Web Directions

“Getting” Web 2.0

• In: Uncategorized
• By:John
• June 7, 2007
• Leave a response

Published today in Smart Company, a newly started online Australian mag­a­zine focussing on busi­ness and tech­nol­ogy is an arti­cale by Brad Howarth, Australia’s lead­ing business/​technology Journalist (at least in my opin­ion), “Web 2.0: the new divide”. Brad and I spoke recently, and quite a bit of what I had to say has made its way into the arti­cle. If you are inter­ested in some of the philoso­phies we have about why and how we run Web Directions, you might be interested.

I sus­pect over the com­ing weeks and months, if you are sick of the term Web 2.0, then you are going to become mighty sick of it. It seems all kinds of pun­dits and experts are crawl­ing out of the wood­work, cap­i­tal­is­ing on a buzz­word few peo­ple will give you a decent def­i­n­i­tion for.

A recent arti­cle in the same magazine

Web 2.0 is the new divide in busi­ness. A new SME Leaders Opinion poll shows that while half of small and medium busi­nesses are Web 2.0 savvy and engaged in online mar­ket­ing, the other half just don’t get it.

I’ll be a bit more blunt about it. In my pretty exten­sive expe­ri­ence, 95% of com­pa­nies don’t get the web in the slight­est. They can’t even build web sites that get remotely close to accepted best prac­tices in basic design, acces­si­bil­ity and coding.

So, when it comes to using the web as a com­mu­ni­ca­tion medium, how many are gen­uinely facil­i­tat­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in con­ver­sa­tions? And how many are sim­ply think­ing of the web as yet another chan­nel, like tele­vi­sion, radio, print and so on. How many under­stand the enor­mous intel­li­gence of that con­nected com­mu­nity of mil­lions of intel­li­gent, pas­sion­ate individuals?

A good place to keep an eye on many of the mis­steps, as well as to learn more about the right kinds of steps you should be tak­ing is Laurel Papworth’s online com­mu­ni­ties focussed site. Laurel spoke at last years con­fer­ence (slides and pod­cast avail­able (CC licensed too — just attribute them if you use them eh?)), and is back again this year, run­ning a full­day work­shop Building and main­tain­ing vibrant social net­works for your busi­ness, and speak­ing on the inter­sec­tion of social net­works and mobile devices.

I’d like to think, while we try as pos­si­ble to make what we do a “web 2.0 hype free zone”, you’ll a have to try very hard to find a bet­ter way to get up to speed with the tech­ni­cal, philo­soph­i­cal, and cul­tural cur­rents and devel­op­ments which are car­ry­ing the web for­ward than Web Directions. I’d liek to think the peo­ple who attend the con­fer­ence don’t so much “get” the web, as “grok” it.

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