A blog is simply a website that will usually ‘provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A fairly typical weblog combines text, images, and links to other weblogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many weblogs.’ according to Wikipedia.

Whilst blogs first came into being as online personal diaries, the ones that we are going to concentrate on in this article are those that are used for business of the type that are in fact now the vast majority.

Blogs have many attractions, the main one being their simplicity. Anyone who has the basic ability to use two fingers on a keyboard can begin to create their own blog, and, if you don’t believe me, would the fact that my seven year old daughter has just started her first blog help prove it?

They can also be updated as often as you like, and many people do update their blogs two or three times a day.

This means that there is a constant stream of fresh new content available on blog sites, which is the reason that blogs are fast becoming the favorite sites of the major search engines, especially Google, itself the #1 search engine.

There is no need to know anything whatsoever about website creation or scripting language to create a blog.

No matter which blogging ‘platform’ (system) you use, it is always a simple question of following a very small handful of simple instructions, and you are good to go.

And, as the Wikipedia definitions suggest, a core function of blog sites is that they invite reader input and feedback in the form of comments.

What a good blog site therefore does is start a ‘conversation’ between the blog site owner and his/her readership.

It has an inherent ability to begin building a relationship centered around a common area of interest, as expressed in the subject matter of the blog itself.

So, in simple terms, if for example you are an avid mountain climber, and start a blog about your hobby, then the chances are very good that most of the people who visit your pages will be interested in climbing mountains too.

So, all you need to do is create articles that are interesting or controversial enough to prompt your readers to comment and you have generated a discussion or debate about a subject that is close to your heart.

And, the point is that you can create your own blog about any topic under the sun, and publish it for the whole world to read literally within minutes of sitting down in front of your PC.

So, let’s extend the idea of creating a blog about mountain climbing to creating one about your business.

It may seem a little strange to be asking whether something that people have been talking about for three years exists or not, but the reason is that there is no easy-topin-down definition of what Web 2.0 actually is.

Indeed, a measure of just how difficult it is to define Web 2.0 is that it is far easier to tie down what it is not!

For example, it is not a particular type of website, although some sites (especially internet marketing product sales pages produced over the last six months or so) are becoming recognizable as Web 2.0 ‘style’ sites.

More and more of these sites are moving away from strong, garish colors in sales page backgrounds and reverting to plain white or grey backgrounds.

Whilst these are not Web 2.0 sites – there is no such ting – nevertheless, simplicity and plainness in site design is making a big comeback!

The fact is that, if there is only one factor that can be said to represent Web 2.0, it can be summed up as interactivity.

Web 2.0 is all about the idea that people should have some kind of input to the sites that they are viewing, again perhaps best described by comparison with the ‘old’ style of websites back when we had what might be called Web 1.0.

Those old style sites tended to be static - you read them and then moved on. There was no requirement for you to do anything other than read and accept the information that the site gave you.

The essence of Web 2.0 is that sites that you are viewing will invite you to do something.

So, maybe when you go to a commercial website for a big international company, the site asks you to leave comments of perhaps take a quick survey? They are asking you for feedback of some kind, whether it is on the story that you have just read, or about the site itself.

They are asking you to interact with them.

Alternatively, Web 2.0 sites can be community sites where users join and then have the ability to create their own individuals pages or ‘spaces’ within the community.

Then they have the opportunity of inviting their friends to join too.

It can also be of sites that allow viewers to post pictures, videos, sound bites, comments and questions.

Web 2.0 is also about blogs where info and feedback can be added to the sites. So, does Web 2.0 actually exist?

The answer is, who the heck knows or cares?

What clearly does exist is a movement to greater interactivity between sites and their viewers on the web. If that is Web 2.0 or nor is really pretty irrelevant as far as I can see!

However, the problem that I see with Web 2.0 is that a lot of folks far wiser and more knowledgeable than me are telling us that it is an Internet ‘revolution’.

And, like all ‘revolutions’ the tendency has been to throw away everything from the old pre-revolution days, whether good or bad.

So it is that many of the things that worked well but that unfortunately represented Web 1.0 have been forgotten or swept under the carpet in the seemingly headlong rush to unquestioningly adopt everything that is Web 2.0.

Maybe this makes me sound like a Luddite or something, but one of my objectives on this website is to show that, alongside all the modern Web 2.0 ‘stuff’, it is still an idea to turn the clock back a little, to show how some aspects of what I am calling the Web 1.0 era still work, and work well.

In particular, I believe that a lot of very valid traffic generations techniques that worked back before Web 2.0 came along can still work pretty well today, especially when combined with some techniques and ideas that are usually categorized as representing Web 2.0.

So, in a nutshell, this book is all combining the best of the old and the new, taking what worked before and what is working now in terms of driving traffic to your site, and putting them together into one cohesive plan.

It is also going to attempt to look into the future too, where the market is going to, because some pointers to the future development of online business and site traffic are already becoming fairly clear.

So, does Web 2.0 actually exist, or is it just a trendy phrase that was invented by a superb marketing specialist?

In my opinion, I would say that the true answer to that is, a bit of both!

I think that the reason that the phrase caught on is that it captures the imagination, and sounds fresh and exciting.

I also think it undeniable that interactivity is a feature of the net in a way that it certainly wasn’t three years ago.

But, just because something is fresh and new does not automatically mean that everything before is necessarily dull and stale, as this website will clearly demonstrate!