Web 2.0: What’s in It for You?

By ExecutiveBrief Staff

The impact Web 2.0 can have on your business may just be real. How is it changing the way traditional business processes are done?

By this time, you may already have a good grasp of the term “Web 2.0” in spite of the absence of a real definition. Some dismiss it as nothing but a “meaningless marketing buzzword,” while others have considered it the second birth of the Web.

Recently, Google CEO Eric Schmidt defined it as “a different way of building applications...that corresponds to something called ‘AJAX’ to the dismay of online pundits who thought that his definition was very inadequate. And they were right.

Collective knowledge, user-generated content, and application sharing are some of the tenets Web 2.0 current Web users embrace.

No matter the definition, it is impossible to deny the impact it has made on business.

Web 2.0 has gradually been taken to mean technologies, activities and approaches, and the online culture that allows them to flourish. Web 2.0 is not limited to AJAX and highly interactive Web sites with shiny interfaces alone. It is, as O’Reilly wrote, Web-as-participation platform.

The Effects of Self-Publishing and Social Networking
Before the Web crashed in 2001, there were only a few sites that allowed consumers to have a say on products, and this was done haphazardly through rating systems and product reviews on e-commerce sites. These days, product reviews and recommendations are fueled by continuous communication processes that take place in commerce and auction sites, social networks and blogs. Although companies did not immediately embrace social networks and blogging, they soon realized that these had the potential to create an impact on their public images, CRM and, ultimately, the profits.

According to the landmark document, The Cluetrain Manifesto, everybody is a potential marketer for a company. Traditionally, much of the talk about the enterprise is limited to the PR department and the advertising firm hired to polish the company’s image or evangelize its product. Now, with sites and platforms that enable people to self-publish, employees have a say in making or unmaking the company’s product through the Web. Flickr serves people’s need to share, rate or discuss photographs; Web logs (blogs) let them create personal sites in diary formats; video-sharing sites let them broadcast videos. Web 2.0 empowers people to talk, and when they do, businesses had better listen.

Ironically, it was not the big businesses that first realized the value of these new communication channels but bit players: independent artists and small upstarts that did not have large marketing budgets. When the British punk rock band, Arctic Monkeys, uploaded music samples on their MySpace profile, their popularity skyrocketed on both sides of the pond. This and other success stories established MySpace as a Mecca for independent musicians and filmmakers clamoring for the attention of recording studios while creating niche fan bases.