1

WEB 2.0: THE WEB BANG

In the course of human events, there have been several profound inventions.
However, when a significant invention has been leveraged creatively to harness
even greater benefits, the results have been enough to make the earth wobble
on its axis. The wheel was an invention but when used under carts, transport was
invented. Nuclear fission was an discovery, but when used to destroy, the atom
bomb was invented. The World Wide Web was an invention but when used as a
platform to liberate the users and unleash the creativity of the masses, Web 2.0
was created. The revolution that has been sweeping the internet portals in the
recent years has all but swept the world. Web 2.0 is more than just technology; it
is more than just collaboration, it is a sea change in perception, it is Collective
Intelligence. This essay aims to understand Web 2.0, its underpinning
technologies; and its potential. The explosion of user-generated content that has
been created and the diversity, the depth and the creativity of this content is
unprecedented and hence the title.

The child of a brainstorming session between O‟Reilly and MediaLive

International, the term “Web 2.0” has swept across cyberspace and is now no
longer restricted to the repertoire of IT specialists (O‟Reilly, 2005). A quick search
for the term “Web 2.0” on Google reveals 71,000,000 results on the 4 th of
February 2008 this is a testimony to the all-encompassing nature of this tide of
web 2.0 sweeping across the world. Rich Skrenta notes that the difference in
web 2.0 and web 1.0 is that it drives an entirely different content delivery,
advertising and value chain. Dynamism is the key-word and has replaced the
content of web 1.0 which grew organically at best and was static at worst.

Web 2.0 provides a richer, dynamic, collaborative user experience. The trend has
changed to a philosophy of openness. The content of a webpage is more
accessible than ever before and webpage creation is done not by the webmaster
but by the web-surfers who view the page; a case in the point being iGoogle a
personalized webpage unique to each user which can be personalized according
to his/her tastes. The communication process has changed and users can and
are learning more and more to communicate with other users. The traditional
modes of entertainment have changed from passive to active. Social networking
sites such as facebook, flickr, orkut engage the users while entertaining them
and users create content while being entertained, are perhaps the biggest
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examples of web 2.0 put to use creatively and effectively. Web 2.0 blurs the line
between producers and consumers and creates „prosumers‟ who produce as well
as consume content (Powell, 2008).

So, what has changed? If one were to consider the technology and the back end
of web 2.0, there is not much of a difference. However, the front end, notably
content delivery and content generation has undergone a massive shift. The first
of the many uniqueness of web 2.0 as compared to web 1.0 is the change from
the perception and use of the internet as a tool to the use of internet as a
platform. A platform where data rules, and the value of the software is directly
proportional to the breadth and dynamism of data it can manage. Consider
Google, for example provides a number of services handling a myriad amount of
data (Google, 2008). Further, web 2.0 utilizes collective intelligence and content
generation is no longer the domain of just the webmasters but is generated and
handled by the users (Cong, Du, 2007). With this new change, data ownership
has undergone a radical change. Raw data is harnessed, added to, reshaped, re-
morphed and re-synthesized. A company with a unique, hard to copy data would
be very uniquely placed to deliver rich web 2.0 applications (Alexander C., cited
in „O Reilly, 2005). The other main difference with web 2.0 is that there is what is
know as „perpetual beta‟ what it means is that since there the web 2.0
applications require constant maintenance and operations become extremely
important towards value creation. Gmail, the e-mail service by Google was
launched on the 1st of April, 2004 and is still in beta stage (Google, 2004). As
stated above, users are co-creators of data and are treated as co-developers
(O‟Reilly, 2005).

Although web 2.0 runs on the technologies of its predecessor, web 1.0, there
have been a few modifications and new tools have been developed to enhance
the user experience and gain added benefit from web 2.0. Web 1.0 pages were
built mostly using HTML on the client side with JavaScript or other additions for
server interactions. However, web 2.0 has changed the client-server interaction
protocols. The pages of today are built on AJAX. An amalgamation of several
technologies, AJAX involves a combination of XHTML and CSS with dynamic
interaction using DOM or Document Object Model, data interaction using XML
and XSLT, XMLHttpRequest for data retrieval, and JavaScript for other
processes. The end result of combining all of these technologies to design a web
page is that it eliminates the traditional model of query-stop-processing-stop-
response. Rather, an AJAX engine is loaded at the start of a webpage which is in
constant asynchronous communication with the server as well as the client. The
exact workings of an AJAX engine are beyond the reach of this paper. Suffice to
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say that it enlivens the web-experience and makes the response much quicker.
There is a growing number of web 2.0 applications and websites which use AJAX
such as Gmail, Orkut, A9 by Amazon, Flickr etc. (Garrett, 2005). Other
technologies that underpin web 2.0 are Adobe Flash, RSS etc. (Powell, 2008).

The economic and business potential for web 2.0 is staggering. It provides for a
plethora of opportunities for business and these opportunities need to be
capitalized upon. A study done on 4000 broadband users in the United States of
America found that an average broadband user performs 2.4 content creation
activities regularly (Riegner, 2007). This enormous content capturing potential
notwithstanding, Web 2.0 also provides businesses with other tools to expand
their market size, increase customer interest and grow the business. One of the
key new developments from Web 2.0 which have changed the face of online
retail is the concept of „long tail‟. It is an entirely new economics model,
especially for the media and the entertainment industries which enables users to
have a virtually unlimited access. This translates to obscure books and music
available for download, thereby increasing the market scope many-folds. In
addition to targeting the traditional market with the traditional offerings, long-tail
enables targeting of numerous niche markets which have a very high as-yet-
unrealized potential. Online retailing, a direct application of Web 2.0 tools
enables retailers to stock those obscure tracks, books, movies etc for download
as there is virtually no distribution fee, no shelf space cost, no manufacturing cost
and hence, virtually no marginal cost per unit (Anderson, 2004). Consider for
example, the following 2004 statistics by Anderson in Wired,

“The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of
Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. The
average Blockbuster carries fewer than 3,000 DVDs. Yet a fifth of Netflix
rentals are outside its top 3,000 titles. Rhapsody streams more songs
each month beyond its top 10,000 than it does its top 10,000. In each
case, the market that lies outside the reach of the physical retailer is big
and getting bigger.”

Thus, the market for books catered to by Amazon or the market for blockbusters
catered to b Netflix or that of Music tracks catered to by Rhapsody is not even
sold in the average physical store.

Another phenomenon sweeping cyberspace is Second Life, a complete virtual

world created by Linden Labs. With 12,240,161 residents as of January 2008
spending 28,274,505 hours per month as of January 2008 translates to nearly
$23 million spent in December, 2007 alone. These are impressive statistics,
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there is a parallel virtual economy flourishing in the realm of Second Life but its
impact is very real. The currency prevalent in this virtual world is Linden Dollar,
which can be exchanged for US dollars. A study of usage statistics provided by
Linden labs reveals a startling revelation in the age range of users. An
overwhelming 58.78% of users are of age band 25-44. This has colossal
opportunities for marketing and marketers (Linden Labs, 2008) and is an
incredible application of web 2.0 tools; however, it does not end here, realizing
the potential of this marketplace, several real-world companies have now opened
their virtual second life accounts, purchased land and actively use it as a
promotion medium. IBM brought the Wimbledon to second life, Cisco interviews
job applicants in there, several news companies such as Reuters and Sky news
have considerable presence in the world and the Guardian even went so far as to
host a virtual music festival. Other significant companies with presence in second
world include, Adidas, which recently opened a store there, Vodafone which
gives away digital presents every week and Nissan which has created a fleet of
cars for the residents.

Although the biggest, Second Life is not however, the only virtual world, World of
Warcraft is a close second who has taken 8.5 million players online. Several
others including some very well known companies, which do not want to miss the
action, have created their online virtual worlds. They include Disney with its
Virtual Magic Kingdom and Nickelodeon based Nicktropolis and MTV‟s Virtual
Laguna Beach to name a few (Wray, 2007).

The treasure trove that is Web 2.0 does not only provide businesses
opportunities to grow their markets but helps them streamline all of the functional
areas, whereby making businesses more effective, efficient and profitable. To
exemplify this point, it would be useful to study another exciting web 2.0
development known as „Crowd Power‟. From R&D for a pharmaceutical giant to
product development for potato crisps, crowd power or CrowdSourcing has
proven to be effective for all. A top executive of the Research and Development
department of Eli Lilly the pharmaceutical giant, Alpheus Bingham realized the
potential of CrowdSourcing as early as in the mid 90s (Burge, 2007). Using web
1.0 technologies, he implemented the idea but the full potential of this radical
concept was realized and harnessed, using web 2.0 resources, in 2002 by
Procter and Gamble when they launched a new version of their well-known
Pringles potato crisps in the US. CrowdSourcing involves a significant departure
from traditional research methods. While conventionally, companies are prone to
keep all of their research to bricks-and-mortar in-house departments, as the
name implies, CrowdSourcing depends upon the collective intelligence of millions
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of people across the world for ideas, inputs and innovation. While not a direct
result of web 2.0, the use of web 2.0 technologies and resources has helped
expand this particular research method beyond what was ever thought possible.
So much so, that 35% of Procter & Gamble‟s innovations and billions of dollars in
revenue now come from CroudSourcing, which Procter and Gamble have termed
„Connect and Develop‟ (Huston and Sakkab, 2006).

This is just tip of the proverbial iceberg. All that is required is for the companies to
incorporate web 2.0 technologies in their businesses. There are several ideas
and practices which can be adapted to and benefited from web 2.0 and there are
also several areas where web 2.0 technologies can help to create a better
workplace. A case in the point being IBM which recently held a 72 hour online
chat session with employees across 75 countries to discuss the company‟s
values and called it a „jam‟ session. It also plans to hold more (Economist, 2006).
It is projects and applications like these which raise the bar and in the world of
web 2.0, the only limiting factor is the imagination and creativity of mankind.

All the benefits notwithstanding, there are some threats which are emerging from
the web 2.0 technologies and their increasing usage. One of the biggest threats
is the problem of content protection. What this means is that with web .0 being
open to contribution, absolutely anyone can contribute. Hence, a website such as
Wikipedia which relies solely upon the contribution of its readers to grow and
generate content provides a prime example to study the threats emerging from
web 2.0 technologies. Since anyone can edit or create a Wikipedia article,
potentially, it means that there might exist discrepancies between the articles
people edit and their specialization, also, there is a high likelihood of users
putting their good over the good of the whole community when publishing
content. Practically, it would translate to users editing something like a Wikipedia
article to benefit their own goals which might be personal benefits or, conversely,
as malicious tools to satisfy personal vendetta (The Economist, 2006). Further,
there are concerns about security and governance issues which are proving to
be one of the biggest factors to slow the web 2.0 juggernaut. A global research
carried out by KPMG, published in January 2008 revealed that while 70% of the
500 executives researched worldwide said that web 2.0 technologies would
improve the productivity of their staff, nearly half admitted to lacking the required
understanding to apply web 2.0 tools to their businesses. Also, over half also
mentioned that security concerns along with a lack of performance measuring
tools for web 2.0 are major barriers to adoption (Muncaster, 2008).

The only solution to these problems is to enhance the moderation of content rich
sites and monitor the content posted by users. IBM has already taken steps to
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tackle the other problems by launching „Web 2.0 goes to work‟ an „initiative to
help businesses apply Web 2.0 technologies across the globe to gain a
competitive advantage‟ (IBM, 2008). This would be an invaluable step towards
teaching small and medium businesses the value of web 2.0 and how it can be
used to enhance productivity. IBM has also donated free script to Open AJAX
Alliance, a group of vendors and open-sourced AJAX projects. Te software,
called Smash which is an acronym for Secure Mashups keeps sources of data
separate in a mashup so that the application becomes difficult to hack into. This
would enhance the security on mashups by a significant amount and help restore
the confidence of users on Web 2.0 applications (LaMonica, 2008). The threats
facing businesses against integrating web 2.0 fade in comparison to the potential
for improvement from the integration of these technologies in the businesses and
there is but one logical conclusion to the discussion of weather or not businesses
should adopt web 2.0 applications.

It is human nature to be curious and inquisitive. Any essay on web 2.0 cannot be
complete without addressing the question of its successor. Web 2.0 is well and
truly on its way to become the „weapon of choice‟ of marketing managers to
operations managers to account managers and be adopted across the industry
but what next? The prodigal son to web 2.0, the so called web 3.0 appears to be
a mashup of web 2.0 and a most promising new development by Tim Berners-
Lee, the man who is invented the World Wide Web. Known as the Semantic web,
although a detailed look at the semantic web, tempting as it may be, is beyond
the scope of this essay, however, the World Wide Web Consortium defines
Semantic web as,

“The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for
integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources, where on
the original Web mainly concentrated on the interchange of documents. It
is also about language for recording how the data relates to real world
objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database,
and then move through an unending set of databases which are
connected not by wires but by being about the same thing.”

To adapt the words of Tim Berners-Lee, Web 2.0 and Semantic web
are “Good separately; Great Together” and their synergy would
unleash an “unbelievable, revolutionary, limit-defying web”.

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Very few generations in history have had a chance to live through a

revolution of any kind. We are in the midst of one. The Web Bang has
occurred, and a web-renaissance is nigh. It is time to grab this tower
of Babel with both hands and scale to the heavens of success.

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10

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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/uk/ or send a letter to
Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco,
California, 94105, USA.

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