This week i’ll be looking at one of most well known Internet companies, the encyclopedia of the internet.

Yes, what else but Wikipedia? Wikipedia currently features well over 15 million articles, all contributed to by Internet users. But it certainly didn’t start that way. No, the success of Wikipedia had a lot to do with it’s ability to adapt to the changes resulting from it’s popularity. Until 2004, Wikipedia ran on one dedicated server. It currently runs on over 340 clusters at two different locations in the United States and The Netherlands.

Wikipedia is truly a community run project. It’s survival is dependent upon donations from the community to keep it running. As already mentioned, all the articles are able to be edited by users.

This extremelyopen system is very inviting for vandalism which is a major concern. Articles that have been falsely edited are usually dealt with extremely fast, which is a credit to the overall community.

Wikipedia is one of the primary Web 2.0 sites and has been for quite some time. This does not look set to change at all anytime into the future, Wikipedia will continue to grow and continue to adapt to change.

This week i’m not going to be discussing anything abnormal, but i will be talking about the online video marketplace. More specifically, Netflix.  As we move further into a digital age, the Internet is increasingly becoming the choice of medium for media content. Video stores are losing business to digital media sites such as Netflix.

One of the greatest reasons why can be explained by the concept of the long tail. The following diagram illustrates what is meant by the long tail.

When we refer to the long tail, we are talking about the niche products that make up the bulk of the market. There are the big selling items that make up the red  section, and then there are the much less popular products, which also happen to make up the majority.

This is what makes Netflix such an appropriate choice to demonstrate “Leveraging the long tail”.

The greatest feature of Netflix is the sheer amount of titles available for viewing. There are over 100,000 movies to select from. Compare this to your local dvd store which only carries a few thousand, and you can see why online viewing is fast becoming the popular choice. There is unlimited amounts of space online, as opposed to a physical location. This is the first advantage of Netflix and the long tail pattern. Out of the 100,000 titles on offer, well over 95% of those (as a guess) would make up the long tail.

The next biggest factor is costs. There are no overheads involved in an online marketplace and no employee costs to consider. This means it is considerably cheaper to view a movie online instead of driving to the store and renting it. Which brings us to the final advantage i’ll be discussing. Convenience.

With Netflix the content is at your fingertips. Instead of driving to a store, you simply stream content off the internet or even have it posted directly to you. It’s instantaneous.

The main beneficiary of Netflix is the consumer, as i mentioned the Internet is able to cater to many different tastes because of the  unlimited potential. There is no better example of an Internet service “leveraging the long tail” than NetFlix.

Keeping software in the beta phase for such a long time has many advantages. The obvious one being that the users of the software act as testers, their feedback is crucial to the development of the software and  to it’s overall success. Being in a perpetual beta stage allows the developers to continually implement new features to the software.

Although i have written about Google services previously, i think the best example of a product in a perpetual beta stage is Gmail.

Gmail was in it’s beta stage for over 5 years, finally coming to an end in 2009. However, has there really been much of a change from the early days of Gmail to when it finally left the beta phase? You would be hard pressed to find an average Gmail user that really notices the difference. The service at it’s core functions exactly the same: You send and receive email. Obviously not hard to understand. Google has done an excellent job of quietly adding new functionality without any downtime or overwhelming the user with new features.

The “Perpetual Beta” tag has really become synonymous with Web 2.0 applications. A lot of applications that are constantly updated can be said to be in a perpetual beta state. It seems as if the beta tag really has a different meaning to what it used to in the world of Web 2.0. Facebook is another example of a service that could be deemed as being in a perpetual beta, it is constantly being updated and new features are always being implemented. Beta software was distinctly different in the desktop environment, but the line between beta and final version software has become increasingly blurred with Web 2.0 applications.

Where else could you find as much useless information as you can in the wonderful world of Twitter? The uptake of twitter has been nothing short of amazing. The past 18 months has seen a staggering increase in the amount of  twitter users as the following diagram demonstrates

Twitter Internet Traffic

And one of the biggest contributors to this increase in traffic? Accessibility.

Twitter is now everywhere. There are so many different applications to use to “tweet” from. Integration with just about every portable device possible has expanded the user base of twitter to over 100 million users worldwide.

One of the potential problems facing users is the significant amount of different twitter applications available. Twitters own API has allowed for the development of these applications. iPhone users alone have access to over 30 different twitter applications. Recently though, Twitter itself have announced the purchase of Tweetie (http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone/) and in the coming weeks it will be re-released as the official Twitter application.

As i alluded to earlier Twitter has it’s fare share of useless information, that would only be expected given there are over 100 million users. However Twitter is so much more than just a personal service. Some of the most important events in recent history have used Twitter as a way of instantly reaching an extremely large online community. Information on the Black Saturday bushfires of January 2009 was regularly posted on Twitter, and election campaigning has even been done via Twitter.

Along with other applications, Twitter is leading the way in software accessibility and integration.  Official client releases are coming for smartphones, and with the release of new devices such as the iPad more new users will flock to Twitter.

Ajax is a collection of existing technologies thatare utilised together to create faster and more interactive web applications. Ajax uses the following 4 standards: HTML, CSS, XML and Javascript. A basic introduction can be found on the W3Schools website.  http://www.w3schools.com/Ajax/ajax_intro.asp

Ajax has allowed for more visually pleasing designs and better interactive user experiences

iGoogle is just one example of a service that uses the Ajax framework.

iGoogle is best described as a personal web portal. The user is presented with a wealth of options to customise their own personal page.

Data from a variety of different sources can be integrated. This is the greatest advantage of iGoogle. The moment you open your browser you can be greeted with the latest youtube videos, weather information and news headlines. There is really no limit to what content you can customise your page with as there is an option to add your own ‘gadgets’ , as they are referred to.  iGoogle also integrates key google account features such as Gmail.

Before today my only experience with iGoogle was around three years ago when it was still known as Google Personalised Homepage. Back then i did not care how it operated or what technology it was based on. All i can say is i wish i paid more attention back then. Personal web portals are a great idea and provide that rich user experience that many of us look for.They are a great example of interactive web 2.0 applications built using Ajax. Hopefully in the future they receive more exposure.

This view of locally-stored software in times of modern cloud computing and connectivity is being increasingly challenged, and labelled as an inefficient way of computing. Several companies have begun to involve themselves in helping to push along the paradigm shift in software, most noticeably the company Google. One way of computing that Google has always favoured is that of server-side storage and software, access to which is granted with the use of any computer with internet and a browser.

For instance, Google’s current suite of office-like applications (Google Docs) is all hosted directly by Google themselves, including the storage of software and the files written by them. Because of this, the user does not require specialised client software to be able to access and edit documents – only a computer and internet is needed. Google is making a great effort to ensure that this new concept of computing will be seen as a norm, evidence of which can be seen in the making of their Chrome operating system, which ensures that users have access to their data and the programs to edit them at all times, no matter what the computer system.

In fact, Google’s influence over how modern software is used and stored is so influential that large software manufacturers like Microsoft are ‘jumping onto the bandwagon’ and releasing special server-side online software counterparts to their current client suites. Along with this, more and more companies are offering online storage of files and software that allow users to have a consistent view of their data and the tools needed to edit it, no matter what software is running on their computers.

John writes “It reminds me that the only constant is change”. Truer words have never been spoken, or typed, as is the case here. It is the way that we adapt to change that determines the impact it has on us.

For this reason I’m going to be talking about the social networking site Myspace.com. Myspace hardly needs any introduction but in case you’ve been living under a rock here’s a brief overview.

Myspace allows users to create a unique profile about themselves to share with other myspace users. They can upload photos, comment on friends profiles, search for people with similar interests and so on and so forth. Your standard social networking site but really the one on which all others were based, at least in my opinion anyway..

The reason I’m writing about Myspace is because of the change that it has seen in recent years. Increased competition (mainly Facebook) has seen a huge downturn in the popularity of Myspace.

Alexa traffic statistics (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/myspace.com) show the average percentage of daily users on myspace has halved in the past 2 years alone. What was once the dominant social networking site has since been replaced because it has failed to adapt to change and thus has fallen behind its main competitor.

I could of course discuss this topic from the other point of view by looking at companies that own huge market shares and have the power to restrict competition to keep themselves ahead. However i found it much more interesting to look at an example where a company has fallen from it’s mantle because of increased competition and it’s own failure to adapt to change. I hope i’m not running off on a tangent here but my final thoughts are that competition is needed to keep this Web 2.0 era alive. We all know of examples of monopolies and indeed it’s observable right now, but the myspace example demonstrates that situations do not always remain the same. At some point things will change.

Place 2 people in a room together and observe what happens. Sure some ideas might be thrown around and you could call it satisfactory but now think of millions of people in the same room (a big room) and you can imagine just how much more knowledge is present. This is essentially one way to look at Web 2.0 Applications. Harnessing collective intelligence is all about users and the information gathered from them. There are many ways this is done. Reviews, comments, ratings, creating content, tagging; just to name a few.

To demonstrate this i will be discussing the website HotelClub.net as i have previously used this site to search for accommodation.

Hotel Club is  dedicated to providing the best accommodation prices to travelers worldwide. The website encourages active user participation by giving users the chance to post their accommodation experiences. Users are able to explicitly participate by writing reviews on the hotels they stay at, and give them star ratings out of 5. The involvement of these users creates a more valuable resource as the collective intelligence is increased, thus providing a more accurate overall rating for each place of accommodation.

Hotel Club also links in with other web applications including Google Maps to provide specific addresses of hotels, as well as making use of social networking sites such as Facebook. There is no direct integration to facebook, rather a group for discussion and promotions of special offers. This at least gives participants a chance to voice their opinion on the company website itself, thereby allowing for a better product to be developed.

Without checking in depth i think it is safe to assume that no legal repercussions would exist from expressing negative opinions on a company. Users are freely permitted to write whatever they like, but content can be moderated.