Web 2.

0
Since 2004 the Web 2.0 concept has increased in prominence amongst
website owners and
developers, and it is now in the mainstream as a marketing approach
which is closely related
to social media. The main technologies and principles of Web 2.0 have
been explained in an
influential article by Tim OReilly (OReilly, 2005). Web 2.0 isnt a new web
standard or a
paradigm shift as the name suggests, rather its an evolution of
technologies and communications approaches which have always been
possible through the interactive nature of the web, but have grown in
importance with the growth in high-speed broadband connections and
acceptance of the benefits of social media by consumers. Back in 1997,
Hoffman and Novak (1997) foresaw this change when they said:
consumers can interact with the medium, firms can provide
content to the medium,
and in the most radical departure from traditional marketing
environments, consumers can provide commercially-oriented
content to the media.

Today many well-known startups, such as Digg, Facebook, Flickr and

YouTube, which have
been purchased for hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars are
founded on Web
2.0 principles and many incumbent media owners and existing companies
are integrating
Web 2.0 applications. So, as part of developing a roadmap for your emarketing plans, its
important to review the Web 2.0 models and prioritize them for integration
into you or your
clients sites.

The main characteristics of Web 2.0 are that it typically

involves:
Supporting participation many of the applications are based on
altruistic principles of
community participation.
Encouraging creation of user generated content blogs are the

best example of this.

Another example is the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia
(www.wikipedia.com) and,
of course, YouTube (www.youtube.com) or niche sites like Constant
Comedy (www.
constantcomedy.com).
Enabling rating of content and online services services such as
delicious (http://
del.icio.us) and traceback comments on blogs support this. These services
are useful
given the millions of blogs that are available rating and tagging
(categorizing) content
help indicate the relevance and quality of the content.
Ad funding of free services web services such as Google Mail/GMail
and many blogs
are based on contextual advertising such as Google Adsense or
Overture/Yahoo! Content
Match. Alternatively social networks all offer advertising space (see, for
example, www.
youtube.com/advertise which offers five different alternatives for brands
to interact with
their audiences including Display Advertising, Brand Channels, Contests,
YouTube Video
Ads and YouTube InVideo Ads).
Hosted as web services or interactive applications examples
include Flickr (www.
flickr.com), Google maps (http://maps.google.com) or blogging services
such as Blogger.
com or Typepad (www.typepad.com). However, some Web 2.0
collaborative applications
may involve downloading a browser plugin or separate application. For
example, Last.fm
has a download which enables you to share track listings or scroble of all
music you play
on your PC so you can find out shared interests and musical
recommendations. Virtual
World Second Life also requires a large, 30Mb, download.
Involve data exchange between sites through XML-based data
standards. For example
RSS feeds (which automatically send you update alerts from particular
web sites) are
based on XML. An attempt by Google to facilitate this which illustrates the

principle of
structured information exchange and searching is Google Base
(http://base.google.com).
This allows users to upload data about particular services, such as training
courses, in a
standardized format based on XML. New classes of content can also be
defined.
Use rapid application development using interactive technology
approaches known
as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) the best known Ajax
implementation
is Google Maps which is responsive since it does not require refreshes to
display maps.
Simplicity in design and style many Web 2.0 applications are
focused on a single
activity such as social networking, mapping or photo sharing. To make the
task as easy
as possible, they have a simple appearance using design techniques such
as simple pastel colour schemes, rounded box corners, gradients and
reflections. See http://www.photoshoplab.com/web20-design-kit.html for
practical tutorials on these techniques.