Trendwatch: What Can Web 2.0 Do for [Your Business Here]

In the past few weeks I’ve heard from several companies that are interested in using Web 2.0 techniques and technologies to enrich their online businesses. The interesting twist is that they aren’t media companies; they’re leading brands in fields such as e-commerce, financial services, and hardware. The Web 2.0 phenomenon has become such a vital element of the online user experience that audiences are demanding it on all the sites they frequent. It’s changed the way people see their own role in terms of interacting with businesses and information.

Web 2.0 started as a media tool that enriched content, generated more pageviews to monetize through advertising, offered a low-cost alternative to content creation, and opened additional channels for distributing content. Using strategies such as AJAX, it provided a richer and more information-dense environment with less visual clutter. It gave the audience a seat at the table rather than a glass pane to press their noses against. The response was highly favorable: sites that adopted a Web 2.0 approach noticed they had more visitors who returned more often, spent more time on the site, and created lots of content. Web 2.0, it turned out, leads to the prized results of deeper brand engagement and loyalty.

If you need a refresher course in Web 2.0, Tim O’Reilly defined it in detail in a well known article he wrote in 2005 (now available in your choice of eight languages). As a quick primer, he contrasts the 1.0 and 2.0 web experiences like this:

Web 1.0		Web 2.0
DoubleClick	-->	Google AdSense
Ofoto	-->	Flickr
Akamai	-->	BitTorrent
mp3.com	-->	Napster
Britannica Online	-->	Wikipedia
personal websites	-->	blogging
evite	-->	upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation	-->	search engine optimization
page views	-->	cost per click
screen scraping	-->	web services
publishing	-->	participation
content management systems	-->	wikis
directories (taxonomy)	-->	tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness	-->	syndication

The time that’s passed since the Web 2.0 concept was defined is like eons in “internet time,” yet surprisingly many major sites still haven’t gotten the message, and some Web 1.0 sites are still attracting investment and launching, seemingly oblivious to progress in the last five years. Against that backdrop it’s exciting to see online businesses beyond the media industry starting big initiatives to tap into Web 2.0’s power to engage customers, expose them to more products, solve problems, and spend more time on the site. Tools such as community, platforms for user-generated content (discussion groups, blogs, wikis), ratings, RSS feeds, AJAX, multimedia, tagging, and facilitating peer-to-peer interaction vs. a linear business-to-customer approach, are quickly becoming the norm for a spectrum of online activities, not only defining the user experience in the media niche.

In the next waves to break, Web 2.0 is expanding to mobile (the “phonetop”) and ideas about Web 3.0 are starting to coalesce. These days, whatever your online business, envisioning the future in 1.0 terms is like trying to get a clearer picture by adjusting the rabbit ears on a black-and-white TV.