Basically, “Web 2.0″ means different things to different people. * To the programmer, it’s a set of tools and techniques that have the potential for fundamentally altering how network based applications and data are managed and delivered. * For start-ups and venture capitalists, it’s an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of another bubble. * For the corporate CIO or IT manager, it’s another set of technologies and architectures to be adopted and supported in an era of continued I.T. department budget strains. * For newer or smaller companies, it’s an opportunity to acquire technical and business process infrastructure at a fraction of the investment made by older and legacy companies. * For the marketing manager it’s an opportunity to “end-run” a traditionally unresponsive I.T. department. * For the CEO of an established legacy industry, it’s a threat of loss of control over customer relations. * For the customer it’s an opportunity to establish and maintain relationships that are both personally fulfilling and empowering in the face of the traditional power of larger institutions.
I received the following email from fellow blogger Chris Law (1000 Flowers Bloom) in response to my article Web 2.0 and Maintaining the Integrity of Online Intellectual Property: I really like your article. One thing that I think is very much related is what happens if it’s not a document? What if it’s say the classified listings on my site that are then being mashed up with a Google Map?
I haven’t really decided how “revolutionary” web 2.0 applications are. One school of thought is that web 2.0 applications like blogs, podcasts, and wikis are “just another set of channels” to be considered in the overall mix of ways to manage communications with one’s target markets and customers. There’s another school of thought, though, that suggests that the interactivity and social networking aspects of Web 2.0 are finamentally changing the balance of power and influence in the marketplace in a profound way. I come down somewhere in the middle.
Dave Taylor, a co-moderator with me of the members-only LinkedinBloggers Group on Yahoo!, has an interesting read on his blog titled "Walmart and Edelman PR lead the way on working with bloggers." Lately I've been reading about the increasing acceptance of blogging by corporations as an extension to their ongoing corporate communications with their customer and the public.
In my article Web 2.0 and Maintaining the Integrity of Online Intellectual Property I discussed what happens when information flowing through the Internet can change between the time it is created and the time it is consumed. This can be both good and bad. Good aspects include the addition of new information and the resulting rich functionality and utility that can be created. Bad aspects include the possible loss of control over quality and authority as information "morphs" in ways that may have been unintended by the information's originators.
"Web 2.0 and Maintaining the Integrity of Online Intellectual Property - Is 'Meta-Information' the Answer?" is a Sys-Con "Web 2.0 Journal" article, published March 3, 2006, that addresses what happens when individual writings become modified and changed -- sometimes accidentally, sometimes on purpose -- through the collaborative and transformative functionality of content-oriented Web 2.0 applications.
I've worked a lot with call centers and contact centers, primarily those that handle incoming calls for things like customer support, product purchasing, account inquiries, and trouble shooting. Many's the time I wondered, while poring over statistics on incoming call type, call volume, and call resolution, "I wonder what the rest of the people out there think of us?" Well, there are now ways to find out.
Linkedin Bloggers is a members-only sub-group of Linkedin members who have created the group to discuss issues related to blogging and professional networking. The group is growing. We've decided to try an experiement we call "blog boosting." We've randomly selected one of the group members' regularly updated blogs -- in this case Itzy Sabo's Email Overloaded -- and group members have agreed to write about and link to Itzy's blog today, March 1, 2006.
I've been experimenting with NetVibes, an online tool that lets you build a re-usable and bookmark-able central page where you can load a variety of services. I've added my Yahoo! Mail link (you can add a link for Google mail if you like), RSS feeds for various Web 2.0 and Yahoo! Groups I'm active in, as well as the feeds for various blogs I check regularly. Since I move around several computers during the day this tool could provide a great service, if only I could figure out a way to tie in my Eudora email that resides on my main machine and the custom Access database I use for contact tracking!