By Paul Lima

Barry Jinks was aware of Web 2.0 as a concept, but when the president and CEO of Vancouver-based Colligo Networks started a blog, he wasn’t thinking about it. He had a new product to sell in a relatively new market category and “had to create both category and product awareness,” he said.

The best way to do so, he determined, was with a blog, which he launched in February.

His new product, the Colligo Reader, allows users to download Microsoft Windows SharePoint portal information, read offline, add comments to threads, and upload when they next connect to the Internet. The product is a simple way for mobile teams to access, modify and share data from corporate applications, even when they have no access to the Internet or corporate servers.

To create awareness, he set up a blog (http://www.sharepointoffline.com) and discovered a community of people interested in talking about how to use SharePoint offline. SharePointOffline is a “category blog,” not a promotional blog, Jinks said. “We are clear this is a Colligo blog but people can say what they like and don’t like about us and our product. And the competition can talk about their products. This has to be a very open blog. That’s how you build credibility in the blogsphere.”

Before launching the blog, Jinks had signed up 100 Colligo product beta testers over three months. He signed up 50 new beta testers within 10 days of launching SharePointOffline. One of the beta testers works for a European company that represents the potential sale of several thousand licenses. “This obviously is working,” Jinks said.

Considering that there are millions of blogs out there, what does blogging have to do with Web 2.0? While the answer to that varies with the definition you adopt, Web 2.0 is really about extending the Web paradigm by adding new communication and interaction options, and blogging is part of that.

These options will increase person-to-person contacts, but will also enhance Internet-based computing so that, for example, a mobile salesperson will soon have greater access to data and functionality housed on business information systems.

“Web 2.0 is a non-linear extrapolation that combines functionality, information and collective knowledge in new and meaningful ways, all facilitated by technology,” said David Senf, Canadian software research manager with IDC Canada.

Which means that with blogs, portals, discussion forums, product review sites and online collaboration tools, many Web sites are no longer static electronic brochures that people just read. They are electronic communities where people interact. Coupled with RSS feeds that notify users when new content is available, online communities — one aspect of what analysts are calling Web 2.0 — are changing the way businesses reach and interact with customers, and how many products and online applications are developed.

Web hangouts

To know if something is truly a Web 2.0 implementation, consider how much interaction the site or application offers, said Kerry Munro, Yahoo! Canada general manager.

Instead of jumping on the Web, picking up a bit of information, and jumping off, Web surfers with always-on broadband are increasingly hanging out at portals, he said. Yahoo! visitors can customize the content they see, participate in Yahoo! groups that reflect their interests, and use Yahoo! instant messaging and e-mail to communicate. These days, conversations often include the sharing of reviews, images, music, and videos with like-minded friends and associates, Munro added.

Recognizing Web users expect a richer, more interactive online experience, Yahoo! purchased del.icio.us, a site that lets visitors store and share links to their favourite articles, blogs, music, restaurant reviews and other content. As sharing increases, credibility becomes important, Munro said. “And users now determine credibility.” On Yahoo! Answers, for example, individuals can ask questions and rate those who supply answers — much like eBay buyers rate eBay sellers. In that way, Yahoo! Answers and eBay members have become self-policing communities.

“In Web 2.0, the cream rises to the top,” Munro said. “If you claim to be the world’s best widget manufacturer and Web chatter runs contrary to your claims, then you have a problem,” he said.

“The jury is still out regarding Web 2.0 business models, but reputations are at stake because Web 2.0 provides a different level of transparency.”

Community members do not have to interact directly with each other to aid businesses. Instead, technology can be used to gather and share information. Amazon.com uses the purchasing patterns of some customers to influence the purchasing decisions of others. For example, look up a Harry Potter book and you’ll see what other books purchasers also bought.

Building communities

If a company builds an online community, it also has to police its behaviour and respect its members, said Jeff Zado, senior product manager of developer tools for Microsoft Canada. With access to more customer data comes “increased responsibilities around security and privacy,” and as Web 2.0 evolves, businesses will have to respect security and privacy if they want to maintain trust and credibility.

This sense of community can also be used in the development of products, said Rob Redford, technology marketing vice-president with Cisco Systems. The use of online collaboration tools and the instant sharing of ideas has quickened the development cycle. “There is no more developing a product, presenting papers at conferences, and then waiting for feedback,” he said.

Many companies, including Microsoft and Google, have put beta versions of their products online and then asked for input from the user community. And smaller businesses are getting in on this as well, as proved by Jinks’ blog. The comments posted there fine-tuned the direction of his SharePoint Reader.

Web 2.0 also covers the way in which “various Web sites can be mashed into new creations,” Senf said. For instance, Housingmaps.com lets users see the prices of properties and rentals available in various cities. It uses a Web 2.0 process known as Small Pieces Loosely Joined (SPLJ) to link information from Google Maps with data from Craigslist, a classified ads Web site, to produce a new Web-integrated application — one that is not run or owned by either Google or Craigslist.

Where’s the profit?

Of course, the economics of mash-ups, like the economics of much of Web 2.0, still need to be sorted out. “Who is going to make any money and how do you make it? That’s the multi-million dollar question. It’s a jump ball at this point,” Senf said.

However, if the short history of the Internet is any indication, companies will, over time, sort out licensing arrangements and put in place payment systems. Google’s AdSense, paying mere pennies per click, has already helped a number of companies and communities monetize content — much of it generated by visitors. And, as Jinks quickly discovered, opening a company’s doors to honest input from its community can enhance marketing and sales.

In short, Web 2.0 may be a coined phrase, but it is also a way of using online tools in a creative and collaborative manner. Software and hardware developers, researchers and scientists, businesses — especially those with an online customer base — not-for-profit groups, and even political organizations had better wrap their heads around Web 2.0, or they will find themselves stuck in a 1999 frame of mind.



Web 2.0

SharePointOffline http://www.sharepointoffline.com

del.icio.us http://www.delicious.com

Craigslist http://www.craigslist.org