Web 2.0 Is the French Revolution of Cyber-Space

Web 2.0 is the French Revolution of cyber-space. The traditional sources of print media, such as television and newspapers, only allowed for one-way communication. Web 2.0 has revolutionized the world of business; not only are sellers able to market and advertise their product, they are also able to receive quick feedback from customers. The traditional method of receiving feedback from customers involved keeping a diary or a register, which customers would fill out after receiving their product or service. However, the use of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ has completely changed the face of customer feedback. Now that customers can post feedback about certain businesses on social media networks, the feedback is visible to hundreds of people, which can either help or hinder the running of a business.

Facebook's Open Graph Initiative was introduced in April of 2012. It enables users to share their activities on another website back on their Facebook profile. Facebook users are now able to exchange information regarding their activities on other websites with their family and friends on Facebook. The Open Graph Initiative also offers social plug-ins, such as the 'Like' button. Facebook users can 'like' each other's comments, activities, posts, pages; customers can 'like' pictures of products on the pages of businesses, which can help a business accumulate useful data, such as which product is most popular among the masses, etc.

Another interesting plug-in is the 'Share', whereby Facebook users can share activities, status updates, pictures, and videos with their family and friends. Videos go viral on Facebook; a video posted by one user is shared so much that it is viewed by thousands of users, thanks to 'share' feature. Using Open Graph Initiative, Facebook has made every website social; using the above mentioned plug-ins, users are able to share articles, videos, and pictures of their interest with their contacts on Facebook.

Just like everything else, Facebook's Open Graph Initiative has its pros and cons. In the old days, people had to download and save every article, picture, and video they liked. With Facebook's revolutionary features, just 'like-ing' an article, picture, or video, saves it to the user's timeline. Previously, if people wanted to share something with their contacts, they had to send it to every person by email; however, now, everything a person reads, or 'likes' is visible to his contacts. Another useful thing that this feature can do is that it saves a user's preferences and choices, which can help websites display things of that particular interest to the user.

Despite all the good stuff, there are also a few negative aspects of these features. The Open Graph Initiative displays a user's information, such as name, gender, age, interests, to third parties; although on one hand, it is helpful in determining consumer preferences, it can also be used for identity theft. The private space of users has been intruded by third party applications. Although Facebook has privacy settings that can be adjusted, the settings are so complicated that they can be difficult to adjust. For lazy users, this can pose a problem, as their information, list of contacts, and all shared content is visible to many other people than there are on their contact list. Open Graph Initiative enables users to share all their experiences and activities, even on other sites, on their Facebook profile; while some of the content may be interesting, there may be some content that will bore or annoy an individual's contacts. Open Graph Initiative floods the user with too much information (Pros and Cons of Facebook's Open Graph Initiative), which can cause the user to shut down the account; because, Facebook no longer serves as a place to interact with friends, rather, it becomes a place where there is too much information, often irrelevant.

A mashup is a web application that uses content from more than one source to create a single new service displayed in a single graphical interface. For example, you could combine the addresses and photographs of your library branches with a Google map to create a map mashup. The term mashup originally comes from pop music, where people seamlessly combine music from one song with the vocal track from another -- thereby mashing them together to create something new (Fichter).

Mashup applications are exploding on the web, as internet companies like Google, Yahoo!, and Amazon combine their data with other websites' data to help users. A map mashup is one of the most popular mashups available; Summer of Green is a mashup application developed by Google, which shows vacation spots that are environmentally friendly. SongDna is another mashup application, which combines all the information about a particular song, such as how well it played on pop charts, who composed it, who wrote the lyrics, and other such information (Chandler). The Tracktor is another example of a mashup application that helps users of Amazon compare price and other details of similar products to help them make the best choice.