Web 2.0 and Social Media

Applying the use of social media and related technologies to the achievement of business results presents a new management paradigm that requires a new mindset. We apply social media's four critical business elements required to succeed in any market.

“One of the defining characteristics of Internet era software is that it is delivered as a service, not as a product.
This fact leads to a number of fundamental changes in the business model of such a company”.

- Tim O’Reilly, Pioneer of the Web 2.0 concept

A Web 2.0 company is a services company with cost-effective scalability; no packaged software. The new generation of Web Co. has full control over one-of-a-kind, hard-to-reproduce data sources, enriched by the amount of people who use them, they trust their users as co-developers of their site, their software is above the level of a single device and work with lightweight user interfaces, development models, and business models. (1)

As cleverly put by O’Reilly, “like many important concepts, Web 2.0 doesn't have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core. You can visualize Web 2.0 as a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles, at a varying distance from that core.”
The so-called Web 2.0 is characterized by the use of key elements. O’Reilly, as many others in the IT environment coincide in the importance of some key elements of Web 2.0. Here are some: (2)

• Folksonomy- a style of collaborative categorization of sites using freely chosen keywords, often referred to as tags. Tagging allows for the kind of multiple, overlapping associations that the brain itself uses, rather than rigid categories.
• Viral Marketing - recommendations propagating directly from one user to another. If a site or product relies on advertising to get to be known, it isn't Web 2.0
• Peer-production methods of open source - an organic software adoption process relying almost entirely on viral marketing.
• Blogging – a means to establish a stronger link with important target groups. (http://www.corporateblogging.info/basics/why/)
• RSS or “live web” - allows someone to link not just to a page, but to subscribe to it, with notification every time that page changes
• Mashability – mash-ups represent the ease-of-use, high interactivity and social networking factors that can be tear apart. “Mashability is as a core capability of crowdsourced systems. Web browsers make it simple to view source any page’s source, and it is accepted practice to use parts of existing websites in new creations. For example, Google Maps, prior to making its APIs public, was already used by others in their mashups” (3).

Social Media Marketing is “a unique blend of networking skills (relationships), traditional PR skills (building goodwill), marketing skills (giving customers what they want), and customer service (delivering resolutions to issues)... It requires a convergence, making the jack of all trades suddenly and incredibly valuable” (4). Many have mistakenly associated SMM to technology and technological resources; however, it is people and the relations among them that best interest the discipline. Social Media depends on what users bring to the table. After all, a blog for example, does not get reviews just for the sake of being; top rated blogs occupy their privileged position because users had something to say about it, and they told their friends as well!

(1) Robert Scoble (also known as Scobleizer) @ Scoble on Tech, http://www.fastcompany.com/scoble (2) http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html (3) http://www.sei.cmu.edu/news-at-sei/columns/the_architect/architect.htm (4) Geoff Livingston, CEO of Media Relations Firm @ http://www.techipedia.com/2008/social-media-marketers/