What is Web 2.0, to you?

If you ask 10 people what Web 2.0 means to them,  you might just get 10 different answers. Some, like noted technologist Tim Berners-Lee "...have questioned whether the term has meaning". Yet there are now Web 2.0 Conferences, reams of white papers, technologies declaring they are web 2.0, vendors touting their approach to Web 2.0, and so many different definitions.

In 2004, Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media and Books) coined the term Web 2.0 in a meeting with MediaLive. And since this first utterance, there are over 9.2 million responses in Google to the Web 2.0 term.

What is Web 2.0 to you?

Reading the Wikipedia on Web 2.0 and the O'Reilly Website page on this subject does not help clear up this definition confusion. In fact, to think-ebiz  these articles add to the confusion. Even Tim O'Reilly's "compact" definition of Web 2.0 does not seem to help much.

"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them."

This think-ebiz writer tries to make the complex simple, especially when working with clients and organizations that can ultimately benefit from eBusiness and online marketing. To get to our  definition of Web 2.0, we need to step back and look at the history of the web.

Web 0.0: The internet for the general consumer was born around 1991 with Berners-Lee's first web site, made universally available by CERN in 1993. The objective was to give consumers an online brochure of your business, with the goals of attracting as many "eye-balls" as possible. Courtesy of the Wayback Machine, this is the first web site I worked on at ADP (1998). We used to say, "wow we had 1,000 eyeballs last month!"

Web 1.0: Web sites begin to conduct online business, usability begins to matter. You can talk to the web site, tell it what you want to buy or provide information and have it display a customized result. Shopping carts, credit card acceptance, eBusiness and eCommerce engines, along with security and the emergence of hackers were the words of the day.

In 2000, I help create the strategy and implement the first ADP eBusiness environment, Solution Profiler. Small business owners could then enter basic information about their payroll needs and a customized solution and price would be delivered. Conversions, (leads and sales) became the metric of success. We would report to management that we had delivered over 100 leads to the sales force, worth $320K last month.

So what is Web 2.0 to you?

Web 2.0:  Think-ebiz believe that it is the social aspects of a web site. It is more than a brochure or a means of making an online sale, it is a true two-way communication between the merchant and the customers. It is about giving the consumer a reason to visit your web site time and again, giving something back while exposing them to your brand. It's enabling sharing of experiences with other consumers, sharing advice on product usage or helping to solve a problem. And yes, making sales... more and better sales! Web sites that support viral marketing, or have influencer capabilities are Web 2.0.

Personally, I do not think of Digg.com as Web 2.0..  or even Wikipedia. I guess it is because this blog is called Think-eBiz, it is about brand building, community sharing and a more meaningful ebusiness user experience.

Disney.com and Barbie.com are Web 2.0. LinkedIn's Answer's are somewhat web 2.0. There are many eCommunities that support forums, polls/surveys, image sharing and the like; Web 2.0.

My daughters love Barbie.com, where they can play dress up games online, share results with friends and are (to my wallet's despair) exposed continually to all the new Barbie stuff.

The metric of success is sustainable traffic AND brand building, which leads to sales (both on and offline sales!).

What is Web 2.0 to you? Let me know what you think and lets build upon the discussion. And please share web sites that you believe are the embodiment of Web 2.0.

Comments

[SEO Consultant Kolkata]

To me Web 2.0 is all about getting content shared across diferent platforms in an easy way. Social Network sites provides a good insight to this.