The term Web 2.0 was popularised by the publishing company O’Reilly, which used it as the title of a conference on the future of web applications. It caught the mood, with many agreeing that the internet is entering a new phase, yet there is no precise Web 2.0 definition. Instead, it represents a collection of ideas and techniques centred on the web as a platform. Enabling technologies include ubiquitous broadband, XML web services, new standards such as RSS, and increasingly capable application frameworks.

“Web 2.0 is not over-hyped,” says Larry Warnock, chief marketing officer of content management specialist Vignette. “The web is continually evolving and businesses ignore this at their peril. It is a cultural shift in how the web is being used. Social networking capabilities like wikis, blogs, IM and MySpace have raised the bar on the customer’s expectation of a web experience.”

Warnock’s comments highlight two fundamentals of the new era. One is participation and collaboration. Late last year Windows guru Mark Russinovich blogged about his discovery that a Sony CD had silently installed what looked like a rootkit on his PC. The ensuing blog-induced publicity culminated in Sony withdrawing millions of CDs from sale and compensating customers, demonstrating the PR impact of the 20 million blogs then active. According to some estimates, the figure today has more than doubled.

More positively, publisher Tim O’Reilly identifies this aspect of Web 2.0 as “harnessing collective intelligence”. A classic example is the way user-contributed reviews drive customers to Amazon’s internet site and assist them in making the right choices. The challenge for any corporation with an internet presence is finding the best and most appropriate ways to enable customer participation.

Web 2.0 participation is not just a matter of customers blogging about your products and services; the same technology also has a role within the enterprise. “A wiki could be used to create a competitive analysis or review documentation online, and a blog might be utilised to gather immediate feedback from employees, partners and customers about new product features,” said Dan Ryan, executive chief operating officer for content management provider Stellent.

The second fundamental noted by Warnock is the web experience. Web design is evolving rapidly. One significant aspect is Ajax, which uses a tangle of JavaScript behind the scenes to give users a smoother user interface, although the technology has not been universally praised. “People have managed to do some clever things in a very cool, but totally inappropriate, way,” said Tony Davis of Red Gate Software. “Ajax involves writing thousands of lines of JavaScript code, hacked together to run in incompatible browsers.”