Is Your Business Web 2.0 Ready?
March 8th, 2008 - Stuart Lisonbee, Content Director
There has been a lot of talk over the last few years about Web 2.0, the supposed next revolution in the World Wide Web. For some webmasters, this has led to a scrambling to update their sites to make them Web 2.0 ready.
But just what is Web 2.0? How do you make your website compliant? Do you really even need to be concerned about it?
Despite the perception its terminology creates, Web 2.0 is not the next generation of Internet hardware and technologies. The truth is that most of the technology that makes up the definition of Web 2.0 is old. Simply put, Web 2.0 is just a more interactive Web, designed to facilitate sharing and interaction between users.
“Gee, that’s great Stuart. So how do I make my website Web 2.0 compliant?”
Okay, so you don’t care that Web 2.0 is simply an overly ballyhooed term that doesn’t really mean anything, or at least that’s my personal opinion of it. For me the Web is still a giant, underappreciated and vastly underused commerce and communications platform. While Web 2.0 has done a lot to change that, we still have a long ways to go.
I built my first website in 1998 for a retail computer business I cofounded. I still remember clearly having a discussion with my business partner about whether or not we should spend the money to build a website. Back in those days, having a website was quite a bit more expensive than it is today, and the number of people that actually had Internet access was a small minority.
I told my partner, “The World Wide Web is the future! In 10 years, EVERYTHING will be done on the Web. We’ll be buying groceries, cars, clothes, and even ordering pizza online. Telephones will be obsolete because we’ll be communicating over the World Wide Web with video. We’ll be taking orders and handling tech support over the Web. Customers will be able to view our inventory in real time. Our cell phones will be connected and be able to transfer data between each other. Even our cars will be connected! We’ll be able to dispatch a technician, whether he’s at home or driving around town, directly to a customer’s home – all over the Web.”
Well, the 10 year mark is approaching. Have we reached MY vision of the Web? Well…
I walked into a national tire store chain a few days ago. When I saw that each store’s inventory databases aren’t connected to the corporate website, I realized that we still have a long way to go. Imagine the day when you can browse the corporate website and view real-time inventories for all 1,200 stores in the chain and get prices on every brand and every size of tire, then being able to order and pay for the tires, schedule an appointment to have them mounted and balanced, doing all of this online, and simply dropping your car off at the store… all without ever talking to a single salesperson.
As a business owner, I believe that this is how you should be thinking regarding the future of your business on the Web. Despite my tire store experience, there is plenty of good news as well. I haven’t ordered a pizza over the phone in years!
Okay, but seriously now… The reality of Web 2.0 is that it is simply the vision of a few people for how the World Wide Web should be. The difference between their vision and mine is that they got the airtime and publicity.
In my next post, I’ll talk about how to actually make your website Web 2.0 compliant.