Web 2.0 – A Game Changer for Businesses

The adoption of Web 2.0 technologies have led businesses from around the world and across a broad range of industries to reap definite benefits, including innovation in products and services, more effective marketing, greater access to knowledge, lower cost of doing business, and most importantly higher revenues.

Successful businesses are integrating Web 2.0 technologies with the work of their employees and are also linking themselves with customers and suppliers through the use of Web 2.0 technologies.

Businesses that have integrated Web 2.0 into their daily operations have seen outstanding results in productivity and efficiency as evidenced by IBM who spent $700,000 tagging content across the business as an alternative to the traditional search. This led to a major success when the average employee saved 12 seconds per search saving IBM at least $4.5m per year.

Businesses have also used Web 2.0 technologies to collaborate with their users to share information and combine their knowledge for everyone’s benefit. Goldcorp were a company in crisis when their CEO released proprietary geological information about the company’s land to the public. Goldcorp offered a cash reward to anyone who could use this geological information to help the company locate gold on the company’s land. Thanks to Web 2.0 technologies Goldcorp located 8 million ounces of gold and attracted global talent to identify these new resources.

The revolutionary nature of Web 2.0 and its outstanding impact on global business is clear and now well established. Web 2.0 technologies form an integral part of a company’s business and from shared knowledge, reputational improvement, staff engagement and productivity to increased revenue they are certainly reaping the rewards. 

eBooks replacing the Hardcopy

With the advances in technology it is no surprise that traditional books are being replaced by their E equivalent.

I think E-learning has huge potential to bring learning to a broader community.   The speed at which technology moves means that through eBooks, e book readers and computers learning potential is enhanced.

The eBook has advantages over the hardcopy for educational learning and for leisure reading.    EBooks save money.   Textbooks for schools and university are very expensive.    It is my experience that college textbooks cost up to 100 Euro.   EBooks are more affordable as there is no printing or massive storage and transport costs involved.   The above helps to reduce the price greatly.

Storage is a huge problem for academic libraries as books take up a lot of space thus reducing the number of study spaces.   The eBook provides the solution to this problem and are also environmentally friendly.

Text books are outdated very quickly and this is very expensive and frustrating for parents and educational institutions while the eBook is easily updated.   New information can be easily downloaded on to a computer or palm-held device thereby updating the eBook speedily and cost effectively.

EBooks are very relevant to the life of today’s student.   The teaching process is as important as ever but eBooks are changing the way in which students absorb the content of the lecture.   Students are hungry for knowledge and therefore new technologies that support their learning is welcome and enhances their learning experience.

EBooks are also very relevant to the leisure reader.   I-pads and kindles are widely used for everyday reading.   It is now common to download your holiday reading material to your kindle before going on holiday thus not having to carry five or six books in a case.   This reduces flying costs.

EBooks are environmentally friendly and contribute to sustaining a healthy planet.

EBooks are a technological development that is bound to be part of the future of education and reading for pleasure as they are a great cost effective way to learn and enjoy the laterst information in an interactive manner.

Why business should use twitter

Twitter has an estimated 350 million users, there are over 250 million tweets a day and more than 2400 companies advertising on the social media site with 80% renewal. So why exactly are businesses choosing this method to get to their target market?  They are using Twitter because it is word of mouth for the digital age.  If a person enjoys a tweet of another person they simply click and re-tweet it broadcasting the message to all the people who are following this person.  A consumer does not take a screen shot of their Google search results and email it to all their contacts but this is happening every day on Twitter.

There are two prime examples proving that business gain massively from twitter:

Virgin Airlines did a one day deal exclusively on Twitter offering flights from any U.S. city to any other U.S. city.  Though this offer was only promoted on twitter Virgin Airlines experienced their 5^th highest sales day in history.

 When Paramount wanted to boost the buzz of their new movie – Super 8 – they also did a twitter only deal. The day before opening day they ran a sneak peek of the movie only for twitter users and they sold tickets on Twitter only at full price.  They raised over $1.5 million on the deal and as people were leaving the theatres they were tweeting on how amazing the film was. The movie was expected to make $20-25 million in its opening weekend but raised $38 million. The chairman of Paramount came out the following Monday and put the great opening success of the movie down to Twitter.

These two success stories are prime examples of how Twitter has given companies a new way to access their target audience.

References:

Business insider interview by Henry Blodget with twitter chief revenue officer Adam Bain

http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-interview-twitter-chief-revenue-officer-adam-bain-2011-11

Web 2.0 changing who controlls the internet

Web 1.0 is the first stage of the world wide web on this platform.    The websites  were very static when it came to user input and the website relied solely on the web master creating new information for the site,   but  web 2.0 changed the way we use the internet.  It  is all about the web master publishing content and then the user generating content.     Web  2.0 is possible due to the improvement in technology such as Broadband, improved browsers and flash applications.

The most successful web sites on the 2.0 platform are very user content heavy,  for example Facebook which has over 250 million users.  It is all about the person uploading photos and information about themselves.

Twitter which has over 350 million users and allows people to message send photos to one or hundreds of there friends free of charge, it is also starting to advertise for companies which has proven to be very effective for businesses accessing their target market.

But the site that has really perfected web 2.0 is you tube.    It is a video hosting service and was founded in February of 2005.   Its founders were Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim.    They developed the site as they were having difficulty sharing videos with  one another. You tube relies solely on the users uploading videos to the site.   The use of mobile devices really made this take off as any person with a phone with a camera can take a video and upload it within minutes.

These are just three examples of sites that are using web 2.0 in a very effective way.    It is very exciting to see what the next stage in the web will be or will there even be a web 3.0.    In my opinion there will be but it will be  much more on our mobile devices and maybe even see the end of web sites as we move to using only applications.

Hello  my name is Domhnall Walsh i am a second year BIS student at Nuig Galway
and this is the blog that i have created for one of my classes for E-Business MS219.
On this Blog i will be discusing topics and going into depth on various topics that are
 relavant to E-Business today.