Web 2.0 Applications MT8425 January 14, 2009 Jaigris Hodson

Web 2.0 Theoretical Overview The popularity of online participatory technologies continues to grow But what exactly is web 2.0? Web 2.0, otherwise known as the participatory web, is a conceptual framework which describes, not differences in Internet infrastructure, but rather the changing ways which people are using the Internet

Web 2.0 Continued Evolution of existing technological and social structures Facilitated by a sudden increase of web content Increase in content = greater functionality of search tools and software

Web 2.0 Benefits A greater diversity of voices and opinions New opportunities for creativity Broadcast for Small Organizations Greater access to information Viral Marketing

Web 2.0 Challenges Greater security risks Possible invasions of personal privacy Misinformation Information overload - how do we find what we ’ re looking for?

Google Applications Google Android Google Chrome Google Trends Gogle Books Google Images Gmail Google Maps Google Earth Google Analytics Google News Google Calendar Google Scholar Google Video ….and more … Is Google Trying to Control all the world ’ s information?

Blogs An online journal that is easily and regularly updated by the “ blogger ” Blogs appear to be an evolution of the Bulletin Board System (BBS), and discussion boards, where participants could go online to post about the subject of discussion

Blog Popularity In the first quarter of 2005, 50 million Americans (or 30% of the US population) visited blogs, The most popular blogs are political, lifestyle, technology, and blogs authored by women There are over 50 million blogs, and more than two new blogs are created every second on average Blogs are published in different languages including Japanese, Chinese, Portugese, Spanish, Russian, and Polish

Mainstream Media Blogging Organizations such as BBC, CBC and CNN host blogs on a variety of topics In the U.S presidential election, blogs were a positive force for Howard Dean ’ s campaign Many news or politically-oriented blogs are generally perceived by their readers to be quite credible

Bloggers Are more Politically Engaged

Micro Blogging Blogging 140 characters or less Examples: Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook status Why? o Mobile social lifestyle o Short attention span - message sound-bites o More impactful, concise messages

Social Networking Sites: Offline social networks have existed as part of human interaction for quite some time Online social networks describe computer networks which connects people or organizations socially They provide an additional medium of communication, complementing face- to-face interaction, telephone, and During the 2008 US presidential election, Obama had his own social network

Social Network Popularity

Created by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 as a tool for freshman law students The introduction of the news feed in 2006 initially sparked a student backlash due to privacy concerns In 2007 Facebook opened it ’ s API to developers, this has led to many opportunities and challenges In 2009 there Facebook was in the Canadian news over privacy concerns

Facebook Groups In Toronto alone, there are currently over 500 Facebook groups classified under the category common interest Common interest is only one of 11 types of groups classified by Facebook The top Facebook groups have hundreds of thousands of members In , The Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group attracted so many members that it successfully captured the attention of the mainstream media

Linked In Relationships Matter o Make a sale o Form a partnership o Get a job Improve connectability and visibility o Connect in industry and community o Google PageRank Tools to leverage relationships

Linked In

Video and Image Hosting Sites Popular image hosting sites include Flickr, photobucket, and imagehosting.com Popular video hosting sites include YouTube, Google Video, and Drop Shots Tagging and messaging capabilities of online video and image hosting sites allow social dynamics to play a large role, similar to the role they play on actual social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook

Video and Image Hosting ct ’ d Video and image hosting sites support the bandwidth of thousands of pictures or videos posted on the site This makes video and image hosting sites a great way to share videos and images around the Internet, and also means that video and image hosting sites are very commonly linked to by sites external to them

Image hosting site People can have a regular account for free or a pro account for a fee People can add friends, post photos to groups and control what images other people see Flickr has already played a dominant role in informing people about crises such as the London Bombings

Nearly 2 out of every 5 US Internet Users watched a YouTube video in September, 2007 YouTube was founded in December 2005 with money from Sequoia Capital Many presidential hopefuls in the 2008 U.S. election created YouTube videos to advertise for their campaigns 2007: First online presidential debate co-produced through CNN and YouTube

Podcasting Podcasts are video or audio files uploaded to the web that can be downloaded via web syndication Special client software applications can automatically identify and retrieve new files in a series when they are made available Podcasting began to gain popularity in late 2004 Podcasts can be uploaded to and downloaded from iTunes Now most broadcasters also offer podcasts

Del.icio.us What is it? o Social bookmarking web service o Del.icio.us Delicious.com Anatomy of Delicious Value of Delicious o Why do people use it?

Digg What is it? o Social news website Anatomy of Digg Value of Digg o Why do people use it?

Digg

Wikipedia What is it? Anatomy of Wikipedia Value of Wikipedia o Why do people use it?