Wikis are websites that allow users to easily add and edit content. They are well-suited for collaborative knowledge building from a variety of user inputs. In contrast, blogs are better for communicating chronological data from one source to many users. Wikis have been used by businesses for project management and collaboration. Mass collaboration on the internet, enabled by technologies like wikis, blogs and social networks, is empowering crowdsourced solutions and transforming how businesses operate.

1. They are extremely easy to navigate and add content
New Frontiers of the Net: to. User security is usually set low, giving users as
Putting the "We" in the Web & much power as possible to change the content.
Page changes, old versions of pages and recent
Its Impact on Presidential changes of pages are all well documented and
Campaigns manageable by users and/or administrators.
Ayub Jake Salik Wikis, like blogs, have become a tool for online
ayubsalik@msn.com collaboration and community building. They differ
Executive Summary: MBA- ITM Thesis 2008 from blogs in several ways. The fundamental
University at Albany, NewYork difference is that wikis do not contain chronological
Advisor: Dr. Lakshmi Mohan posts, and are hence, not a tool for recording
chronological data. Functionality has been added to
What is Web 2.0? some wikis to allow recently added content to show
The rising popularity of user-driven online services, up in a certain place in order to fold blog functionality
including MySpace, Wikipedia, and YouTube, has into wikis. Wikis are best suited for building a
drawn attention to a group of technology knowledge base from a variety of user inputs. Blogs
developments known as Web 2.0. Web 2.0 refers to are better suited to communicate recent or
second generation web-based services that let people chronological data from one source to many users.
collaborate and share information online. Examples
include blogs, social networking sites, wikis and Wikis have been used by businesses in a number of
communication tools. The concept of “Web 2.0” ways. Some have used them for project
began with a conference brainstorming session management. Because wiki page content is so easy
between Tim O’Reilly and MediaLive International in to add and modify, project status information can be
2004. The phrase, Web 2.0, suggests an improved updated quickly and easily. Links to project
form of the World Wide Web, emphasizing tools that information can be given to all parties involved, who
allow users to interact with each other. A key feature can check the progress as needed. They have also
of Web 2.0 is harnessing the collective intelligence of been used for a wide variety of collaboration work.
its users and transforming the web into a global brain, Any time a document needs to be seen and modified
which can be tapped by any user. by more than one user, it can be posted on a wiki and
all revisions done there. Documents, lists, meeting
What’s in Web 2.0? Blogs are most commonly agendas, reports, RFP’s can all be uploaded to a wiki
used as an online version of a personal journal. page and revised from there. This saves time by
Essentially, a blog is a webpage that contains reducing the amount of emails flying around related to
periodic, chronological ordered posts, additionally the document revisions. Wikis have also been used
grouped by categories. Users visiting the blog can to create any kind of knowledge base. Examples
often add comments to posts. For example, include product documentation, corporate yellow
teenagers may post photos, poetry, game scores and pages, and an entire intranet. These kinds of
other content to share with their friends. But projects work because they cut down on the
businesses as well have found them to be powerful bottleneck of updates. Anytime an administrator
tools for internal and external communications. must be involved to update a web page, a bottleneck
Some companies have harnessed the power of a star is created that slows updates. Wikis reduce that
blogger within the company or used a CEO blog for bottleneck by giving users the power to do updates
corporate communications. themselves, increasing the quality of information
online.
A wiki is a web of interlinked pages where each page
typically contains a concept (a name) and a Podcasts are audio or video recordings - a
description of that concept (an article). Users are multimedia form of a blog or other content. They are
allowed to edit any part of the article, modify the often distributed through an aggregator, such as
description, add new names, add external links and iTunes. Podcasts essentially turn blogs into audio.
add links to names (and their corresponding articles) But the answer to “What’s next?” is video. Now that
that don’t exist yet (so that another user can fill in the Google has bought YouTube, the commercial
description of the new concept). Being essentially applications are endless. Samsung, Heinz,
just a web of interlinked pages created by users, wikis Quicksilver and Johnson & Johnson are just a few
are freeform, informal and emphasize content over that are cashing in on the video posting phenomenon
form. They are also often minimalist in design. with contests aimed at attracting their youthful target
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2. audience on YouTube. online worldwide, along with their shared knowledge,
social contacts, online reputation, computing power,
RSS, Really Simple Syndication, is a format for and more - are rapidly becoming a collective force of
distributing and gathering content from sources unprecedented power. For the first time in human
across the web, including newspapers, magazines, history, mass collaboration across time and space is
and blogs. RSS allows people to subscribe to online suddenly economical. It was the force behind the
distributions of news, blogs, podcasts or other collective clamor of Weblogs that felled CBS
information. Web publishers use RSS to easily anchorman Dan Rather and rocked the media
create and distribute information. Yahoo! News, for establishment. Global crowds of open-source Linux
example, offers dozens of RSS feeds in topics that programmers are giving mighty Microsoft fits. Procter
run the gamut from sports to obituaries. And feeds and Gamble’s $1.7 billion a year operation, for
are not just limited to the written word. Video is also instance, is taking advantage of collective online brain
distributed via RSS feeds. trusts such as Innocentive, a network of 80,000
The corporate application of this technology is independent, self-selected “solvers” in 173 countries.
obvious. The RSS format is perfectly suited to More than a third of the two dozen requests that P&G
replace mass communications coming from corporate had submitted as of 2005 have yielded solutions for
or any subscription-based communications for that which the company paid upward of $ 5,000 a piece.
matter. Users can subscribe to, or be automatically By using Innocentive and other ways of reaching
subscribed to based on their job function, certain RSS independent talent, P&G has boosted the number of
feeds; and, content can be sent directly to their feeder new products derived from outside to 35% in 2005
or aggregator page. This cuts down on email clutter from about 15% in 2000. As a result, sales per R &
and allows users to maintain subscribe lists. D person has gone up by 40 % and R&D investment
as a percentage of sales is down from 4.8% to 3.4%.
Social networking refers to a system that allows P&G had roughly 8,200 people working on innovation
members of a specific site to learn about other in 2000 - 7,500 inside the company, 400 with
members’ skills, talent, knowledge, or preferences. suppliers and around 300 external people. By 2007,
Facebook and MySpace have made social networking P&G has doubled the number to 16,500 - “we still
famous. A growing number of companies are have 7,500 people internally but now we have 2,000
beginning to create their own. Companies are trying with suppliers and 7,000 virtual and extended
to learn from customers and develop a closer partners”.
relationship with them. By creating a social network,
a company can watch as its customers build their own For all the benefits, Net-based cooperation can be
communities and their own groups. It is a vehicle for dangerous for the unwary. As companies have
customers to correspond, communicate and socialize learned, the online crowd can quickly turn against
with each other. them. In September 2004, Kryptonite, a bike-lock
manufacturer, tried to downplay a blogger video that
Social networking is not just for teens. It is a showed how to open its bike locks with a BIC pen.
collaborative style of communication that every The company underestimated the power of the video,
business needs to understand and find creative ways which instantly spread across the net, forcing the
to incorporate into their communication plans. For company to spend over $10 million on lock
business-to- business companies, podcasts, webinars replacements.
and video presentations could be incorporated into
marketing plans. For consumer-based businesses, a The paper contains case studies of pioneer users of
MySpace page or YouTube promotional video can be Web 2.0. The European investment bank, Dresdner
created. Kleinwort Wasserstein, launched a corporate wiki
which had by October 2006 grown to more than 6,000
Web services are software systems that make it individual pages created by the bank’s 5,000
easier for different systems to communicate with one employees and attracted 100,000 hits. The benefit:
another automatically in order to pass information or e-mail volume has decreased by 75%, and the
conduct transactions. For example, a retailer and company’s meetings time has been cut by half. The
supplier might use Web services to communicate over paper also highlights how Obama has used the
the Internet and automatically update each other’s numerous technologies of Web 2.0 to get the
inventory system. message across the voting public and build support
for his candidacy.
Mass Collaboration on the Internet is literally
shaking up business - the nearly 1 billion people
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