Oct
8
I’m sure you’ve all heard about this Web 2.0 craze that is sweeping the Internet by storm. Unfortunately, not very many people are tuning into it as they should, which means that those who understand it are going to have a distinct advantage over those who have no made themselves aware of the new web world.So what does Web 2.0 mean exactly?On the Internet, websites strive on being community based and bringing people together. When it comes to making a sale, generating advertising revenue, and promoting the usability and accessibility of a website, the art of bringing people together has never been more important. Web 2.0 is the way to people are coming together and the software applications that make it happen.Examples?You’ve probably already been exposed to it in one form or another. Here are some examples of how this Web 2.0 craze is taking over the world. A Web 2.0 website can contain any of the following:
- AJAX - Tried GMail yet? GMail is an excellent example of how AJAX is used to make a web application usable and “fun” to use. GMail was able to get almost immediate market share by creating one of the first AJAX engine e-mail clients. Several other hosted application providers have followed this trend.
- Blogs - Do you have a blog? It doesn’t matter if you’re a 16 year old girl in high school or an established rock musician, creating a blog is one of the best ways to create interactivity on your website. It also allows you to easily and quickly bring your thoughts to life. High quality blogs (like this one) are able to bring targeted traffic to your website for free. It’s also an awesome opportunity to express yourself and get people to listen to what you have to say.
- CSS - Over are the days where you can throw together a website in Microsoft FrontPage (or some other WYSIWYG editor) and conform to accessibility standards. CSS has revolutionized the way that web pages are rendered and are deprecating HTML tags such as Tables, Font Tags, and Meta tags. The best Web 2.0 websites are completely CSS driven, where DIV tags mandate the design elements–making your websites design easily changeable and adaptable to any media: projectors, mobile phones, web browsers, and PDAs.
- RSS - People want you to share your content with them. RSS is one popular way to incorporate your content across multiple platforms. This blog, for example, has the capability to share blog updates by syndicating every update with an RSS Aggregator or within your favorite reader, such as Google Reader or MyYahoo.
- Social Networking - MySpace and FaceBook are popular social networking websites that people use to “get together” and share information about one another. If your website brings people together you reap so many benefits because you are able to categorize your users/customers and target products and services based on that category, thus increasing your conversion rate.
- Wiki’s - Not only do people want information, they want to be able to create information. Content is one of the most difficult things webmasters struggle with. Why not open your content up to editors (with moderators of course) and lets thousands of people control content that you used to control all by yourself. Just imagine the amount of work can be done when you have a team of people helping you out!
Next time you build website, why not focus on bringing people together and get ahead of the curve by incorporating some of these new concepts.
Article written by Andrew J. McClary, © 2008, All Rights Reserved.
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