Web+2.0+and+good+business+since

=Business trends come and go, but innovation never goes out of style.=

In today’s fast-evolving business world, if you can’t keep up with the competition, then you’re in trouble. Ideas and collaboration are the fuel for innovation. Leading companies in many industries and Web-based, not-for-profit user communities have already done. They’re early adopters of Web 2.0 philosophies and approaches. They’ve created business approaches using a set of technologies, known as Web 2.0, to foster innovation and responsiveness to customer and marketplace trends. Web 2.0 is about using the Internet creatively, as a platform to foster innovation,speed and simplicity. A technology environment enabled for Web 2.0 is essential to support an innovative and agile business enterprise that can compete effectively today and in the future. Web 2.0 will forever change the way businesses operate. And early adopters that take advantage of Web 2.0 technology today will have greater opportunities to distance themselves from technology laggards.  media type="youtube" key="2RnDgw6SdDE" height="315" width="420" align="center"

Economic impact
Given the global economy, companies increasingle rely on widespread teams and networks of people who need real-time access to one another and to common project resources. The ability to easily interact with customers, vendors and partners is critical to ongoing success. Business models based on Web 2.0 strategies, which can change how people connect, communicate and organize, are typically more difficult to replicate and thus potentially deliver a more sustainable competitive advantage. Web 2.0 approaches create opportunities to turn traditional sales and #|marketing strategies on their heads. Using Web 2.0 approaches, however, companies can cost-effectively sell and market wider varieties of products and services to fewer people in niche marketplaces. Decisions in most companies typically are based on historical data—collected over time by the business—and on the wisdom of executives and of front-line staff, who take action based on their experience and on what the data and their colleagues tell them. In many cases, this approach is very effective, but not always most accurate. Web 2.0 strategy can extend your potential brain trust to every employee, partner and customer who has access to the Internet. Employees, partners and customers can,in turn, create their own brain trusts. Actively build relationships to share and aggregate the knowledge of many people in specific business areas. Connect people to one another and to relevant information more efficiently. People can use situational applications that give them quick access to services in the context of their role and that can be mixed and remixed as needed. Web 2.0 technology enables people to connect in ways that simply weren’t possible before. Individuals and teams canjoin interest- and job-related networks and participate based on preferred working styles. And by harnessing the collective intelligence of customers, organizations can enhance customer relationship management and potentially respond more quickly to changing marketplace conditions. Web 2.0 strategy will provide users with real-time access to relevant, trusted information and applications presented based on role, expertise or preferences.

Three qualities make Web 2.0 resemble the Internet in the 1990s: it's is poorly understood and it is without doubt revolutionising business. The technical definition of the term Web 2.0 emerged from publisher Tim O’Reilly in 2004: “The business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform.” But with the phrase ‘cloud computing’ having since emerged as the preferred buzzword denoting the use of the Internet as a computing platform, Web 2.0 is now more often used to describe a new generation of web-based services that allow people to interact, collaborate and share information. Put simply, Web 2.0 replaces the view of a website as analogous to a publication, wherein a trusted source provides information to be consumed by the user, with one that sees websites as tools for structured interaction between people. ‘Social media’ is a common, perhaps more meaningful, alternative term. Blogs, wikis, social networks, social bookmarking, news aggregation sites: the litany of tools that make up Web 2.0 are numerous, and they are constantly evolving and recombining. The implications for business are numerous. For one, Web 2.0 changes the way customers interact with one another and that demands a change in the way business communicate with their markets.

=How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey results =

The heaviest users of Web 2.0 applications are also enjoying benefits such as increased knowledge sharing and more effective marketing. These benefits often have a measurable effect on the business. SEPTEMBER 2009 Source: [|Business Technology Office] [] Over the past three years, we have tracked the rising adoption of Web 2.0 technologies, as well as the ways organizations are using them. This year, we sought to get a clear idea of whether companies are deriving measurable business benefits from their investments in the Web. Our findings indicate that they are. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Nearly 1,700 executives from around the world, across a range of industries and functional areas, responded to this year’s survey.[|1] We asked them about the value they have realized from their Web 2.0 deployments in three main areas: within their organizations; externally, in their relations with customers; and in their dealings with suppliers, partners, and outside experts. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Their responses suggest why Web 2.0 remains of high interest: 69 percent of respondents report that their companies have gained measurable business benefits, including more innovative products and services, more effective marketing, better access to knowledge, lower cost of doing business, and higher revenues. Companies that made greater use of the technologies, the results show, report even greater benefits. We also looked closely at the factors driving these improvements—for example, the types of technologies companies are using, management practices that produce benefits, and any organizational and cultural characteristics that may contribute to the gains. We found that successful companies not only tightly integrate Web 2.0 technologies with the work flows of their employees but also create a “networked company,” linking themselves with customers and suppliers through the use of Web 2.0 tools. Despite the current recession, respondents overwhelmingly say that they will continue to invest in Web 2.0.

=Wikipedia says this= <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0Marketing <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">For marketers, Web 2.0 offers an opportunity to engage consumers. A growing number of marketers are using Web 2.0 tools to collaborate with consumers on product development, service enhancement and promotion. Companies can use Web 2.0 tools to improve collaboration with both its business partners and consumers. Among other things, company employees have created wikis—Web sites that allow users to add, delete, and edit content — to list answers to frequently asked questions about each product, and consumers have added significant contributions. Another marketing Web 2.0 lure is to make sure consumers can use the online community to network among themselves on topics of their own choosing <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Small businesses have become more competitive by using Web 2.0 marketing strategies to compete with larger companies. As new businesses grow and develop, new technology is used to decrease the gap between businesses and customers. [|Social networks] have become more intuitive and user friendly to provide information that is easily reached by the end user. For example, companies use [|Twitter] to offer customers coupons and discounts for products and services.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">[|Web 2.0] technology can fundamentally change business processes by delivering productivity gains and making user feedback an integral part of development processes. But many IT managers are shying away from the technology, unsure of how it will fit into their business. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">[|A survey] of 3,000 executives conducted in January by US consultancy McKinsey found widespread but cautious interest in using Web 2.0 technology to enable greater automation and networking within enterprises. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">So far, Web 2.0 has had a greater impact on consumer internet technology, where related product categories include [|social networking], [|wikis], social bookmarks, blogs and RSS news feeds. These technologies use technologies such as Asynchronous Javascript, and XML. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">The success of [|Google Apps] and the entry of many major software suppliers into the web-based [|application] market - including Microsoft with its Live platform and [|SAP] with its hosted AS1 enterprise resource planning tool - points to the potential for much greater penetration of Web 2.0 technologies into enterprises. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">A [|company website] that is a simply an online product brochure is a wasted opportunity. More progressive companies are using theirs to stimulate discussion and community around their brand, products and services, and are harvesting invaluable customer insight as a result. It doesn’t stop with the official company website: many organisations monitor and participate in external online communities, where consumers are sharing opinions and experience of the businesses they patronise. As equally significant as the impact of Web 2.0 on consumers and customers are the implications for internal collaboration. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">[]
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">[|Coca Cola] The drinks maker's exhaustive use of Web 2.0 keeps its brand in front of young eyes ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">[|Best Buy] Electronics retailer has built an exemplary internal social network ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">[|Ernst & Young] Facebook-based recruitment program lets the accounting giant keep in touch with the finest graduates ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">[|Procter & Gamble] Retail manufacturer's BeingGirl website built a community around a brand that was otherwise tricky to market ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">[|Wachovia Bank] A web 2.0-powered intranet is tackling some of the US bank's biggest issues ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">[|Dell] IdeaStorm lets the computer maker's customers contribute to innovation ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">[|GE] US giant has an evolved a collaboration framework that has revolutionised knowledge management ||

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Danielle Ralston