Small Business 2.0 or How Web 2.0 Favors Your Small Business
By: Curt Conrad
President, BrightCite Inc.
If the "Web 2.0" reference hasn’t come across your radar screen yet you should familiarize yourself with it pronto. I’d like to offer my assistance… (Warning: this post is link heavy and can take you off on interesting tangents that may offer creative breakthroughs for your business. Travel off this page at your own risk)
Web 2.0 is really a meme (Meme is another concept you should know). According to Wikipedia (itself an example of a Web 2.0 application) Web 2.0 can be defined as:
"…A supposed second generation of Internet-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users."
I add to the above definition something especially relevant to small businesses:
Here are 5 principles of the Web 2.0 phenomenon as articulated by O’Reilly with my definition for the small buisness:
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The Web As Platform - The Internet itself is the basis for software application. This turns the tables on cost. Free "Open Source" models flourish in the naturally collaborative Web 2.0 environment.
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Harnessing Collective Intelligence - Ask one person to help you solve a problem, they may or may not have the answer. Ask 1,000 people to solve a problem and chances are at least one person has faced that exact problem before and has a detailed explanation of how to solve it. Web 2.0 enables this type of instant, low cost access to the wisdom of crowds. This dynamic creates a network effect. As more people join a network its value increases exponentially but, the hard cost to plug into it remains the same or even decreases. This is a major advantage to the small business. Once access to filtered and indexed information was cost prohibitive, not anymore.
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Data is the Next Intel Inside - Web 2.0 is about capturing, organizing, combining and mining data to create new value for company and customer. This can be seen in the development of widgets, mash-ups, start-pages and dashboards that enable you to see micro and macro relationships instantly. These data collections reveal emerging patterns by tracking behavior. Web 2.0 makes it easier to understand what your customer wants. Instead of contacting them (Which costs time and money) you simply watch how they behave on your website as captured by what they click on or download. With Web 2.0 each action has a compounding data reaction. How your business model uses, transfers and transacts on this data will determine your future success.
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End of the Software Release Cycle - Web 2.0 "software" evolves and releases in semi-real-time. It’s web based agility and distribution allows instant upgrade and incremental feature releases. Your small business gets better functionality and systems integration. Plus, you get it far faster and at much less cost when compared to software following 1.0 release cycles. It’s amazing how cost efficient you get when you eliminate shrink wrap disk distribution and provide web based ASP software access rather than 1.0 computer based software installation on individual machines.
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Lightweight Programming Models - Open source code lets programmers be legally free to combine existing code from multiple programs in useful combinations. And an affinity for syndication have created programming methods that provide innovation by default not on purpose. When you use web 2.0 applications you have the ability to profit, customize and synthesize from the future value inherent in the philosophy behind the application’s very programming. On other words, these programmers are inviting and encouraging users to improve what they have built. In this environment, everyone wins.
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Software Above the Level of a Single Device - No longer are you separated by or limited to an individual desktop or laptop or cell phone or T.V. or iPod or stereo or car or radio. Web 2.0 has the ability to cross platform, to be accessible when and where you need it. This translates into great reduction of overhead for the small business. With Web 2.0 you no longer are held hostage by compatibility, size, device, or location.
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Rich User Experiences - Ajax, Java Script, standards based CSS and XHTML all enable a web browser to behave with the continuity and fluidity of a desktop program. Instead of waiting for pages to load, Web 2.0 applications allow the user instant gratification and smooth interaction that the Web 1.0 browser experience simply couldn’t provide. No longer is quality of user experience and program performance exclusively reliant on a powerful computer or it’s processing speed. Small businesses who have benefited from falling hardware costs can now reap even greater cost reduction benefits. The chains to desktop software efficiency are broken by the increasing richness of the Web 2.0 experience.
So let’s tie this all together. A great way to understand Web 2.0 is to compare it to Web 1.0 - which most small business owners are familiar.
I find an example again supplied by Tim O’Reilly. In a blog post (a Blog is another example of a web 2.0 application) entitled "What is Web 2.0?" he offers a clear evolution from web 1.0 to 2.0. As you review it ask yourself how Web 2.0 can enhance your business today… Ask yourself why Google, MySpace, YouTube, Digg, Linked-In and dozens of other Web 2.0 companies are changing the way we meet, interact and transact… Ask yourself how Wiki’s, RSS, Open Source software, Blogs, Tags and social software can be applied in your business. Your opportunity awaits…
| Web 1.0 | Web 2.0 | |
|---|---|---|
| DoubleClick | –> | Google AdSense |
| Ofoto | –> | Flickr |
| Akamai | –> | BitTorrent |
| mp3.com | –> | Napster |
| Britannica Online | –> | Wikipedia |
| personal websites | –> | blogging |
| evite | –> | upcoming.org and EVDB |
| domain name speculation | –> | search engine optimization |
| page views | –> | cost per click |
| screen scraping | –> | web services |
| publishing | –> | participation |
| content management systems | –> | wikis |
| directories (taxonomy) | –> | tagging ("folksonomy") |
| stickiness | –> | syndication |