Make Web 2.0 Work for You
The New Era of Internet Brings Great New Resources To Tap
If you're not making the most of Web 2.0, you soon will be! Here are a few tips to get you started.
Web 2.0 websites allow the user to do more than just retrieve information. It is a new generation of web-based communities, including social-networking sites, wikis, and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users. Think about some of the biggest sites out there – EBay, MySpace, Wikipedia and Facebook - they all use Web 2.0.
Just to recap: Web 1.0 was largely written for readers, and the most it could do was to take your credit card details. But then the revolution happened – everyone started to want their own slice of the Internet and many more people were creating their own content for the net.
Bart Decrem, a founder and former CEO of Flock, calls Web 2.0 the ‘participatory Web’ and regards Web 1.0 as the web-as-information-source.
But How Can a Participatory Web Help Your Business?
Here are a few examples of new software that can make your reader become part of YOUR marketing process:
Ian McCarthy of Orb has software allowing surfers to stream media from their desktop using any web-enabled device, without having to worry about the format or bit rate of their movies or music.
Structured Blogging allows bloggers to easily add structured meta-data to blog posts, such as movie reviews, product reviews or event listings, so they can be easily found, read and syndicated by other sites.
Zimbra CEO Satish Dharmaraj has demonstrated an Ajax-powered web client, which displays the calendar when mousing over a date mentioned in an e-mail and call a number through Skype when clicking on a phone number in a message.
The opportunities for interactive advertising are immense.
Points To Remember:
(1) Don’t use trendy Web 2.0 features for their own sake. Flash graphics and slide shows can actually detract from the user experience. Use interactive features with care.
(2) Think outside the box when it comes to bringing readers to your site. These days, a feed reader, a link on a blog, a search engine, or some other content aggregator is your most likely source of custom. Make the most of these new technologies to direct web traffic to your site!
The big players have been using interactive Web 2.0 technologies for years. Amazon, for instance, has allowed users to write reviews and consumer guides since its launch in 1995, in a form of self-publishing. Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the net, said: “That was what the Web was supposed to be all along”.
So don’t forget web users when you market your business. Post articles to blogs, optimise your site so it attracts the search engines, create links on social networking sites and create a real buzz about your company online!
Why not try it for yourself today?
Sources
Stage 2 Studios - 'Sometimes Web 1.0 is Better than Web 2.0' by D. Board 10/2/07
Digital Web Magazine - 'Web 2.0 for Designers' by Richard McManus and Joshua Porter 4/5/05
Blog - 'All We Got Was Web 1.0, When Tim Berners-Lee Actually Gave Us Web 2.0' by Dion Hinchcliffe 4/9/06
Wired - 'Are You Ready for Web 2.0?' by Ryan Singel - 10/6/05
