generation C,
digital natives who are technologically literate, highly
connected to their community, economically confident
and determined to shape the world, see Figure three.
There are 100 million videos on
You Tube, podcast subscriber
numbers are at 100,000 and growing
by over 20% per month in Australia.
Globally there are 2.7 billion searches performed on
Google every month – which raises the question, to
whom were all these questions directed BG – Before
Google4. And Technorati now estimates that there are
70 million blogs in the ‘blogosphere’ of which 5 million
are updated at least once a week.
Shift Happens, The Fischbowl Blog, fischbowl.blogspot.com
4
Web 2.0: Friend, foe or just a fad?
Figure two
% of
Description Born Age population
Builders Prior 1946 62+ 17.0%
Boomers 1946 – 1964 44 – 62 26.0%
Generation X 1965 – 1979 29 – 43 21.5%
Generation Y 1980 – 1994 14 – 28 20.5%
Generation Z 1995 – 2009 Under 14 15.0%
Source: McCridle Research, April 2008
Figure three
Welcome to Generation C, digital natives who
are technologically literate, highly connected to
their community, economically confident and
determined to shape the world.
According to some thinking, a ‘digital native’ is a
person who has grown up with digital technology
such as computers, the web, mobile phones
or MP3 players, whilst a ‘digital immigrant’ is
someone who grew up without digital technology
and adopted it later.
So for example, a digital native might refer to their
new “camera”; a digital immigrant might refer to
their new “digital camera”.
Taking a view of the web population as a whole
there is a generalised statistic that predicts how we
use or interact with content:
• 1% are producers
• 9% are ‘prosumers’, who comment on or
distribute the content
• 90% are consumers who passively partake of
the content without any contribution
Generation C causes a significant shift in this
statistic and what’s important about Generation C
is how it cuts across and through traditional aged
based definitions of a generation:
• 15% are producers
• 30% are ‘prosumers’, who comment on or
distribute the content
• 55% are consumers who passively partake of
the content without any contribution
There is however some debate over the validity
around these digital definitions. A digital native
research project is currently being run jointly by
Harvard Law School and the University of St.
Gallen in Switzerland, more information about
which is available at www.digitalnative.org
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 Even the (arguably) most extreme example of the
participative web, Second Life, now has 2 million
registered users, of which 10% use the site every day.
IBM estimates that by 2011, 80% of the Fortune 500
will be active in Second Life and that “Second Life is
today what the web was 10 years ago.” For additional
information on Second Life see Figure four.
And as if no further proof of the popularisation of the
participative web was necessary, politicians are now
using Web 2.0 applications as communications tools
see Figure five.
Web 2.0: Friend, foe or just a fad?
Figure four Figure five
Second Life is a virtual 3-D world created and As at April 2008, the You Tube channel You Choose
launched in June 2003. Second Life was developed ’08 featured, in addition to playlists and Issues
by Linden Research Inc, which is commonly education specific channels for the Republican
referred to as Linden Lab and is populated by Nominee John McCain and the two remaining
nearly 14 million users known as Residents. candidates in the race for the Democratic
Nomination Barak Obama and Hilary Clinton.
Second Life is in effect a MMORPG or massively
multiplayer online role playing games in the same If the number of channel subscribers and
genre as games like World of Warcraft, with a associated uploaded videos is reflected in the US
couple of major differences. There is almost no limit General Election then Barak Obama will seep the
to a user experience or creativity, almost anything Nomination and the Presidency:
seems possible in Second Life and secondly,
residents pay for services and experiences much
as you would in the real world – buying real estate, Channel subscribers Video uploads
starting businesses, etc. There are for example Barak Obama
active land sales and property re-sale auctions on 44,198 696
eBay for real estate in Second Life:
Hilary Clinton
According to Linden Lab’s data, residents come 12,610 325
to Second Life from over 100 countries with
concentrations in North America and the UK. John McCain
Demographically, 60% are men, 40% are women 4,164 187
and they span in age from 18 – 85.
Total user to user financial transactions are used as Source: Youtube.com 15 April 2008
the measure of the gross domestic product (GDP)
in Second Life, which grew from an annualised rate
of $261 million in Q4 2007 to just over $300 million
in Q1 2008. Second Life even has its own currency,
the Linden Dollars, which are actively traded on
the LindeX Market against the US$ at a current
exchange rate of L$265:US$1.
For more information see www.secondlife.com
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 But more then attracting and eliciting the attention
and interest of web users and politicians, Web 2.0 is
also exciting the corporate world, with estimates of
US$5 billion to be spent by US corporates on Web 2.0
applications by 20135. Forrester reports that in addition,
56% of surveyed organisations, from both the USA and
Europe, regarded Web 2.0 applications to be a spending
priority in 2008 and that the greatest levels of investment
would be in the following seven areas, see also Figure six:
• Blogs;
• Mashups;
• Podcasting;
• RSS;
• Social networking;
• Widgets; and
• Wikis.
And if you are still not convinced of the potential staying
power of the participative web, then consider Facebook
events and its capacity to transfer virtual communities into
physical ones. In February 2008, 320,000 people were
invited to a protest in Columbia against the Marxist rebel
group FARC. Of those, 100,000 were invited through and
responded to the Facebook Event invitation6.
So if it’s not a fad and it’s not
just going to go away, what
should we as organisations
do with the participative web?
Part of the answer comes from a quote from Bruce
McFarlane of Dow Jones Asia Pacific – “the corporate
internet is where content goes to die!”
5
Web 2.0 is set for spending boom, Maggie Shiels,
bbcnews.co.uk, 22 April 2008
6
The Facebook that launched 1,000 ships, Melbourne IT,
1 May 2008
Web 2.0: Friend, foe or just a fad?
Figure Six
Blogs
A blog (the term is the abridged version of web log)
is effectively a small website, more often than not
operated by one individual, which includes regularly
updated information and commentary on one issue or
on a series of related issues.
Mashups
The term used to describe taking content feeds from
more than one source simultaneously and combining
the feeds, or mashing them up, to create a new and
improved application, for example, the combination of
BBC News and Google Maps as a mashup to create
News Maps.
Podcasting
A podcast is a digital media file which is designed
to be downloaded to portable media players (mp3
players for example) or played through a PC. The
term podcasting is in effect an amalgam of ‘ipod’ and
‘broadcasting’ and reflects the market dominance of
Apple’s ipod in the mp3 portable market.
RSS
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a
web feed or channel which takes content in an easily
transported form from one web site, or a series of
websites, and through an RSS Reader enables a user
to access content from multiple locations at one time.
Social networking
Effectively the term which has come to mean a web
based application which creates a community from like
minded individuals, example of which would include
My Space or FaceBook.
Widgets
A web widget is in effect a portable piece of code
which can be implemented without the need for
additional programming or development input inside
another web site. One of the most common examples
of a web widget is the Google application implemented
on many blogs and smaller websites which links
Google advertising to content on the site.
Wikis
A wiki is a web site or series of web pages in which
all of the content has been created collaboratively by
users of the web site. Wikis are therefore effectively
community websites, or can be used as a component
within a site to create user developed content, for
example a wiki glossary of terms. One of the best
known examples of a wiki is the website Wikipedia.
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 Having a corporate or indeed product or service web
site is a pre-requisite, but it is not a digital strategy, nor
is it making the most or the participative web which
encourages the sharing and discussion of content.
And this becomes the fulcrum of the
discussion for marketing directors
and business managers – Consumers
are valuing content over advertising
messages, so can we as an organisation
adapt to and maximise this opportunity?7
And when we discuss content in this context, we don’t
mean carefully crafted and equally carefully executed
messaging; we effectively mean less easily controlled
peer to peer or consumer to consumer content. Worse
still for the control freak in us all, this is not user generated
content, but effectively user controlled content.
Web 2.0: Friend, foe or just a fad?
So to effectively create proactive engagement with
stakeholders, an organisation needs to address both
offensive and defensive engagement strategies:
• Offensive strategies concern the discussion of core
brand or product/service messages; and
• Defensive strategies concern the communication
or discussion of proof points around key brand
substantiators.
Effective engagement within the
participative web is focused on peer
to peer connection, dialogue and the
sharing of information. Therefore, to
effectively engage at this level, an
organisation needs to engage with its
audiences on an individual level.
7 Brands are banking on content, Simon van Wyk,
Hothouse Interactive, 2008
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 Offensively, this is effectively the facilitation of
discussion around key attributes or unique points of
the brand proposition or product set and defensively,
this is the continued discussion of key brand
substantiators or the real proof points that define a
brand’s essence. Take the example of Lonely Planet’s
brand supportive defence of a brand crisis illustrated
in Figure seven or Dell’s use of both offensive and
defensive strategies in Figure eight.
Proof points can also take the form of utilising social
media and Web 2.0 applications for genuine purpose,
as in the recent example of the addition of a blood
group api to Facebook that helps to track down donors
with specific blood types8.
So, an effective strategy therefore allows an
organisation to facilitate content which both
supports sales and marketing activity and
creates the potential to build a protective
cocoon around a brand’s reputation.
All of which concentrates in the need for organisations
to create an effective digital strategy. And to that end, an
effective digital strategy is one which begins to address
a range of techniques and media that vary along two
axes, namely influence and conversation. Organisations
need to learn to use channels which they do not fully
control to begin to engage clients or consumers on a
deeper level and where they like to be rather than where
your organisation would like them to be.
8
Evolution of the social network, Marc Cieslak, BBC Click,
29 March 2008
Web 2.0: Friend, foe or just a fad?
Figure seven
In April 2008 it was widely reported that Thomas
Khonstamm, a Lonely Planet guide book writer had
not travelled to one or more of the countries he had
written about, complaining that “[Lonely Planet] did
not pay me enough to travel to Columbia!”
Unsurprisingly and particularly given the
transparency of web based media, this story broke
very quickly and also appeared on Lonely Planet’s
own blog entitled the Thorn Tree. Comments
and posts varied significantly and increased
exponentially, with early posts questioning the
credibility of the organisation, their other writers and
publications and their pay and remuneration scales!
It must have been extremely tempting for Lonely
Planet to censor their blog to rectify the problem,
but instead the organisation seemed to take the
decision that this would compound concerns of
the publications being untrustworthy and instead
posted reassuring information and links to further
reading on the issue, highlighting a transparent and
open approach to the crisis they faced.
This approach by Lonely Planet changed the angle
of attack for many bloggers and other commentators
who then directed their vitriol at Khonstamm rather
than the publisher, questioning his personal validity
and effectively positioning Lonely Planet as just as
much a victim as their customers.
A transparent approach to managing this crisis
through tried and tested social networking techniques
totally defused a potentially damaging revelation
for Lonely Planet and arguably turned a potentially
damaging situation into a brand enhancing one by
living the brands perceived essence of trustworthy,
honest and open assessment.
Figure Eight
In the blogosphere people can say anything they
want about any business and there’s very little that
organisation can do about it, at least not without
putting a bit of effort into managing their messages
in the participative web.
People are going to talk about your organisation if
they want to and not engaging in that conversation
or hiding your head in the sand and hoping it
will go away will not stop people having the
conversations. This is something that Dell found
out to their cost several years ago when a popular
blogger wrote a series of scathing posts about the
company’s customer service.
About 12 months ago Dell decided to address
these comments head on and that it was in the
company’s best interest to deal directly with any
complaints or criticism on the web.
Now, it is nearly impossible to find a story or
blog entry about Dell that isn’t accompanied by a
comment from the company. They now have an
entire team dedicated to finding and responding to
comments about Dell across the web.
Engaging with the participative web isn’t just a
defensive tactic. It’s also changed the way that Dell
promotes its products. CEO Michael Dell took a new,
as yet unreleased candy-red computer to a Wall
Street Journal conference with the goal of showing it
unofficially to some of the bloggers in attendance.
A writer from Gizmodo, a popular gadget blog, saw
the new computer and took a few pictures, which
he posted. Dell’s own blog post says Gizmodo
“caught” Michael Dell with the new computer.
The VP Marketing commented that Dell took the
computer to the conference hoping someone
would write about it, although he added that “we
didn’t scheme everything up.”
Adapted from ‘Dell Incites Internet Buzz’, Ben Worthen,
Wall Street Journal, 3 June 2008
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 And what of the use of participative web applications
within an organisation or their use in the recruitment
monitor measure
and retention of staff. Could the use of the corporate
controlled intranet site, a typically much maligned and under used
application be improved with the addition of a wiki
glossary, a flickr account of social photographs or even
a ‘today at the water cooler’ corporate blog? A recent
study conducted in Australia determined that over
50% of surveyed staff received all of their corporate
information from water cooler conversations10. Surely
monologue dialogue a blog would be a better solution?
Additionally, a recent survey in Australia indicated that
23% of responding organisations had actively used social
networking applications to attract or recruit new staff11
which demonstrates that social networking and the wider
use of Web 2.0 applications can be used to communicate
with wider stakeholder groups and not just customers.
uncontrolled

A recent Forrester report entitled ‘Consumers want

Content’ confirms this potential; ‘”…brands may benefit
from rich content, but they don’t have to create it
themselves. Marketers must decide whether they want
to create their own content, or integrate with existing
content.” And unsurprisingly it is the global consumer
brands who are leading this charge. Dove’s real women
campaigns and the success of Mattel with their online
community for Barbie are two examples and the
following quote from Joaquin Hidalgo, VP Global Brand
Marketing for Nike indicates their direction of choice9;
“We don’t automatically think about television
anymore. There was a time when brands like Nike
could tell kids through the medium of television what 9
Brands are banking on content, Simon van Wyk, Hothouse
was cool, what was in, what was not in, because Interactive, 2008
that was their only window onto the world. That has
10
Talent2 sponsored survey, Spring 2007
completely changed now.”
11
Workplace Barometer, Chandler Macleod, May 2008

Web 2.0: Friend, foe or just a fad? www.daemondigital.com | 8

 So, based upon the information summarised here what
recommendations would we make to organisations
with regards to their approach to the participative web
and the creation and delivery of a digital strategy:
1. Find out where you stand
What is being said about your organisation online and
by whom? 270,000 users mention Coca-Cola in their
Facebook profiles in Australia and 617,000 have joined
groups dedicated to Ugg Boots! There are 2.6 million
Facebook users in Australia alone, which means that
1 in 5 internet users have a profile. And that’s just
one social networking site, ignoring the others or the
countless blogs that are being regularly updated. You
cannot manage your organisations’ reputation if you
don’t know what is being said about you.
2. Know your audience
Who are your primary audience and are they online and
active? Don’t make the mistake that Target made in
Figure nine. Know your audience and understand their
current online habits as well as basic demography like
age, geography and profession, for example, and then
go to them.
3. Trust your people
Your organisation cannot harness the power and the
value of Web 2.0 if you are not using it internally. You
cannot expect your own people to champion the cause
if it is new and alien to them.
Some organisations have banned access to Web
2.0 applications through work internet connections,
but surely there are greater productivity and sharing
benefits to encouraging their use?
Web 2.0: Friend, foe or just a fad?
“If you worry about internet productivity,
you’re worrying about people stealing
pens from your stationary cupboard”,
Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft.
Practice what you preach and encourage your people
to blog, share, wiki and network both internally and
externally. Trust them to add value to your brand and to
your organisation.
4. Get involved and stay engaged
Being actively involved in managing your message
and managing your organisation’s reputation using the
tools that the participative web makes available can be
invaluable to any organisation. Equally, not engaging
or doing so in a light touch manner could be equally
damaging. Assess the potential for your organisation
and then if you consider it appropriate, get engaged
and stay engaged.
5. Keep it real
Don’t try and fake it, you will get caught out. Yes,
communicate your messages and manage your own
agenda, but do it honestly and do it openly.
6. Get to the point
You don’t own the space, you haven’t bought it. Make
your point move on and let someone else have their
turn. Also speak using language that your audience
relates to and understands, don’t use technical
language or jargon if it doesn’t add value to your point.
Figure nine
When Target received an email from a blogger
questioning an image being used in one of their
advertising campaigns, the response was not as
helpful as the blogger in question had hoped it
might be:
“…unfortunately we are unable to respond to your
inquiry because Target does not participate with
non-traditional media outlets. This practice is in
place to allow us to focus on publications that
reach our core guest.”
Ouch. Amy Jussel, the blogger in question,
had been dismissed on several levels and in no
uncertain terms. Unfortunately for Target, Amy
is the founder of Shaping Youth, a not for profit
organisation whose raison d’être is the impact
marketing and media usage has on children.
Amy subsequently involved the NY Times and a PR
disaster ensued for Target. The business was very
publically attacked for having not only questionable
advertising practices but also elitist, old school
and outdated PR practices. Not a good day to be
in-house at Target.
Moreover, as the story continued to run and run
across social media particularly in the blogosphere,
Target, which has no blog and clearly no history
of engagement online, was wide open to posts on
Amy’s blog as she was able to regularly update her
side of the story and direct readers to other articles
of interest and other questionable adverts run by
the company.
Target’s approach of hiding their head in the sand
waiting for the story to fade seemed to forget that
news cycles don’t really operate in the same way
across social media, but hey, none of their ‘core
guests’ would have been reading anyway, right?
Source: Adapted from Is your web 2.0 strategy on target,
Liz Fuller, 4 February 2008, businessandblogging.com
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 7. Measure what you are achieving
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it and just
because it’s new doesn’t mean it should not fall under
the same maxim as all of the other communications
techniques your organisation employs.
So, to wrap up, and hopefully to answer the premise
of the question in the title of this document, albeit in
reverse. Fad, certainly not. Foe, possibly, but that is
going to be determined by your organisation’s adoption
of the medium and its ability to influence rather than
control messaging and also how quickly old media
communicators can adapt to new media environments,
see Figure ten.
So a friend then? Yes maybe, but one that, as with
all friends, needs to be communicated with on a
regular basis, with honesty, openness and trust.
And worst case scenario, if your organisation isn’t
ready for Web 2.0, you can always wait for Web 3.0,
see Figure eleven, which can surely only just be
around the corner.
Web 2.0: Friend, foe or just a fad?
Figure Ten
On 16 May 2007 Engadget, a well known and
popular technology site in the US, ran a story on
its blog, that the release of the Apple iPhone was
going to be delayed for several months.
Engadget had received from a source, what it
believed to be a genuine internal email from Apple,
discussing the issue and the delay and after having
sought, but not received comment from Apple within
2 hours, made the decision to post the blog entry.
Within 6 minutes the market capitalisation of Apple
had fallen by $4 billion.
The posting was erroneous, Apple contacted
Engadget who ran a retraction and the Apple share
price recovered intraday, however, many investors
had already made, or lost a small fortune.
Figure Eleven
Web 3.0 is the logical extension of Web 2.0 as many
technologists and journalists, start to use the term to
hypothesize about a future wave of Internet innovation.
What form this innovation may take is still moot.
Some believe that the Semantic Web will transform
the way the Web is used, and lead to new possibilities
in artificial intelligence. Others suggest that increases
in connection speeds, modular web applications, or
advances in computer graphics will play the key role
in the next stage of evolution of the web.
When asked to define Web 3.0 Eric Schmidt the
CEO of Google, responded thus in May 2007:
“Web 2.0 is a marketing term, and I think you’ve
just invented Web 3.0.
But if I were to guess what Web 3.0 is, I would
tell you that it’s a different way of building
applications... My prediction would be that Web 3.0
will ultimately be seen as applications which are
pieced together.
There are a number of characteristics: the
applications are relatively small, the data is in the
cloud, the applications can run on any device, PC
or mobile phone, the applications are very fast
and they’re very customisable. Furthermore, the
applications are distributed virally: literally by social
networks, by email. You won’t go to the store and
purchase them... That’s a very different application
model than we’ve ever seen in computing.”
Web 3.0 is currently a way off commercial reality
for the vast majority of organisations. That said,
commercial reality in web terms can be measure in
months rather than years.
Arguably the first such development is Yahoo’s
Pipes or the next generation extension of mash
ups without the need for the input or knowledge of
a developer. Pipes in effect are not user generated
content, but user controlled content . It is effectively
the popularistion of the mash up, making it as easy
to achieve as My Space made owning your own
web space and developing your own content.
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 About
Daemon
Group
Daemon Group is an integrated
communications agency specialising
in brand, business to employee
communications, marketing, PR and
interactive application development.
Founded in Australia at the end of 2002,
the business has wholly owned offices in
London and Prague and employs over 40
people across three countries.
Daemon Group currently provides
services to client organisations ranging
from SMEs through charitable trusts to
ASX, NASDAQ and FTSE blue chip listed
corporates.
In March 2007, Daemon Group
acquired Sydney based 2iC Integrated
Communications, a full service PR
agency with award winning consumer
and corporate divisions, founded in 1999.
Further acquisitions took place in May
of 2007 and in July of the same year
when Daemon Group acquired Spinner, a
London based design agency and MRA, a
Sydney based market research agency.
In mid 2008, Daemon Group launched
Daemon Digital to drive the adoption
and use of digital media and digital
applications across communications
solutions. www.daemondigital.com

Web 2.0: Friend, foe or just a fad? www.daemondigital.com | 11