Web 2.0 Portal

This page is used as a resource for participants in our Marketing 2.0 workshops. We hope it becomes your handy portal to Web 2.0 sites that are potentially relevant to your marketing needs, as discussed during our workshops. If you would like to suggest a Web 2.0 link that you cannot find here, please email your suggestion to steve@patrickbaker.com.au. If you would like more information about our Marketing 2.0 workshop, please email training@patrickbaker.com.au.

Social Networks are online venues where people go to meet other people. Current popular sites include MySpace for teens, and Facebook for college students and professionals.

Although not strictly Web 2.0 properties, online auction sites capture the spirit of Web 2.0 through the user-generated nature of consumer to consumer transactions. While eBay does dominate this field globally, Oztion is slowly increasing its prominence within Australia. Other sites are listed, due to their niche market qualities.

Social Media is a term that refers to sites where "citizen journalists" or users create content available to other users. Typically, this refers to blogs (web logs) and podcasts (audio and/or files) but can also refer to the sharing of user-created photographs and video, sharing of knowledge, and review sites. Wikipedia - the online encyclopedia maintained by any and all internet users - YouTube - the video sharing site - and Flikr - a photo sharing site - are dominant players in this genre.

Social Media Tools is a small collection of websites where you can access or download tools to help you establish your own social media channel. Typically, these tools allow you to download software that you can use to create and manage your own Web 2.0 elements. WordPress is the flagship of this fleet - it is open source software that you can host on your own website enabling you to host and control your own blog site.

Social Bookmarking is Web 2.0's answer to being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of websites, blogs, and countless other internet-based resources vying for our attention daily. Once you have registered on a Social Bookmarking site, you can add stories, blogs and sites to your "bookmark" list, and give each item a positive or negative rating. By taking into account the ratings of other users, certain stories, blogs and websites gain prominent ranking scores which, in turn, attracts more visitors to those properties. In effect, these sites help users self-organise web content, bringing order out of chaos.

Widgets are small scripts that help harness the power of today's web technologies, such as RSS Feeds, to help you organise your online experience and bring web content to you, rather than you needing to go to it afresh every day. We feel widgets are at home with other web-based communication platforms and hope you find these tools make your life/work easier.