Web 2.0 As The New Philosophy of Information Distribution. Part 2

by Sibers Senior Flash Developer Alexander Nemtsov

Another useful service is connected with e-commerce. Currently a new term “one-man shop” was introduced with regard to the Internet applications. It means that all aspects of one e-shop are managed by various companies, each of them specializing in managing one particular aspect of this shop, and its owner just manages interactions between these companies. In this schema, for example, a person who wants to open his or her own e-shop doesn’t have to hire an accountant to manage their e-shop finances, they simply find a specialized company that provides accountant services for such businesses, and all calculations and financial management of the e-shop are conducted by this company. The owner doesn’t have to worry about logistics but simply hires another company that will be responsible for this. It is necessary just to manage interactions between these companies in a most convenient way. The point here is that each company in the business chain specializes in its own area thus improving the whole business process of the company they are servicing. So Web 2.0 is the type of application that is distributed all over the Internet. How parts of this application will interact with each other and what information channels will be used in this process are the issues we will be working on in the future. At present we have already started to conduct the research on these issues in our department.

Another important feature of Web 2.0 is interaction with users. Naturally, when a person enters any environment he or she tries to change it according to their needs. For example, when we come to our work place, we usually bring with us our favorite pens, cups, pictures of our loved ones, etc. By introducing these things to our environment we make it more convenient and familiar to us. In the same way, we familiarized ourselves with computers and got used to the Internet. Now it has become not just multimedia content but the environment, which is the same as our day-to-day environment. As for Web 2.0 applications, they should enable users to shape the environment according to their tastes and needs.

I believe the closer Internet will come to solving real problems of ordinary people in their everyday lives, the closer it will get to becoming Web 2.0.

Speaking of the technical side of the issue, in my opinion, among existing technologies the most convenient ones for developing Web 2.0 applications are FLASH and FLEX. But in general, it is not so important what tools will be used to create Web 2.0 applications. A more important thing is to create them. At present, when the tools for creating Web 2.0 are already invented, it is time to formulate and shape the theory of Web 2.0.