Web
2.0
The
Evolution
and
Growth
of
the
Interactive
Internet
HCL Technologies, Bangalore HCL Technologies, Chennai ATS ATS‐Technical Research Senior Technical Architect Lead Researcher Sanjeet Joshi Subramanyam B S AUTHORS
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Title: Web 2.0 – The Evolution and Growth of the Interactive Internet © 2008, HCL Technologies Ltd. September, 2008Page
3
Table
of
Contents
Introduction ... 4 What really is Web 2.0? ... 5 Components ... 8 The Reach of Web 2.0 ... 9 Growth by Technology ... 10 Growth by Geography ... 10 Growth by Focus ... 11 Growth by Business Segments ... 11 A Closer Look at Some Industry Growth Areas ... 12 Typical Web 2.0 Implementation ... 14 Technology Considerations ... 14 Typical Features of a Web 2.0 Application ... 16 Challenges ... 18 Conclusion ... 19
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Introduction
The dot‐com bubble that burst in 2000 seemed to signal the end of one
phase of the Internet era. One line of thought attributed the collapse to a
rationalization that occurs, as technology matures. Some Internet
companies, however, continued to thrive and grow.
The term Web 2.0 was just meant to be a catchy expression for the subject
of a conference. Web 2.0 has now become a buzz‐word and conjures up
images of Amazon, GoogleApps, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, social
networks, wikis, blogs, Really Simple Syndication (RSS), mashups,
collaboration and cooperation among other things.
In today’s highly competitive global economy companies operate in a fast‐
paced environment. Daily work depends on virtual teams that span
different geographies and time zones. Today’s generation is spawned in
the digital age and concepts of trust, collaboration, and using the Web as a
platform, fit naturally with the Web 2.0 approach, often leading to
increased productivity and high innovation.
This paper takes the reader through a brief description of Web 2.0 and its
components and explains how Web 2.0 has thrown open new
opportunity areas for business in domains such as pharma, retail, travel,
mobile, tourism, and entertainment to mention only a few.
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What really is Web 2.0?
There are different opinions on Web 2.0⎯a Google search for Web 2.0
definitions yields 812,000 results, while a Google search, posing the
question “What is Web 2.0?” yields 69,500,000 results! Some industry
commentators think of Web 2.0 as ʺa major trend that is building
steadilyʺ—others tend to feel that Web 2.0 is ʺa bagful of old technologies
under a new nameʺ.1
The term Web 2.0 was coined by Tim O’Reilly and MediaLive
International2, in 2004, as a catchy name for a conference that sought to understand, the commonalities between the companies that had survived
the dotcom collapse. In O’Reilly’s words, the purpose of the term was to
understand if the “dot‐com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the
web, such that a call to action such as ʺWeb 2.0ʺ might make sense?”
According to O’Reilly’s description, Web 2.0 consists of a central core, to
which a set of practices and principles are linked. The central core and the
set of practices of Web 2.0 are shown in Figure 1.
1 Langley, Nick Web 2.0: What does it constitute?from
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/02/11/229337/web‐2.0‐what‐does‐it‐constitute.htm [May 2008] ‐> represents when this site was accessed
2 O’Reilly, Tim What is Web 2.0 from
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Figure 1: OʹReillyʹs concept of Web 2.03
The general principles of Web 2.0 are listed below.
The Web is a platform
Users add value and data gets richer as more people use the data
Users control data by harnessing collecting intelligence
Services supersede packaged software in importance
Services integrate across handheld devices, PCs, and internet
servers
Another view of what Web 2.0 is based on the evolution of the Web from
its earlier format termed Web 1.0, to its current format. 4
3 Ibid 2
4 Rosas‐Guyon III, Louis Evolution of the Web from
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Figure 2: Evolution from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0
A few years later, in 2006, O’Reilly described Web 2.0, “as the business
revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as
platform.”5
Even though we do not have a definitive statement on how Web 2.0
should be defined, there seems to be a general consensus that Web 2.0 has
the following characteristics:
1. Data abstraction
2. Powerful personal computers and broadband
3. Focus on the needs of the user
5 O’Reilly, Tim, Web 2.0 Compact Definition: Trying Again from
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/web‐20‐compact‐definition‐tryi.html [May 2008]
• HTML Web pages • Browsers • E‐mail becomes ubiquitous as business tool • Online stores • Search engines
• Dot‐com boom (and bust!)
• Fast connections enable more vibrant content
• User generation of much of that content
• Online sales become a
measurable and
increasingly important part of the economy
• Key words to enhance search engine position
• Click‐through advertising
• Social networking sites create online communities and vastly enhance online marketing (including viral marketing)
• Wikis
• Wireless devices Web 1.0 1994‐2004
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4. Shift from one‐to‐many publishing model to a many‐to‐many or
many‐to‐one model
5. Shift away from the request page/get page/view page technology.6
According to Tim Berners‐Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web we
are simply at a later stage of Web 1.0 in that, if user interactivity (e.g.,
user‐generated content) and empowerment of users are what the Web is
supposed to be about, then Amazon has been doing that since 1996.7
Components8
Web 2.0 represents a fundamentally new technology value proposition
and is not restricted only to blogs, tags, RSS, social bookmarking, wikis,
and AJAX. It is also meant to enable media consumers and Web users to
customize media and technology for themselves and for the Internet
communities to which they belong. As illustrated in Figure 3, there are
many technologies9, delivery mechanisms, and operational models that are already in use for a range of purposes.
6 Carton, Sean, Web 2.0: What Is It Really from http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625146
[May 2008] 7 Ibid 1
8 Zambonini, Dan, Why should you let Web 2.0 into your hearts from
http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/08/why_you_should_let_web_20_into.html [May 2008] 9 The most popular technologies in the Web 2.0 world include: RSS, Blogs, AJAX, Wikis, Tagging
and Social Networking. For further details on each of the aforementioned technologies, see:
Krasne, Alexandra What is Web 2.0 Anyway from
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The Reach of Web 2.0
Data compiled by Technorati indicates that there are more than 112
million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media today.10 According to a Forrester study, enterprise spending on Web 2.0
technologies is estimated to reach USD764 million in 2008, and it is
expected to grow at a 43% compound annual growth rate, to reach $4.6
billion globally in 2013.11
10 See: http://technorati.com/about/ [May 2008]
11See: http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/enterprise‐web‐20‐market‐to‐reach‐46b‐in‐2013‐
4307/forrester‐global‐enterprise‐web‐20‐spend‐by‐technology‐2007‐2013jpg/ [May 2008]
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Growth by Technology
Figure 4: Current Share of Different Web 2.0 Figure 5: Projected Share of Different Web 2.0 Technologies in 200712 Technologies in 201313
Growth in Web 2.0 is expected to be led by social networking, as
organizations look to improve expertise location, relationship
management, collaboration, and innovation by providing easy access to
tools that effectively help users manage their relationships. 14 Mashup
tools that are used to deliver applications by leveraging the resources of
the local SOA and global SOA are expected to follow close behind in
growth.
Growth by Geography15
According to the findings of a
McKinsey survey, American
companies are not poised to be
12 See: Hincliffe, Dion 12 Predictions for Enterprise Web 2.0 in 2008 from
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=157#more‐157 [May 2008]
13 Bughin, Jacques and Manyika, James How businesses are using Web 2.0: A McKinsey Global
Survey, 2007 – 14 Ibid 13
15 Ibid 13
Figure 6: Region‐wise growth in adoption of Web 2.0 Technologies
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the leaders in embracing Web 2.0 in coming years. Leading the way are
Indian firms, 80% of which plan to increase their investments in Web 2.0
over the next three years, compared with 69% of Asia‐Pacific firms, 65% of
European firms, 64% of Chinese firms, 64% of North American firms, and
62% of Latin American firms.
Growth by Focus
Enterprise spending, at present,
is more on employee
collaboration tools than
customer‐facing Web 2.0
technologies. This trend is
expected to reverse by 2008‐09.16 Growth by Business Segments
Retail leads the industry
segments in its intent to adopt
Web 2.0 technologies and tools.
Retail is followed by High Tech,
Telecommunications, Financial
Services and Pharma.17
16 Ibid 11
17 Ibid 13
Figure 7: Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Spend
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A Closer Look at Some Industry Growth Areas
The popularity of user‐driven online services, such as Wikipedia and
YouTube, has drawn attention to Web 2.0. McKinsey survey findings
indicate that companies consider Web 2.0 technologies easy to implement,
flexible vis‐à‐vis top‐down approaches, and as having strategic benefits.18
It appears that Web 2.0 has even impacted the 2008 presidential election in
the US by making politicians accessible and bringing them under closer
scrutiny.19
The Changing Retail Market
The earlier paradigm of the marketer communicating with customers and
turning them into buyers has changed with Web 2.0. Consumers now
largely go by
• The opinion of a friend who has used the product
• Consumer reviews on retail site
• Consumer reviews on third‐party sites
• Online reviews by editors of third‐party sites20
18McKinsey Global Survey How Businesses are Using Web 2.0” from
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Information_Technology/Applications/How_businesses_are_u sing_Web_20_A_McKinsey_Global_Survey_1913?gp=1 [May 2008]
19 The Times of India, Chennai edition (India), June 02, 2008 “User‐friendly Politics: Web 2.0 is
changing the way campaigns are conducted”:
20 See: Forrester Consumer Forum2007 – Web 2.0 Poised to cross the Chasm in 2008 from
http://globalhumancapital.org/archives/181‐Forrester‐Consumer‐Forum‐2007Web‐2.0‐Poised‐to‐
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Blogs in the Retail segment not only offer inputs from users, but also
instantly update information and user reviews, to help increase loyalty
and attract serious buyers.
The popular mantra for success in Retail seems to be: assess what your
customers are doing; decide what you want to do; plan how customer
relationships will change; and then decide what technologies to use.21
Financial Services
The adoption of Web 2.0 features among financial service providers has so
far been low, when compared to Retail, because of security issues. 22
Financial service providers have adopted Web 2.0 features such as
• Data feed mechanisms (e.g., RSS/Atom feeds)
• Podcasts and videocasts
• Branch/ATM locator mashups
• RIA to enrich user experience
Pharma
Marketing, communication, condition‐specific communities and health
focused sites lead the adoption of Web 2.0 approaches in Pharma. Blogs
are used to create an environment in which users can share information,
and not for promoting any particular product. Podcasts can be used to
engage consumers by relaying condition or lifestyle content.23
The mantra for success in Pharma seems to be: try out the approach
internally, with a small target group to understand the opportunities and risks of
21
Ibid
22 Kolhatkar, Ajay, Practice Before You Preach from http://infosysblogs.com/web2/2008/04/
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a Web 2.0 approach, prepare to cope with adverse contributions and develop plans
to counter criticism, before going live with the solution.24
Travel
Travel research indicates that about 6 in 10 leisure travelers use the
Internet or an online service to obtain information and prices. Among
users who seek information on the Internet, more than a quarter have
visited a blog to review information about a destination or travel service
supplier.25 Travel communities, blogs, podcasts, social networking sites, online video, RSS, mashups and AJAX are all useful to enhance user
involvement and experience. Blogs are perceived as a personal
communication channel, and visitors, rate blogs over corporate Web sites
as an impartial source of information.
The mantra for success in the Travel domain: The consumer is king. Allow
customers to decide how they want to create, read or consume information by
engaging with them to build loyal communities, and maximize online revenue.26
Typical Web 2.0 Implementation
Technology Considerations
A Web 2.0 implementation has at its core a Web‐based application that is
built using standard Web‐based technologies such as the J2EE stack. A
Web 2.0 application emphasizes usability, scalability, security, and
availability and has functional and non‐functional features that are
24 Ibid
25 Hepburn, Craig, Web 2.0 for the Tourism & Travel Industry 26
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specific to Web 2.0 applications. The technology considerations in a multi‐
tier architecture are
The Presentation Layer
The user interface (UI) layer in a Web 2.0 application lays emphasis on
being responsive, user friendly and dynamic. The technology choices that
are used to support this requirement can either be open source‐based
AJAX based toolkits and Google Gears or commercial options such as
AIR, Flex, and Smart Client. These technologies enable fast development
of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and provide dynamic Web UI
components. Some key aspects of a functional UI are
• Zero page refreshes
• Auto complete features
• Instant feedback to user actions
• Drag and drop features
• UI customization
The Business Logic Layer
A Web 2.0 application provides the required infrastructure services to its
users to enable the online content creation. Implementing these services as
Web Services enables consistence, reusability and platform independence
in the integration approach for internal and external use. An alternate way
of providing infrastructure services is to adopt a SOA based approach.
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• Services to publish the user generated content to the
outside world
• Services to manage content
• Content aggregation features to build mashup UIs.
• Infrastructure services to host multimedia content
• Services for managing advertisements
• Social API and containers for developing social
applications
Applications like Google Search Engine provide a SaaS‐like interface that
has a UI to access the search features and the output in some format (SRP).
This type of service is non transactional. Such services can be continuously
improved without having to worry about issues related to distribution,
licensing etc.
Database Layer
The choice of the database and the data architecture are critical factors in a
Web 2.0 application as they tend to be data intensive. Twitter.com, a
popular social networking site, is unstable due to incorrect architectural
choices for the database and business logic layer. However, Google uses
the file system that it developed, the Google File System (GFS) to cater
effectively to extremely large volumes of data with very high performance
requirements.
Typical Features of a Web 2.0 Application
Each Web 2.0 application provides different features based on the purpose
of the application. Some generic features are listed below.
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Web 2.0 applications provide a platform that uses distributed storage
service providers such as Akamai or Amazon S3, for registered users to
create and share online content, such as blogs, wikis, forums, photo
albums and so on. This user content is hosted on a website and can be
viewed by anyone online. These platforms help minimize the load and
improve the performance of the applications.
Folksonomy
Folksonomies are similar to taxonomies, except that in a folksonomy the
content is categorized based on tags created by the online community.
Folksonomies provide features such as search and online catalogues.
Mashups
A mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one
source into a single integrated tool. Content used in mashups is typically
sourced from a third party via a public interface or API (web services).
Other methods of sourcing content for mashups include Web feeds (e.g.
RSS or Atom), and screen scraping27.
A mashup web application is comprised of the following three parts:
1. A content provider that acts as the source of the data.
Data is provided using an API and different Web‐
protocols such as RSS, Representational state transfer
(REST), and Web Service.
27
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_scraping Screen scraping is a technique in which a
computer program extracts data from the display output of another program. The program doing
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• Understand and follow the philosophy that drives Web 2.0,
and not just adapt the technologies that make up Web 2.0
2. A mashup site which is the web application that
provides the new service by using different data sources
that are not owned by it.
3. A client web browser that acts as the UI for the mashup.
In a web‐application, the content can be mashed by the
client web browsers using a client‐side web language
such as JavaScript.
Network Activity Updates
Online communities create a sense of connectedness by using online
messages or RSS to update everyone in the network about the
status/activity of other community members in the network. A publish‐
subscribe‐based messaging infrastructure is used to create an activity feed
and then update the feed to reflect the activity on the UI and in the RSS
feed.
Social Apps and Gadgets
Social Apps and Web Gadgets such as Google’s Gadget API and
OpenSocial API help build simple applications that work within the social
networking platform, and can be installed on‐the‐fly by anyone who has
access to it. Challenges
Since Web 2.0 services are user‐driven, they tend to be unstructured and
uncontrolled. Traditional IT applications, in contrast, are controlled and
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From an enterprise perspective, blogs, wikis, and communities of practice
lead the Web 2.0 initiative, simply because they enable knowledge
sharing, and assist in coordinating the work of geographically dispersed
teams. On the business front, industry segments such as retail and travel
have leveraged the benefit of user‐driven content. Social networking and
interactive feedback recreate the ambience of real‐life shopping. Blogging • Retain the balance between the “ad‐hocism” of Web 2.0 and
the controls of the traditional approach to IT • Leverage the concept of community value creation
• Include this online value in their value chains to realize its
impact on their businesses Conclusion
In a four year period beginning from May 2004, the Internet has grown
from approximately 757 million to 1412 million users. One aspect of this
growth has been the creation of opportunities for companies to market
their services and products across the globe by customizing content that
appeals to specific demographics. As companies grow globally, the
workforce gets dispersed and mechanisms that help collaborate and
coordinate their activities effectively are needed. Web 2.0 offers a
framework to handle these aspects of doing business.
The term Web 2.0 was coined in the year 2004 and includes most things
that we are familiar with⎯blogs, wikis, social networking, RSS, tags,
AJAX and so on. These technologies represent a fundamental change in
approach to Web content⎯the shift from the one‐to‐many model of
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and photo‐sharing capitalizes on the natural desire of people to consult
each other prior to taking a decision on say, a holiday or a hotel to stay in.
While Web 2.0 tools offer a range of options to promote business, certain
segments such as financial services and insurance have displayed caution
in adapting to Web 2.0 because of security concerns.
Studies indicate that many companies are unsure about where to begin
their effort on adapting Web 2.0 and are unclear about the implications of
adopting a Web 2.0 strategy for the companyʹs business models.
Opportunities exist for consultancy organizations that can aid these
companies by analyzing their current setup, and then devising and
implementing their Web 2.0 strategy.
