General News
Boost your business with Enterprise 2.0!
Exciting developments with Web 2.0’s exploitation by consumer giants such as Wells Fargo Bank and McDonald’s to extend and progress their businesses are welcomed by us at WebsynergiDesign, where we have been promoting Web 2.0 development for our customers for several years.
Web 2.0 technology enables the development of complex, interactive bespoke websites. Enterprise 2.0 is the new generation of the Web. Now, with Enterprise 2.0, the social networking versatility of Web 2.0 can be harnessed to develop online business even more. The bonus of Enterprise 2.0 means that new search, syndication and subscription techniques will be used by innovative businesses to streamline internal and external communications.
San Francisco Web 2.0 Conference
A Web 2.0 survey carried out by Forrester to coincide with the 2008 San Francisco Web 2.0 Conference has found that over $5billion will be spent by European and American businesses in the next 5 years to develop Web 2.0. The new technologies to be exhibited at the Conference represent, say Forrester, “a fundamentally new way” for businesses to communicate with employees and customers.
Enterprise 2.0 Leaders
The development and implementation of the new Web 2.0 technologies are being driven by multi-national giants such as McDonalds and General Motors. Of the Web 2.0 tools analysed by Forrester - blogs, mashups, podcasting , RSS, social networking, widgets and wikis - social networking will be the most popular form of Web 2.0 investment. Over half of European and North American companies see Web 2.0 as a priority development for the forthcoming 12 months.
(BBC News, 22nd April 2008)
Hi-tech tools divide social sites
Social network sites are moving to make it much easier for software developers to write add-ons for the hugely popular web destinations.
Bebo, Facebook, Meebo and Friendster have unveiled plans to help them become more than places to keep in touch.
The add-ons will allow users to add extras, such as video and music clips, to the personal profiles they maintain.
The alliances behind the technologies also reveal the fierce competition between social sites for users.
Tough choices
In one of the broader announcements Bebo unveiled its Open Application platform which will produce a set of common interfaces that developers can use to create programs and applications that will work with the social network site.
At the launch Bebo unveiled partnerships with more than 40 developers, including NBC Universal, Flixster and Gap. A sample application produced using the tools allows Beboers to create an interactive avatar that models Gap clothes.
Significantly, Bebo's interface tools will work with Facebook's already announced development system. This will make it possible for the many developers who have written applications for Facebook to use their code almost unchanged for the Bebo network.
Despite the tie-up on tools, Bebo and Facebook will not become a unified network.
Social networking giant MySpace is backing Google's initiative.
In a further boost for Facebook instant messaging network Meebo announced its support for the tool set. Meebo said it had no plans to support Google's initiative.
At the same time Friendster announced that its development tools would be "open" so they can work on as many networks as possible. It has declared its support for Google's Open Social initiative.
Finally, Facebook has announced plans to license its development system to other sites. Since it was announced in May 2007 more than 7,000 applications have been written for Facebook.
This series of announcements shows how keenly contested this sector of the hi-tech market has become.
The deals and technological tie-ups are all about building up as large an audience as possible in a bid to dominate the sector.
Courtesy BBC news online, 14st December 2007
Web 2.0 projects form an essential part of the WebsynergiDesign website portfolio. We specialise in such complex interactive bespoke websites (Web 2.0 application development), often utilising online video, which can be an important ingredient of Web 2.0, and other modern technologies such as .net2, Ajax, SQL, Server 2005 etc.
Full details of our Web 2.0 development experience and expertise can be found...
UK 'keener on online networking'
More adults in the UK use social networking sites such as Facebook than in other European countries, a report by communications watchdog Ofcom says.
Four out of 10 UK adults with internet access use social networking sites compared to 17% in France, 12% in Germany and 22% in Italy.
The UK is eclipsed only by Canada where 53% of internet users go on social networking sites.
In Japan and the US the percentage is 32% and 34% respectively.
International comparisons
The Ofcom report into the £873bn telecoms, radio and television sectors compared the UK with 11 other countries, including Canada and the US.
It also looked at emerging giants Brazil, Russia, India and China, where mobile phone growth is particularly strong.
The report found that the US and UK are the only places where men do not use the internet more than women.
In the UK, the split is equal, while in the US 52% of internet users are women.
Cheap deals
The watchdog also said that the UK enjoys some of the cheapest deals for telephone, pay-TV and broadband.
In the UK, about 40% of households already take a bundled service, where they pay a monthly fee for a telephone landline, pay-TV and the internet.
This can be as low as £25 in the UK for a typical family household including two parents and two children.
This compares with £27.22 in France, £39.77 in Germany and £69.54 in the US.
Price may be one of the reasons the UK has the highest take-up of digital television in the 12 countries surveyed.
At the end of 2006, about 76% of UK households were digital.
But it is still Japanese and US consumers who spend the most time watching television, averaging 4.5 hours a day.
This is one hour more than people spend in front of television in the UK.
Revenue boost
Internet advertising revenues are also on the rise, particularly in the UK.
At £33, advertisers in the UK spend more money per person on internet advertising than any other country, twice as much as that spent in France, Germany and Italy combined.
Overall, the money to be made from telecom services is increasing, reflecting the growing importance of the sector.
Telecom services revenue per head increased by 20% - from £288m in 2001 to £345m in 2006 - across the countries surveyed, the report found.
Global take up
Globally, mobiles are driving growth in the communications sector, now accounting for 53% of total telecoms revenues.
By the end of 2006, there were 402 million landlines and 634 million mobile connections in the 12 countries surveyed.
Brazil, Russia, China and India are driving much of this growth.
Since 2001, more than 660 million subscriptions were added in these four countries, accounting for 40% of total new mobile subscriptions globally.
Last year, mobile phone users in China sent 429 billion text messages, or 967 text messages per user, compared with 621 per mobile user in the UK.
New subscriptions in India doubled to 150 million, more than twice the number of UK subscribers.
Courtesy BBC news online, 12st December 2007
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