Why Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 is a popular term that defines a new wave in the internet usage aiming at improved creativity,
information sharing and most importantly the association and co operation among the users. The main idea
behind Web 2.0 is that the internet users not only passively retain the information but also make contribution
to the available information. Wikipedia is the best example of Web 2.0 technology. The term Web 2.0 was coined
by Tim O’ Reilly in the year 2004 and he stated, “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry
caused by the move to internet as a platform. “ In this article we will make you familiar with the innovations
that Web 2.0 has introduced and how these can benefit your business and work place.
Universally Accessible: Web 2.0 has increased and improved participation and collaboration.
AJAX has made the web experience quicker and bigger. This unique combination of XML and Java Script has made
interaction liberal and given birth to desktop like responsiveness. This feature has allowed companies to
communicate more effectively with their clients. Companies can publish blogs discussing their strategies,
products, opportunities, and challenges, thereby allowing the customers to follow their progress through a
more intimate and open medium than a formal press release.
Ruby on Rails:
Ruby on Rails is the other break through of Web 2.0. This technology comprises of programming language and the
framework that has boosted the enhancement of web applications. This particular innovation has enabled various
starters to build potential business in much less time. This framework of web applications includes blogging
tools to galleries to wikis and has enabled the site visitors to become the site participants. Its language is
clear and easily readable to designers as well as programmers.
Blogs:
Blogs are the websites featuring regular comments, description of events, or other materials. Readers here are
free to comment in an interactive pattern. Blogs are really beneficial to establish your brand and also
encourage customers to develop communities as they are free to provide the feedback. Web 2.0 is the
architecture of participation baked into the architecture of software. Blogs encourage participation,
collaboration, efficiency, approach, simplicity and user orientation, thus making your business more interactive
and approachable.
Wikis:
Wikis are the web pages, those enable anyone to contribute or alter content by using simple mark up language.
Wikipedia is one of the well- known wikis. In business, intranets and knowledge management systems are due to
wikis. A company using wiki- based solutions for collaboration tends to be more successful than a traditional
one. As wikis work as small teams do, allowing the staff to scan each others ideas and contributing more
information. Wikis allows developing a compact online profile describing professional interests, previous
jobs, or posts, contact information thus creating an atmosphere of sharing and trust. For example, the
“innovation jams”, a new launch of IBM which encourages the employees to participate in virtual chat rooms
to develop more innovative ideas in order to enhance the business.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication):
RSS is used to publish regularly upgraded content as news, headlines, blog entries, and podcasts in a uniform
pattern. RSS feeds help the companies employees to get the information in pattern of their choice. If everyone
is allowed to publish and subscribe to desired RSS through desired tools, the best feed automatically comes to
the top and moreover employees would be better informed and author gets the deserved identification. This way,
employees will automatically learn about what is valuable and useful for their company instead of being
pressurized to learn the same. This would also help to develop strategies needed to make the company progressed.
Folksonomy:
Folksonomy is a technique and method of collectively developing and managing tags to comment and grade the
content. In this practice, metadata is developed not only by the experts but also by the users and creators
of the content. It makes use of freely chosen keywords. This technique enables the organization to find and
tag important and relevant information. In another words, corporate customers can depend upon the intelligent
filtering of the news. Staff becomes enabled to tag important news and would gradually develop the
understanding about which stories are relevant for the company. For businesses, where workers know each other
and domain information is focused, folksonomies work greater than any other initiatives to enhance business
efficiency and knowledge management. Folksonomy helps in collaboration of employees, while widening their
knowledge and making its management easier.
Mashups:
Mash up refers to a web page or application that results from combining data, presentation and functionality
of two or more sources to develop a newer and unique web service that is not originally offered by either of
the sources. The main purpose of creating mashups is to make available data more useful both professionally
and personally. Enterprises can create mashups to provide new functions and insights. They enable business to
mingle the inside & outside information to resolve any situational issue easily. These can result in reduced
application backlog, development time and costs along with increasing the productivity and helping business
user to innovate and co operate more efficiently. Moreover business mashups can enable business to extend
their existing investments like SOA and thus helping them to meet their business needs in a better way.
Apart from above mentioned innovations Web 2.0 has revolutionized the business by offering various other
benefits like:
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Enhanced revenues: Web 2.0 has enabled businesses to collectively harness the power of collaboration
and self organization to make innovations, improve growth rate and make lasting improvements in
productivity that can result in increased revenues. This has also improved marketing ROI and minimizes
the marketing time, thus leading to the speedy and better creation of the products and services.
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Lowered Costs: Web 2.0 has enabled businesses provide their customers, employees and partners the massive communication
and collaboration abilities at much less cost across the world. This in turn has furthermore helped the
business to attract more and more customers, employees, and partners.
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Advanced Online Experience for Users: Above the par internet application techniques like AJAX, Adobe, Flash, Java and many
more came into being due to Web 2.0, thus enhancing users experience. This technology enables a web page
to request changes only in a part of its content in the browser without refreshing the whole page content.
Thus web 2.0 has become pioneer of innovation, information sharing and above all collaboration and co operation
among the users. Web 2.0 tools suggested in the article would help you add on speed along with simplicity and
sense to your business. Web 2.0 has changed the publishing house image of the web by letting the customers,
partners, and employees to take the control of online content where they can modify, add on and contribute
apart from passively collecting and retaining the content.