2007 has been a great year for the Web. On the one hand, there has been an upswing in the number of Web 2.0 start- ups globally, while on the other hand, popular Web 2.0 start-ups like Facebook, jaiku, feedburner and others have been acquired or invested in by the giants of the Web like Microsoft and Google. Closer home in India, the trends have been similar, though still in a nascent stage, as social networking became a buzzword with Orkut. That led to start-ups like Minglebox (which obtained funding from Sequoia Capital), BigAdda (backed by Reliance), Desimartini (recently acquired by HTMedia), and many others. Though launches occurred at a lower frequency than in the US, India has seen over 150 Web 2.0 start-ups launched during this year (according to internal research at WATConsult) in different spaces from social networking, social bookmarking and blogging, to media sharing, local search, etc. Let’s take a look at some of the…

Key international trends in 2007
Open APIs: The Web as a Platform: Facebook revolutionised the concept of Web applications by opening its API (application programming interface) and introducing a developer platform that allows developers to create applications for Facebook. By doing so, it leveraged the wisdom of the crowds, a concept well explained in the book ‘The Long Tail’ by Chris Andersen. Now everyone could have a unique Facebook profile by just adding applications of their choice. Facebook’s opening of its API led to Google launching ‘OpenSocial’ with Web 2.0 players like MySpace, Engage, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, Imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, Orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

The widgetisation of the Web: In the US, there’s been a huge surge in the use of widgets that can be embedded in your page or blog, or even used through your desktop. Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, Netvibes, and Wordpress added widgets capability; services like SpringWidgets and WidgetBox let you create your own widgets, and Widgipedia is an online repository of widgets. This phenomenon has become one of the most defining characteristics of Web 2.0, because it facilitates deconstruction of the Web into small, single-purpose applications called widgets or gadgets, which can be created, distributed, and publicised by the average non-technical user.

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