Many IT organizations view the phrase Web 2.0 as either just marketing hype that is devoid of any meaning or they associate it exclusively with social networking sites such as MySpace. That’s understandable as Web 2.0 is not the same as a new protocol that has an associated RFC that spells out definitively what is and what is not included as part of the protocol. As a result, many concepts get lumped under the banner of Web 2.0. In one of the most insightful analyses of Web 2.0, Tim Reilly points out that Web 2.0 involves fundamentally new design patterns and business models and he compares companies that were successful with Web 1.0 with those companies that are leading the movement to Web 2.0.

One of these comparisons is Netscape vs. Google. Reilly states that Netscape intended to use their dominance in the browser market to establish a market for high-priced server products and that Netscape’s ability to do this would stem from their assumed control over standards for displaying content and applications in the browser world. From a design perspective, Reilly states that Web 2.0 companies such as Google focus more on cooperation than on control and that their success requires a key competency that Napster never needed – database management. Reilly emphasized the importance of databases when he states that “Data is the Next Intel Inside” and he added that while competitors often acquire a base data set from the same source, the successful Web 2.0 companies are the ones who leverage users to continually annotate and add value to the base data.

Semeniuk emphasized his view that Web 2.0 is “a lot more than just social networking”. He said that the goal of Web 2.0 is to “allow for greater flexibility for presenting information to the user.” Semeniuk added that Web 2.0 started with sites such as Google and MySpace and is now widely used as a way to aggregate websites together more naturally. A key component of Web 2.0 is that the content is “very dynamic and alive and that as a result people keep coming back to the website.” The concept of an application that is itself the result of aggregating other applications together has become so common that a new term, mashup, has been coined to describe it. According to Wikipedia a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool; a typical example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data from Craigslist, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally envisaged by either source.

Forte stated that when he thinks about Web 2.0 he doesn’t think about marketing hype. Instead he thinks about the new business opportunities that are a result of Web 2.0. He said that, “Ten years ago if somebody was starting a web based business they would need roughly one million dollars to get their product to beta. Web 2.0 allows someone today to start up a business for fifty thousand dollars.” Forte said that this dramatic change is enabled in part because today businesses can hire programmers who use application platforms such as ASP.NET that rely on technologies such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). Developers can use ASP.NET to quickly develop applications that run on low cost virtual servers and communicate amongst themselves using Skype.

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