A lot of coverage has been given to the new breed of websites or 'Web 2.0' as it has been imaginatively dubbed, entering the public conscience. With Google paying handsomely for youtube and Rupert Murdoch buying Myspace in order to twist and convert the minds of the next generation, what will this new horizon mean for us slow witted luddites just catching up with the news?

User Generated Content Is King

To cut a long story short, Web 2.0 is all about exploiting the need for lonely people worldwide, desperate to express themselves by way of blogs, forums, and personal web spaces. Rather than spend days, weeks and months wasting your time providing useful content yourself on your website - open things up and let the users write there own ill advised, rambling, poorly written content. Hey presto you've created a 'community'

Follow the Herd

Web 2.0 will mean novel ideas, interesting websites and unfortunate individuals caught shagging dogs by a work colleague will soon be viewed globally by millions of people thanks to bookmarking sites such as digg and del.icio.us that act as a popular benchmark of things other people find hilarious and by default you will find the need to have a look at as well.

Close with a Sale

Another big difference between Web 1.0 as it shall now have to be known and Web 2.0 is the abscense of any tangible product to sell. Back in the salad days of 2000-20001 any fool knew that they could set up a website attract backing from some high flying city investor and sit back for six months despite having only sold one pair of matching moleskin slippers. With Web 2.0 your objective is not to actually sell anything but moreover to attract people or 'users' hungryfor a fix of 'new media' to your website. The trick is finding enough people and making sure they come back regularly. I think some degree of Web 1.0 style pornography or gambling must therefore be a mainstay ingredient for anyone seriously adopting the Web 2.0 model. Once your website is attracting regular ammounts of people it's time to sell on to one of the big boys who will then have the unenviable task of trying to find a way of making money out of your idea. Good Luck to them.

Web 3.0 The next Generation

So should you play your hand now or wait until next spring when the 3rd generation or Web 3.0 applications are due to be rolled out? It's a tough call, while many of us are beavering away tapping endless garbage into web pages in a vain hope of the search engines picking some of it up, there are already plans afoot to remove large swathes of all this guff from the internet and replace it with something more deep and meaningful. What that is we shall all have to wait and see. Personally I'd like to see some 3d virtual reality documentaries on Funkadelic or Sly and the Family Stone if thats not too much to ask?

So then in a nutshell, Web 2.0, should you be worried? Yes, big time! If you're not feeling the slightest bit paniced and paranoid then sorry my friend it's already over - you're outta here, you're down the pooper. If you've got a succesful website selling merchandise then you're yesterdays news, I don't want to hear about it - boooooooring. Ditch the stock, upload some videos of office workers 'goofing' around and get on the Web 2.0 bandwagon before it's too late.