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Netizens drive Web 2.0

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CIOL Bureau
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Srinivas R and Majnu Babu

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BANGALORE: At a time when citizen journalists often challenge the professional ones with speed and accuracy, will Web 2.0 adversely affect the media?

“Web 2.0 will definitely affect the media,” believes Nimish Vohra, head of Regalix Inc., a Web 2.0 specialist firm based out of Redwood Shores.

“Today, if I want to publish, I can’t go to Rediff and publish. But since I am the publisher (of the blog), I can get it published,” says Vohra, who joined Regalix from StarTV.

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A lot of online PR is happening through blogs. The moment a story breaks, the PR sends it to the blog writer. The blog writer will gain from it (through contextual ads) and he can promote it saying, “I’ve blogged it first!”

Web 2.0, a phrase coined by Tim O'Reilly two years ago has become the buzzword in 2006. Call it the second generation Internet or the web in a new avatar, the Web 2.0 has caught up with social networking.

Some of the popular examples for Web 2.0 includes Orkut.com, youtube.com, esnips.com and flicker.com.

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In Web 2.0, the community-driven online platform, the users themselves are both producers as well as consumers. And they market the content, and also rate the quality of the content posted.

“Web 2.0 is all about user-generated content for user consumption. It is fairly new concept and most of the websites globally are looking at this,” says Vohra.

However, a look at the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 would help one understand the latter better. Web 1.0 is all about server and client relationships, where a particular website or portal resides on a server. In Web 2.0, the website resides in that same server that allows users to form a community or put up the content they desire.

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Though Web 2.0 is called peer-to-peer, it still has to look at the same client-server relationships. For instance, a website developed under `Web 1.0’ allows users to read the content, while `Web 2.0’ will allow you to blog (write) on the website.

On the technology front, Web 1.0 is developed using HTML; Web 2.0 on XML. The emergence of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) has enabled interactivity feature on the web page. The introduction of new web browsers and Flash for improving the design element of the website has also helped the latest version.

Along with this, some external factors are also helping the growth of Web 2.0. When Web 1.0 was introduced in late 1980s, it was mainly used in the college campuses. Introduction of web browser in early 1990s took Internet to corporates.

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According to SOA webservices Journal, there were 250,000 websites reaching 45 million global users in 1996. Ten years later, users have just crossed a billion plus with 80 million websites. Over 100 million are more “directly shaping the Web by building their own places on the Web with blogs and "spaces", or by contributing content.”

This is where the new Internet, the Web 2.0, will play a major role.

“In the next six-12 months there will be a lot of changes in the Internet space. Most of the website/portals, especially media portals will go for user content,” says Vohra.

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He feels that some of the popular sites have already started their journey towards this end.

Meanwhile, some of the `community’ based website such as sulekha.com, have received millions of dollars from the VC community. This triggers the question, are we going back to the dotcom era?

“This environment looks like the dotcom era. However, in the next six month or so, there will be some kind of ‘correction’ in the market and some of the Web 2.0 based websites, without proper revenue model will fade away,” predicts Vohra.

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Looking at the revenue model, Vohra says that contextual ads are the main source. However, if one looks at Google Adsense, it took more than two years for Orkut to get over 33 million-user community to introduce contextual ads (it has not yet introduced it completely).

A blogger writes in his blog: “Web 2.0 is only about renaming and making ‘old thing’ easier, not about any ‘brand new thing!’”

Adding to the confusion, discussions on Web 3.0 have already started. Does this mean Web 2.0 will meet with a premature death?

Apparently not, argues Vohra. “Web 3.0 is Web 2.0 for enterprise, while Web 2.0 is for retail guys.”

How is Web 2.0 doing in India? “Web 2.0 is still new and not well established in India. It will take a little bit of time more,” says Vohra.

According to Keith Turnbull, vice president of Citrix, “Web 2.0 provides some interesting front-end technology that certainly the most modern browsers can take advantage of. However, very few ISVs or businesses can afford the effort to completely rewrite their apps and upgrade their desktop machines to the latest hardware and software outside the normal refresh cycle JAVA was meant to sweep everything that had gone before.”

He adds: “That was a fallacy. You do get new layers. This is like civilization - generally builds on what was developed in the previous generation. Behind many 'web' applications lie a mixture of older technologies. It’s relatively easy to create new frontends or 'mashups' with SOA but only once you have developed the relevant web services for existing or new functionality/applications.”

Problems and confusion apart, Web 2.0 holds a lot of promise. Till a new technology trend takes the industry by storm, people will be riding on the Web 2.0 hype. If there is a power beneath the hype, then it is worth experimenting.

© CyberMedia News

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