Everyone throws around the term Web 2.0. They know about MySpace.com and Wikipedia.com because of the publicity surrounding them, but I’m convinced most of them don’t have a clear grasp on the range of technologies covered by this term.

Let’s review the web services, peer-to-peer networking, blogs, podcasts and social networks that constitute Web 2.0.

Blogs – Also known as Web logs, these sites are online journals that allow the host or blogger to post comments, text, photos, graphics and links on a regular basis. Visitors to the site often can respond by posting their own comments. There are a number of blog types: photoblogs, videoblogs, podcasts, and even online portfolios called sketchblogs.

Collaborative Tools – Many Web 2.0 tools are services that will replace desktop applications. Google has rolled out a number of them, such a Google Docs & Spreadsheets. This service allows you to store documents and spreadsheets online and to allow others access for collaborative purposes.

Collective intelligence – These are system designed to tap the collective rather than the individual for decision-making. The popular del.icio.us and flickr.com are examples of the use of collective intelligence.

Mash-ups – These combine data or content from multiple sources into an integrated experience. HousingMaps.com is an excellent example or a mashup. It takes craigslist data and plots it on Google maps to show where real estate is available for rent or to buy.

Peer-to-peer networking - Sometimes called P2P, peer-to-peer networking is a technique for efficiently sharing files either over the Internet or within a closed set of users. Files are stored on many machines, not just on one server. This speeds access to the files. An example of a peer-to-peer network is Napster, the original music-sharing system.

Podcasts – These are multimedia blogs using audio or video content instead of just text and images. Podcasts often are distributed through aggregators like iPodder, Doppler and iTunes.

RSS – Often referred to as Really Simple Syndication, RSS allows people to subscribe to online feeds of information such as news, blogs, and podcasts. Feedster.com is an aggregator that distributes a wide variety of feeds.

Social networking – This refers to systems where members may share information about their hobbies, talents or knowledge. LinkedIn.com is an example of a business-oriented social network. Gather.com is an example of a more personal one.

Wiki – Wiki is the Hawaiian word for “fast.” A wiki, such as Wikipedia, is a collaborative publishing system that allows visitors to add, remove, edit and change content.

Harry Hoover is a partner in My Creative Team. He has 30 years of experience in crafting and delivering bottom line messages that ensure success for serious businesses like Bank of Commerce, The Bray Law Firm, CruisingTheICW.com, Duke Energy, Focus Four, Levolor, North Carolina Tourism, Rubbermaid, TeamHeidi, Ty Boyd Executive Learning Systems, VELUX, and Verbatim.

As the popularity of social networking has skyrocketed over the last couple of years, the Internet of five years ago has indeed come and gone. Web 2.0 is now the talk of major Internet players and venture capitalists across the globe.

What is Web 2.0? It is the next generation of Internet interactivity and utility platforms. In a nutshell, Web 2.0 involves the facilitation of enhanced web user activities and experiences via systems that allow users to more easily interact, communicate, share information, learn and collaborate with one another.

Witness the huge success of Wikipedia, a free multi-lingual encyclopedia. Formed in January of 2001, Wikipedia has quickly become one of the most visited websites in the world with more than six million articles in 250 languages currently hosted. The premise of the founders of Wikipedia was simple: create a place where users from all over the world can write and edit articles and entries according to their area of expertise. In turn, content created by tens of thousands of subject matter experts is available to anyone in the world with an Internet connection.

Other wildly successful social networking and interactivity websites include MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Digg and StumbleUpon. To Internet companies around the world, it has become more than apparent that Internet users are embracing these platforms with great enthusiasm. The Internet is becoming more than just a place to find information: it is now a place to interact, communicate, learn and opine on a wide variety of subjects. Blogging is no longer the realm of the web futurists but a de facto part of doing business. Forums have popped up all over the Internet in order for members to share information, ask questions and even form relationships. And tens of thousands of singles willingly pay a monthly fee to network with potential love interests on sites like Match.com and Eharmony.com.

In regards to business applications of the social networking phenomenon, the industry is young and just getting started. Over the next five years, expect a wide range of new applications to spring up in industries of all shapes and sizes. The potential for knowledge and learning is enormous as are the possibilities for unprecedented business referral partnerships. The Internet, only in its first decade or so of popular use, is going to continue to evolve to meet the needs and desires of its hundreds of millions of users.

Jesse Chatham is the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer for Dwela.com, a peer to peer, home industry networking and directory website. Realtors, mortgage lenders, general contractors and other home professionals are invited to join.

Can you make money with social media? As you should know by now, my big thing is article marketing. I write lots of articles – and I submit them to the right place – but what about social media, what about myspace and squidoo and the blogs?

I think the one thing to be aware of is that the basic principles apply there just like they do with the articles.

You see, there is a formula that works online, and it doesn’t matter what the media – you just have to follow the formula.

That formula is traffic and conversions. You see the money you make online = traffic times conversions times price. Want to make more money? You have to increase one or more of those elements without decreasing the others by as much as your new increase. That is it – nothing more.

So how do you do it with article marketing? You write articles, send the readers to your web squeeze page, and it opts them into your email list – then you have even more traffic because a list = traffic.

So how do you relate that to the social media, myspace, squidoo, the blogs?

Same thing – you have to get traffic to your social media pages, then you have to direct them to a squeeze page, then you have to send them to your list – it really is that easy.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am writing these articles on social media out of popular demand – but you can see where my money is – it is in the articles I am writing – just like this one.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 900 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.

The influence of the Internet has caused a change in the way we communicate, learn and shop.

The Internet is probably most famous for the ability to spread information, fact or fiction. We were once limited to news editors of a local paper, then to national cable news. Now anyone can search the globe, visit local papers in foreign countries, and see the views of all sides. This ease of information has also brought with it a large amount of hoaxes, money schemes, and fallacies.

There is no question that easy access to the Internet, like the introduction of mail service and the invention of the telephone, has changed the nature of people’s connection to others in their social world. Mail made possible connections among people without physical proximity, and the telephone facilitated communication among distant people, making rapid connections possible across long distances.

But has this communication revolution changed the pure nature of interpersonal and group processes?

On the one hand, since the primary use of the Internet is communication, some people might speculate that the Internet will have positive social consequences in people’s everyday lives because it increases the frequency and quality of interpersonal communications among people. People with easy access to others would feel better connected and more strongly supported by others, leading to happiness and engagement in families, organizations, communities, and society more generally.

But, on the other hand, the ease of electronic communication may lead to weaker social ties, because people have less reason to leave their homes and actually interact face to face with other people. The Internet allows people to more easily work from their home, to form and sustain friendships and even romantic attachments from their home, to bank from their home, to vote and engage in political and social issue based discussions with others (from home).

In this variety of ways, Internet communications can potentially displace face-to-face communications. I think this point is important because psychologists in many researches have described and proved such face to face and telephone connections as being of higher quality, when viewed in terms of their contribution to satisfaction and well-being.
Reading a series of longitudinal and experimental studies (e.x. McKenna, Green, and Gleason), who test a theory of relationship formation on the Internet, these researchers directly address the argument that the psychological quality of Internet social interaction is lower than is the psychological quality of traditional face-to-face interaction.

Consider my own use. I’ve received several e-mail messages in the past hour. My boyfriend confirms the dinner for tonight. Even though it is weekend, my colleagues send me questions about the pending exam expects a quick answer. So does some graduate student from Europe, that I recently met on “MySpace” with an urgent request for a letter of recommendation. My friend Ksenija sends me an IM to tell me the latest news about her new love. And so on and so on…

I assume that I am also living a virtual life, and what’s the most interesting of all, all of my friends online, are also my friends in real life. And if they weren’t that in the past, I somehow managed to bring my cyber friends into my real life, so I could here in my real life enable real communication, real face-to-face “talks”, real exchange of emotions, feelings of happiness, satisfaction and well-being. I’d say for me, the Internet is a great new way for doing old things.

So, what else conclusion can I bring except the one that Internet life cannot stand on itself without real-life communication. It is simple: If we understand the qualities of face-to-face communication that influence the impact of such communication on people and their social interaction, we would be able to predict the probable influence of any new communication technology. However, researchers show that people sooner or later convert their cyber contacts into more traditional face-to-face, the same as I do. People use the Internet, in other words to help them achieve their real-life goals. And rather than technology’s changing people’s social and psychological reality, in other words, people change their use of technology to facilitate their creation of a desired social reality.
Internet users should closely examine their behavior, to ensure that excessive time online will not negatively impact their personal well-being. We shouldn’t throw our computers out the window, but neither should we charge on blindly into complete dependence on the Internet. As with many things in life, it seems that moderation and balance are key to maximizing the Internet’s positive effect.

Social media optimization is the newest thing which is happening in the World Wide Web. Everything associated with the web is changing on a constant basis and to be attuned with the latest, one needs to know all about the latest happenings like social media optimization. The internet world is rapidly expanding these days and the due to this the way we communicate with people is also undergoing vast changes. Earlier after people left school, college or their birth city there was very little chance of getting in touch with family and friends who are associated with those places. Today that is no longer the case, all thanks to social media platform which in turn has given rise to social media optimization. Today, social media optimization has become the best means through which one can promote anything on the web.

Social media optimization ideally means promoting about something on all the social media platforms. Studies have found out the more then 70 percent of people those who surf the web regularly have an online profile on some social networking site or the other. So it makes sense if someone wants to promote about their things on all these social networking platforms and attract attention. The whole idea is to create a buzz on the web about the thing which you want the people to know. Naturally when a buzz is created everywhere, there will be lots of discussion and debate about that aspect and this is a very good means to become popular on the web without making extensive efforts.

Getting popularity is not an easy task and one needs to undertake lots of work and effort to make this a success. The business world is rapidly expanding and one needs to know all about the latest which is happening to become successful. One of the main things, which need to be done for successful social media optimization, is facilitating free travel of content on the web. Webmasters are always on the lookout for well written content and if you have really good content written on your site you can become popular very easily. Whenever someone uses the articles or content from your site, a link will of your site will be provided and this will make sure that more and more visit your site and you become popular.

The basic idea behind social media optimization is rather simple. You just need to implement certain things on your site which will make it more easily accessible to visitors at all social media platforms. Another means which can be implemented for social media optimization is through participating in all the discussions that are taking place on the web about the subject on which you are promoting. The web is populated with forums on anything and everything. The best part about talking part in these discussions is that even if there is no discussion taking place, you can very easily create a thread about the concerned subject and start the discussion. Social media optimization has huge scope and all you need to do is identify the proper method for doing this.

Steve Waganer has specialization in Web Marketing. He is expert in Search engine optimization, Affiliated marketing, Social Media Optimization. To get the Search engine Optimization tips for your website to get high rank and top position in major search engines visit http://www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com

Maybe it’s just allergy season again, or I have too much on my mind. For whatever reason, I couldn’t sleep last night. I awoke with a headache and took a few aspirin. But I realized I needed to get up and allow the medicine to kick in. So I tried reading for a minute or so, but that wasn’t such a good idea as my pounding head told me. I tried the TV, but one can only watch just so many “Creatures of the Black Lagoon” on Nick-at-Night so I went on the Internet. In comparison, that was a fairly interesting diversion.

I understand that there are several time zones at work here. So it can be 5AM on the East coast and many people are up or even at work. But the majority of the country isn’t. I first stumbled over to Yahoo Answers where I like to read the questions. It gives me a nice overview of how the country is doing as a whole. It’s a bit scary, even during normal viewing hours. The grammar and spelling would lead one to believe I was back in the 3rd grade. Of course I can’t tell the age of the posers, but I would think they were mostly adults. There were plenty of questions being posed and asked as I watched and refreshed. Obviously, like myself, they had no early-morning life or were some type of Zombies. Ah, another great movie, but I digress.

I also enjoy wandering over to the various chat rooms to see what’s shaking. I used to go to the social club chats but realized that most of them were older men, pretending to be young guys, trawling for very young girls. The talk quickly turned to sex and quite graphic at that. It reminds me of the on-going MSNBC Dateline undercover sting run by Chris Hansen. He tapes various online predators as they come wandering into a trap as they are hoping to meet a 13 year old girl they’ve been chatting with. Chris and company have lured everyone from a company CEO to a Rabbi to military men, mostly married by the way, into their home-like setup. Once confronted and asked about what they intended to do with the minor girls, they all said “nothing.” It was amazing that they caught hundreds of men that came to this young girl’s house, condom in hand, with the intent to do nothing but have a conversation, a drink or a dunk in the spa. That’s the problem. They were caught and their life is now ruined. So I avoid those chat rooms like the plague.

But Ebay is always fun. There is always something being bid on at all hours. Art, coins, tools, books, junk and more junk. It never ends and you can browse around that site for hours. Amazon has lots of good stuff too, but it’s static. At least you can count down to zero on Ebay and see what sells for what. There are also tons of puzzle sites and online games to play against other online insomniacs. There’s plenty of trivia contests and poker. I could do a crossword or jigsaw puzzle to make the time fly. Heck I could even write an online article but what would be the fun of that? Oops.

The point, and I actually have one, is that the Internet is a boon to the “I can’t sleep” sector of society. It’s interactive and provides endless avenues of entertainment. It’s silent and unobtrusive so that it doesn’t have to disturb the other sleeping members of the household. I figured that, with all that time to kill, I might as well make myself useful. After writing a few articles like this one, I relatively bored myself enough to become drowsy and head back to bed. But it wasn’t a total loss. You got to benefit from my sleeplessness and read this article and I got to practice my typing, writing, and reasoning skills while in a semi-coma. How do you think I did? Not bad for a Zombie, huh?

Jeffrey Hauser was a sales consultant for the Bell System Yellow Pages for nearly 25 years.
He graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Advertising and has a Master’s Degree in teaching. He had his own advertising agency in Scottsdale, Arizona and ran a consulting and design firm, ABC Advertising. He has authored 6 books and a novel, “Pursuit of the
Phoenix.” His latest book is, “Inside the Yellow Pages” which can be seen at his website, http://www.poweradbook.com Currently, he is the Marketing Director for http://www.thenurseschoice.com a Health Information and Doctor Referral site.

Since everyone in the world is spending more and more time on the net social networks are what is needed, they are like neighborhoods on the net.

We all came from the Mayberry’s of this world, little local communities but that has changed as more people are spending their free time surfing the web. Companies, clubs, and religious organizations can now have a social networking site of their own where members can interact with each other.

Hopefully these new sites will have better management than sites like MySpace. MySpace is becoming a place where people try the hand at marketing, no longer are they doing bulk email but instead you will find profiles of a lot of scum on sites like MySpace, I’m surprised there are not drug pushers on the sites yet. Spend some time looking at the profiles and you will find escorts, models, strippers, hookers, pimps, and blatant spammers abound on the MySpace community sites.

With the development of these social networking sites there is even a greater need for human editors to oversee the content that is being uploaded every second of the day. The only marketing we should see is in the forum where people post a great comment and then have links in their signature so we can find out more of who they are.

It is great that a community user can upload pictures and music of who they are and what appeals to them but I guarantee that I could see a much better private dance video on MySpace than I would ever get at a top level strip club.

I wonder if any politicians are posting on the MySpace site? I am not advocating a Net Nazi group that closely monitors what is posted but some intervention needs to be applied. Maybe a voting system like on of those social bookmarking services where visitors can rate the profiles they find.

Sites like MySpace can be a perfect place for advertisers to target their work. Focus groups can be expensive but on a site like one of these it would be very inexpensive to set up a poll or a topic of the moment where people can vote on.

Jeffrey has over 2 decades experience in the business world. When he writes he blends his unique wit and humour into every article which if you read his blog you can see all of his many works. http://www.nosugarcoating.info/

In order to make the best use of all opportunities to promote your online business, it is important that you learn how to use social media. The term appears at first sight to be one of those that are used by marketers to cover some form of advertising technique designed to screw the public through the use of such outlets as TV and radio. However, while the term may be unfortunate, the way they operate is going to sweep the internet by storm. That storm has already begun.

People who use social media tend to be of the younger generations, and they use them to share experiences, information and generally communicate with people they would otherwise never have had the opportunity to contact. An Australian can discuss her latest video with a British guy who is considering buying it, and an American kid can explain some PS3 cheats with a Chinese youngster who doesn’t even know what PS3 means.

It is a means for people to communicate with one another about any subject under the sun from law to chemistry and train-spotting to drug taking. Examples of sites they use are MySpace, YouTube and Tickle. There are rarely barriers to the exchange of information and communication is by means of blogs, podcasts, forums and occasionally direct emailings. Even Wikipedia is an example of a social medium in that the public are able to make additions to it, and edit the content. It is a database of all knowledge supplied by every contributor.

There are a number of commonalities that make social media what they are. Generally, though not always, there is the opportunity to contribute to the site through the provision of content or feedback. Normal media, such as radio, TV and the press are generally associated with the provision of information in a one-way manner, whereas social media involve two way communication between individuals and groups of people, and even lead to the formation groups that have a common interest.

So what forms do these media take? If you examine the two words social and media in the context in which they are used in the term social media, the word social refers to a community or group of people, and media to methods of communication. The most common communication techniques used online with respect to social media are those that allow interactive mass communication such as blogs, which are the most common for of social media.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

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The word blog is a diminutive form of web log, or an online journal and is also a record of the contents of a website. Social networks are other forms of social media, the two best known of which are probably MySpace and YouTube. MySpace has almost 110 million registered users while YouTube was devised specifically for the dissemination of videos, especially home made videos. Social bookmarking sites are other examples, and sites such as del.icio.us and Blink are well known examples of this type of site. While YouTube is specifically devoted to videos, Flickr exists for the distribution of members’ photographs.

More mundane examples of social media, if they can be described as that, are forums and wikis. Forums allow complete and instant interaction between people on specific topics while wikis are online databases and expert documents that are compiled and edited by members of the public. The best known is probably the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

The fundamental aspects that define social media are those of community and interaction. In all of the above examples there are few restrictions on the participation of ordinary people to contribute to the medium concerned. These types of social media can be used to promote your website if you are able to promote yourself as an expert without seeming to be advertising your product.

If you learn how to use social media in forums, podcasts and even sites such as MySpace and YouTube, that are collectively known as Web2 sites, to market and promote specific pages within your website, then you have a good chance of keeping one step ahead of your competitors. The web pages that you promote should be relevant to the topic of the moment on these social media sites so that you are less liable to be accused of spamming. Check them out and use them to your advantage, but do not actively use them as advertising media.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Internet Article Marketing

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Working in 100 countries with over 5 million members (1.2 million in the U.S. alone), WWF works to preserve the diversity of animal life. These are some of the things they do:

Protecting natural areas and wild populations of plants and animals, including endangered species.
Protecting sustainable approaches to the use of renewable natural resources.
Protecting more efficient use of resources and energy and the maximum reduction of pollution.

WWF has helped establish or manage nearly 500 parks and game reserves. World Wildlife Fund is effective safeguarding hundreds of species and millions of acres of wildlife habitat. They have relocated rhinos in Nepal and saved Siberian tigers in the Russian Far East. Helped protect the critically endangered Maui’s dolphin. Stopped plans to hunt and kill all tigers in the northern Malaysian state of Kelantan in response to human-tiger conflict.

The educational efforts of WWF are geared to organic items or eco-labelled goods as well as everyday activities that can make a real difference to the environment. The World Wildlife Fund’s educational material is makes Turn off equipment like televisions and stereos when you’re not using them, turn off the tap when brushing your teeth, collect the water used to wash vegetables and salad to water your houseplants, recycling paper, glass, plastics and other waste, using rechargeable batteries and not using “throw-away” products like paper plates and napkins, and plastic knives, forks, and cups.

While out shopping WWF suggests demanding organic items or eco-labelled goods and asking for them if not available and taking your own bags to the shops to carry home your groceries and shopping, buying organically grown fruits, vegetables, cotton clothing, and hemp-fibre products. One should not buy bottled water if you know your tap water is safe. Choose biodegradable cleaning products, energy-efficient household appliances, use recycled paper, buy dolphin-friendly tuna.

In the garden one can collect rainwater to water your flowers, use organic compost and mulch, plant local species of trees, stop using chemical pesticides and use natural products instead. Attract birds to your garden to eat aphids and other gardeners’ pests. Use traps, parasites, and natural predators such as ladybirds. Use plants that repel insects. Some herbs and flowers - including basil, chives, mint, marigolds, and chrysanthemums - mixed in with other plants, help keep pests away.

Other common responsible common sense advice like not using power or electrical equipment like leaf-blowers and use a rake instead, not pouring antifreeze, oil or other chemicals on the ground, into storm sewers or down the drain, not buying garden furniture or decking made of tropical hard wood - mahogany for example - unless it’s got a Forest Stewardship Council label (the “tick” tree).

On the global warming front, WWF has bought into the founder of the Internets CO2 doomsday scenario neglecting the fact that the sun is getting hotter and more active than thought. The sun’s radiation has increased by 0.5% per decade since the late 1970’s. That is cause for alarm.

CO2 emissions have spurted up and down with economic cycles for recessions and boom markets. If these emissions were link to global warming, you would expect to see rises and falls of temperature follow the ups and downs for the global economy. That has not happened. The planets temperature has risen because of the suns radiation increase, not CO2 emissions, at least this is the case made by reputable scientists. They went on to say that a 99 in 100 correlation exists that the increase in sunspot intensity and solar activity is the reason for the increase in global temperature.

In other words, if you shut down the factories and power stations as Gore suggests, there would be little effect in the global temperature. Because of the intense political pressure, Europe sets strict targets for EU emissions to be reduced by 30% by 2020. A fifth of energy from renewable energy. WWF supports deep cuts in global emissions, however, the poor nations of the world continue to be the worst polluters.

As WWF works to preserve the diversity and abundance of life on Earth, raise the awareness by usingWorld Wildlife Fund Personal Checks. You can use WWF Bank Checks as a way of raising Awareness of WWF Mission for Social Responsibility To Protect Wildlife and Endangered Species. Working to ensure that the world our children inherits will be home to elephants, tigers, giant pandas, whales and other wildlife species, as well as people.

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Author Bio: George Evers is a published author and writes for a variety of internet sites, magazines and newscasts.