Social networking and web 2.0 are two recent technologies. But the big question is ‘what is common between these two technologies?’ If you look at each of them independently from a technological point, there is nothing much in common between them. However, if you merge these two concepts, they result in one of the most upcoming technological advances and have powers that can bring major changes in the world. Change always happens over time so these technologies will not change the world in one go, but they present a framework and a few opportunities for change.
Majority of the focus between social networking and web 2.0 is that of customer interaction. This means, attracting customers by means of blogs, forums and social media sites, increasing product awareness and increasing customer satisfaction. Furthermore, these technologies also allow better productivity, management of knowledge, innovation and creativity of all employees in the organization.
What is web 2.0?
It is basically a collection of technologies that allows users to come up with new and exciting ways of providing services to final users of the product. In addition, the concept of web 2.0 is helping towards innovation and better interaction with users. Some of the technical aspects of web 2.0 include innovation and implementation of new standards and technologies within the platform of the web. Moreover, web 2.0 focuses more on upcoming business models too. With web 1.0, the focus was mainly on the delivery of products, but with the introduction of web 2.0, there was a paradigm shift to the delivery of services to be used as well as linked with various other services in innovative ways. In addition to providing data in innovative ways, web 2.0 is also about having a better user interface and allowing end users faster access to data in more dynamic ways through the use of richer interfaces.
Social Networking
In today’s world, computer literacy is at its peak. Social networking is a complicated concept and all the tools that help through the computerization age are what is keeping the concept alive. Web 2.0 consists of a few components or tools that will help with social networking. These include communities, wikis, blogging, folksonomy, mashups and file sharing. Each of these components helps in contributing towards the implementation and existence of social networking sites. Communities and wikis provide an online space for the social networks and file sharing, folksonomy and blogging help with the flow of information across the social networking world.
The impact of web 2.0 on social networking has had a deep effect on the society. An important group of people referred to as the medical community has already reaped many benefits from this technology and these benefits are being used towards the betterment of people’s lives. According to research, almost 90% of physicians use a tool provided by web 2.0 in practicing medicine. Building social networks on a web 2.0 platform has become very cost effective and easy to use, hence more and more organizations are choosing this option. NGO’s and other social service organizations also benefit from web 2.0 social networks by reaching out to the community in a more structured manner. In addition to that, implementing social networks on a web 2.0 concept helps to conduct faster analysis in identifying trend patterns. By linking social networks and the behavioral patterns of people, analytical studies can be carried out to predict behavioral, economic and social patterns of the community as a whole. This further benefits a business in promotions and advertising and also with linking different social networks with each other. For example, there could be a certain networking site that consists of a community with particular interests and businesses catering to those interests can target these sites from a business perspective.
