What is this web 2.0 about?

We’ve been kicking the term around the office and most recently I was part of a meeting were we spent some time talking about Web 2.0 and its application to our work and business efforts. Is the internet changing right in front of us again?

Wikipedia.org defines web 2.0 as “a perceived second generation of web development and design, that aims to facilitate communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and applications; such as social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies”

Although I couldn’t define it as clearly as the collaborators over at Wikipedia, I do sense a real-change in how we are using the internet. Years ago (and I do mean years ago), I was focused on email addresses and web sites. My first contact with the internet came with the introduction of email addresses at the University and a training on how to search the web using web-crawlers using a now extinct program called Netscape.

Today the internet is quickly becoming about Facebook, Linkedin, blogs and tweets. It is these web-features that are driving web traffic, connections and, most importantly, populating search engine results. To be sure, web sites will continue to be important, but their function is shifting from being the primary internet presence to the place where our blogs, tweets and social profiles lead our customers to for secondary information. Assuming this is true and we are part of the advent of web 2.0, the team here is working hard to understand the implications.

So that is how I ended up here on Blotspot. Others in our office are experiementing with other web-based communities and communication tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I do believe the internet is changing. Right now, right in front of us. I believe that traditional, static web sites will stop being the most important part of the web, replaced with something more dymanic, active and adapative. I don’t know what this will be, but the team here is commmitted to being part of it, whatever it is.

Mark