ABSTRACT

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the
Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new
platform. Web 2.0 encapsulates the idea of the proliferation of interconnectivity and
interactivity of web-delivered content. Web 2.0’s defining characteristics as “conceptual” and
“technical”. The conceptual characteristics describe a company’s approach or way of thinking
about their product, and technical characteristics describe the shared programming
architecture principles of the product itself.

The different types of Web 2.0 like Consumer to Consumer (C2C) Web 2.0, Business
to Consumer (B2C) Web 2.0, Consumer to Business (C2B) Web 2.0, Business to Business
(B2B) Web 2.0, and Enterprise 2.0 (Internal Business Web 2.0).

For most IT organizations, a high emphasis has always been placed on the creation of
applications. This technology is very promising because it will allow businesses to have
powerful methods for building and utilizing various IT programs. The systems will be highly
proficient, and their costs will be lower. Users as a Source of Value: The Network Effect,
Collaborative Value, Collective Intelligence. The network effect is a simple one. For
Example a single fax machine is a useless item but a network of millions of fax machines has
tremendous value.
 INTRODUCTION

Web 2.0 is much more than just pasting a new user interface onto an old application.
It’s a way a new perspective on the entire business of software—from concept through
delivery, from marketing through support. Web 2.0 thrives on network effects: databases that
get richer the more people interact with them, applications that are smarter the more people
use them, marketing that is driven by user stories and experiences, and applications that
interact with each other to form a broader computing platform.
The trend toward networked applications is accelerating. While Web 2.0 has initially
taken hold in consumer-facing applications, the infrastructure required to build these
applications, and the scale at which they are operating, means that, much as PCs took over
from mainframes in a classic demonstration of Clayton Christensen’s “innovator’s dilemma”
hypothesis, web applications can and will move into the enterprise space.
Today, a new set of internet technologies and fresh philosophies on how to harness
the interconnected nature of the network are gaining significant attention from consumers and
venture capitalists. It’s the web, version 2.0, or Web 2.0 as it has been dubbed by many.
Online companies and services are harnessing the network effect of the web combined with
syndication, micro-content, social networks, collective intelligence and open standards to
change the face of interactivity both online, and offline. There will be serious implications for
businesses focused on information and people.

WEB 2.0

Web 2.0 denotes the paradigm of employing the Web as the platform to deliver and
use software. Nevertheless, what user experiences, design patterns and technologies Web 2.0
actually encompasses are not concretely bound and they keep evolving. “Given the lack of
set standards as to what ‘Web 2.0’ actually means, implies, or requires, the term can mean
radically different things to different people.” In this paper, Web 2.0 is defined as the
innovative use of the World Wide Web to expand social and business outreach to and exploit
collective intelligence from the community. The features of Web 2.0 from the user behaviour
and software design perspectives are discussed.
Features of Web 2.0

Despite its fuzzy definition, Web 2.0 also has a number of features that have gained general
acceptance. Here these features are classified into the following two aspects: (1) social /
business aspect and (2) technology aspect. The new technology model supports the new
social / business model in this new Internet age.

User behaviour aspect

1- Architecture of participation
2- Personalization of web resources
3- Power of the Long Tail

Software design aspect

1- Deployment of rich applications
2- Perpetual beta release
3- Syndication of information and services

Different types of Web 2.0

1) Consumer to Consumer (C2) Web 2.0

In general, consumer to consumer is aimed at connecting people with the same
friends, same cause or same interest. Collective intelligence is a very strong outcome
of such forms of social networking. In many cases, C2C Web 2.0 could be just for
leisure purposes. In C2C Web 2.0, there are a few key applications and tools out there
like FaceBook, YouTube, SlideShare, GoogleDocs, Twitter, DIGG , Delicious,
Wikipedia and Linux.
2) Business to Consumer (B2C) Web 2.0
These kinds of Web 2.0 are really getting consumers to contribute and share
their knowledge, expertise and/or feelings towards their products or services for the
organisation. The organisation can choose to compensate their contributors with a
cash reward or not. In B2C Web 2.0, there are some really famous case studies like
Lego, Procter and Gamble’s Connect and Develop and GoldCorp.
3) Consumer to Business (C2B) Web 2.0
There are also many forums out there that help people solve their issues for
any organisation. For example, Whirlpool is telecommunication forums for
Australians where consumers help consumers solve problems that they have with
Telco companies.
4) Business to Business (B2B) Web 2.0
B2B Web 2.0 is about how two different and separate organisations can
collaborate and share sensitive information about each other for their own specific
benefits. For example, in a supply chain, organisations can tightly integrate any two or
more organisations together through an online platform and share information not
only about their inventory status or production output but also information about key
staff, communicate via a communal platform on issues, progress, updates and
anything in between.
5) Enterprise 2.0 (Internal Business Web 2.0)
This is all about the internal social networking and collaboration within the
organisation. Tools like Jive’s Clearspace, SocialText and Telligent have generally
focused on this requirement from organisations. Web 2.0 within organisations require
more governance and control as compared to consumer Web 2.0. The data that is
being exchange could also be generally more sensitive and holds some commercial
value.

Importance of Web 2.0 in IT organizations:

For most IT organizations, a high emphasis has always been placed on the creation of
applications. This technology is very promising because it will allow businesses to have
powerful methods for building and utilizing various IT programs.
 The systems will be highly proficient, and their costs will be lower. The technological
stack for the system destroys the need to use client software, and this allows
companies to leverage the web without spending large sums of money.
 It allows companies to deploy an identical version of an application among all their
users. Being able to deploy the application among a large number of users will stop
companies from having to develop numerous client software programs.
  Web 2.0 is powerful because it responds efficiently to drivers. Development teams
will have the capability respond rapidly to and needs that their business may have.
 Businesses can also benefit from Web 2.0 in the area of social computing. Example
blogs and the act of blogging.
 Social computing has led to a new form of marketing, a form of marketing that can
reach a large number for a fraction of the cost that traditional media sources require.

The Web as a Platform and Software as a Service

Today, most software is distributed as a “package” and operates on a desktop

computer with limited reliance upon the web for most of its functioning. Web 2.0 companies
have recognized the web’s capacity to deliver “desktop-like” performance without ever
having to install a piece of traditional software. The architecture of Web 2.0 applications
relies upon centrally managed software, pushed to the edges of the network, and delivered as
a service. This thin-client architecture is not new, but the ubiquity of the web as a delivery
medium, and its low cost of distribution is making the “web as a platform” attractive for
software companies of the future.
 APPLICATIONS OF WEB 2.0

Users as a Source of Value: The Network Effect, Collaborative Value, Collective

Intelligence. The network effect is a simple one. For Example a single fax machine is a
useless item but a network of millions of fax machines has tremendous value. The network
essentially is their service (think eBay). The network’s collective intelligence (Amazon.com
book reviews), harness the networks behaviour as data (links in as a determining factor of
relevancy for Google search results), harness the network to perform work (wikipedia.com)
Successful Web 2.0 companies and applications are baking the power of the network right
into their offerings.
Let’s use another comparative example to illustrate the point more clearly.
Snapfish.com is a photo sharing and printing service that lets subscribers upload and store
their digital photos, share them with selected individuals, and order prints. Flickr.com is a
service, that has the same core services. However, by default, photos on Flickr.com are
shared with the world (the network) unless restricted. On Snapfish, the opposite is true – a
photo can only be seen by those invited to see it by the owner. Further, Flickr.com allows
users to describe each uploaded photo with “tags”, and allows all users to browse and
discover photos by tag – not just view photos they have been “invited” to see by friends.
These seemingly simply distinctions make a large difference. Flickr is leveraging its network
of users directly within its application itself.

The below figure gives a brief idea on the areas in which Web 2.0 is being used:
 IMPROVEMENTS IN WEB 2.0

Web 1.0 assumes that information is published and services are provided for
consumption by human users only. Web 2.0 advocates reuse of web resources and a web
application can be provided as a syndication of other applications offered by different
providers. An important criterion of syndication is that the information and services must be
accessible through some standardized web API so that third party applications can utilize
these web resources.
For example, while the contents of a website are prepared, the developer should consider not
only how they are formatted in a web design but also whether they are well categorized and
laid out in web feeds for subscription by feed readers. To-date, many providers manage their
web contents in database systems instead of maintaining static pages in file systems.
Web 2.0 style services should also be exposed with some kind of web application
programming interface (web API). A simple web API is the use of meaningful and
computable URLs so that applications can compose the URLs to retrieve the required web
resources. A website called Google Sightseeing is an innovative yet simple mash-up of
Google Maps, Google Earth and blogging, where interesting sightings discovered in the
satellite photos of Google Maps are posted and discussed. Other more advanced web APIs
may be in form of the Web Services standards such as SOAP (Simple Object Access
Protocol) and WSDL (Web Service Definition Language). Amazon provides a Web Services
Interface for accessing product data, such as descriptions, pricing, etc.
 CONCLUSION

Web 2.0 is more than a temporary buzzword. Web 2.0 has to been seen as a new
Philosophy of information management. A group of people is collaborating to create
and share information. The result of the cooperation is the creation of collective
Intelligence by a common self-regulation quality assurance process.
So the philosophy of Web 2.0 is to let go of control, share ideas and code, build on
what others have built, free your data. And this freedom is not limited to a fixed release
version. You release it today, tomorrow a new bug; fix it and again a new release. You got
something to add, one more release. And what we say the web2.0 products are always in
BETA version.
.