The tale of two Webs

Communities: Humans are social creature and associating with a tribe is a very basic instinct for most of us. We identify ourselves by the places where we were born or live,schools we attended,religious beliefs we practice,professions organization we belong to,companies we work for and a whole slew of such groupings. The groups can be professional or personal and everything in between. Web 1.0 was very informational centric and did not include the community aspect. It did not foster any sense of community,the sense of belonging. So in a sense Web 1.0 did very little to address one of the very basic human nature.

Content: Content is king. However not all kings are created equals,there are emperors,kings and chiefs. Similarly all content is not created equal. In content world,one of the biggest differentiator is content creator. In the world of Web 1.0,because of the inherent cost related to content publishing and distribution,content was locked-up to the few. For example corporate marketing defined all out bound messaging. However,within any industry,groups or company there are leaders and experts,example company CTO or somebody who is an influencer in your group. Their voice and opinions are important to a more targeted group. The third type of content is the idle chat between friends,or a water cooler talk between co-workers,think Facebook. People have various personas,and there is place for all these types of conversation in each persons life.

Whereas Web 1.0 was mostly for the first persona of content creators,Web 2.0 covers all types of content. In the Web 2.0 world,Wikipedia replaced Encyclopedias,Corporate Wiki replaced the intranet and your LinkedIn post of Tell your network what you are doing and IM status replaced the Post-it notes of Do not disturb sign outside the cubicle.

Communication: Communication is a two way dialog. In the real world it happens top down,bottom up,and sideways. The first version of the web was top down,talk only as it had no listen capability. In a sense it allowed for a very uninteresting monolog. Web 2.0 is about two way communication,it is about a dialog.

It put people and their communities in the center of all the dialogs. In the first incarnation of the web,this interaction was left to the physical world. Communication is about collaboration and conversations. It is about linking,sharing and interacting. Web 2.0 provided a platform to do all of this.

With so much content and so many conversations and no moderator,the problem of information overload became even more acute. Web 2.0 addressed this problem with a unique wisdom of the crowds who provide the moderation by following on twitter,rating and ranking associated with both the content providers and their content. Comments,bookmarks,..also bought at Amazon,thumbs-up/ down,defined the features that link between relevant content to their communities and allowed them to have a meaningful conversation.

What role has Web 2.0 played in giving rise to the era of blogging and to social networking?

Some of the key Web 2.0 technologies include

Social Networking site

Wikis,Blogs amp; Micro blog

Mash-ups,Video and Podcast

There are five specific business objectives of most communication to listen,to talk,to energize,to support,and to embrace. Individuals and companies are using Web 2.0 technologies to communicate with their customers,business partners,employees and their industry groups. Blogging and Social networking are two of the more widely adopted Web 2.0 technologies.

Often time,the users for these tools are viewed as outside of the company,but the audience can very likely be your employees too. Initial adoption of these technologies was done by companies trying to sell directly to the consumer,but companies that have traditionally sold to the Fortune 2000 or to SMB are also starting to adopt ways to bring these tools into their portfolio. The initial adopters of these tools were people who were in the front end of the sales and marketing,but now applications are being developed that are using these tools to support internal and backend processes. Imagine the CEO of a company who wants to engage in chat dialog with thousands of employees. Think of the CTO who wants to communicate his product/ architecture vision to the engineers while including constructive feedback from his entire team. These tools are the enablers of these conversations.

So how has the rise of Web 2.0 affected business and changed the way people work.

Web 2.0 is still in its infancy within most organizations. However it has the prospect of changing how marketing departments engages with prospects and customers,how product managers interact with internal and external stake holders,how hiring and recruitment is done,how training is delivered,or how customer support performs their activities today. For example,it is not uncommon that marketing updates their websites once a quarter or every six months with messages that are very carefully crafted but that is totally gibberish to most. It does not have to happen that way. There is no reason why training departments should only conduct instructor led courses that are conducted at prescheduled times that are inconvenient to all and topics that are relevant to few.

Where is the web 2.0 heading

The future is hard to predict. However,some places where Web 2.0 is most like to go next could be..

Adoption of these tools within the enterprise. Companies shall start using these constructs to reduce the friction and increase the speed in how work is done. Some have labeled this as Enterprise 2.0. Today integration of the corporate tools such as email,documents etc. is missing. Addressing issues such as security,compliance,would be important before these tools get wider acceptance within enterprise.

Web 2.0 is very text oriented today. Video,animation,audio,mobile smart phones are some fairly unexplored areas in the web 2.0 world.

So far Web 2.0 is mostly about free to consumers. Rise of the private club,where members pay to participate or pay for premium services,B2B services is another area that is relatively unexplored.

The author is Vice President,Product Management amp; Marketing,Consumer amp; Enterprise Business Unit,GlobalLogic