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The Use of Web 2.0 in Business
Business Information Systems > The Use of Web 2.0 in Business
Abstract
Web 2.0 is a notional concept used to describe second generation
web-based communities and hosted services that are available
on the World Wide Web. One of the enabling technologies of
Web 2.0 is Ajax, a web development technique that transpar-
ently exchanges small amounts of data with the server so that
an entire web page does not need to be reloaded each time a
change is requested by the user. There are several elements that
are typically thought of as defining a web site as being Web 2.0
including mashups, real-time data feeds, tags, and user-gener-
ated content. These elements are often used in applications such
as wikis, podcasts, and blogs. Although these applications have
relevance to some businesses, they are not applicable to all. The
key to appropriately using Web 2.0 for business purposes is to
look at the technology itself rather than the current applications
to determine how it can be leveraged into doing something new
and relevant for one’s business.
Overview
The last hundred years have been witness to an amazing proces-
sion of new technologies that have revolutionized the way that
we do business in the 21st century. Letters that were once written
by hand were replaced by those written on the typewriter. The
same correspondence was later produced on word processors
which morphed into the personal computers sitting on our desk-
tops. Cut-and-paste no longer requires scissors and a gluepot but
a drag and drop, or a few mouse clicks on a virtual document.
The editing process and review cycle that not too long ago was
measured in many cases by the march of weeks or even months
can be shortened to hours or days by online collaboration and
document sharing.
In addition, not only has the technology by which we produce
our correspondence changed, the co