The internet consumed billions of dollars in the 1990s as speculators rushed to build their fortunes on the new technology — even though few understood it. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, most investors stumbled away with empty pockets. But times change, and the Internet is now rising from its financial ashes.
A new buzzword, Web 2.0, is commonly used to refer to what is being hailed as the “second generation” of the Internet.
Changes, subtle and yet numerous, have already taken place. The Internet is now incredibly interactive and much more user-friendly than even five or six years ago. Most people have gone to a high-speed bandwidth connection and now download music, watch movies, transfer gigantic files and tailor Web pages to suit their needs.
More important, the Internet has quickly become a platform or home base for many other new-generation gadgets, such as iPods, personal digital assistants and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP).
Behind the scenes, the architecture of the Internet — the millions of software programs that allow it to exist — are being streamlined and continually revamped with newer levels of technology.
Detractors say Web 2.0 is simply a trendy gimmick, arguing the Internet’s move forward is a natural progression and is largely being made due to the breakthroughs during the 1990s by geeks and entrepreneurs, many of whom abandoned incomplete projects when the investor bubble burst.
Proponents, however, say the new optimism that is luring back software geniuses and research and investment dollars is due to a dramatic change in the way the entire Internet is viewed by businesses and consumers alike. The key, they say, has been the opening up of the Internet to the world: people can exchange ideas with one another more freely, make Web sites more interactive and keep sites evolving by the day or week instead of once every year or two.
In short, the Internet user is more involved. Web site owners must seek out and heed criticism, and then jump on something that’s proving popular and put more attention toward it.
A vital change that will foster even more breakthroughs, supporters say, is the step toward “open source” development, which occurs when someone who creates a new software program releases the coding to the world under licence rather than keeping it proprietary. By doing so, other software programmers can tinker with the code, possibly improving it or even thinking of new uses for it.
One of the head cheerleaders for Web 2.0 is Tim O’Reilly
(www.oreillynet.com), who says everyone —businesses and individual users — will benefit as the Internet becomes more open and collaborative.
O’Reilly, who helped coin the term “Web 2.0,” notes that some of the big successes in the past few years have been interactive Web sites that make visitors feel more involved.
Some new-generation sites he mentions are:
> Flickr (www.flickr.com) is an online photo sharing and management site;
> Delicious (www.del.icio.us) lets you store all your favourite Web sites, blogs, songs and reviews, so you can access them from any computer;
> Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) is a massive online encyclopedia that is continually updated throughout the day by member researchers and editors;
> Cloudmark (www.cloudmark.com) is a product that quickly helps eliminate e-mail spam and viruses, largely by relying on input and tip-offs from its members;
> SourceForge (www.sourceforge.net) is the world’s largest “open source” software-development site, on which more than 100,000 new projects are presently in the works.
In an article on his site, O’Reilly says interaction by Web site users is key to future business successes on the Internet. Get people involved, he says, and they’ll keep coming back.
He compares online book giant www.amazon.com to Barnes & Noble Inc., an 840-store chain founded by Charles Barnes in 1873.
Amazon.com, launched in 1995, had 2005 revenue of US$8.5 billion, while the once-untouchable Barnes chain, which also has had a Web site for years, had total revenue of just US$4.9 billion.
One reason Amazon.com came out of nowhere, says O’Reilly, was because the site “relentlessly” kept enhancing its data on each product. It added book-cover photos, tables of content and chapter excerpts. Above all, he says, Amazon.com allowed its customers to write online book reviews and annotate data. Customers became part of the site.
“Value added” has always been a hallmark of successful business, and the Internet is no exception. But apparently thousands of businesses took a decade or so to remember that golden rule.
@page_break@The Web 2.0 message is clear for any advisor or financial services company: always give Internet users fresh content; offer free software programs and tools; keep a sharp eye out for new programs to add; emphasize something if it is becoming popular; and ask for feedback.
Do so, and site users will keep returning to see what’s happening. And a loyal audience means more advertising revenue and a great opportunity to sell products. IE
If you have a Web site to share with IE readers, e-mail Glenn Flanagan at gflanagan@sympatico.ca.