'Web Innovation' unleashes the potential of Web 2.0 Date:   Monday , December 31, 2007 What the bloody hell is Web 2.0?’’ - These were the exact words Kiruba Shanker used, as he moderated the Inaugural Round Table on ‘Web 2.0 - Fundamentals and Beyond’ in a two day Web Innovation - 2007 conference organized by Trade Fairs and Conferences International at The Hotel Grand Ashok, Bangalore on 18 and 19 December 2007. The top-notch industry experts and technology leaders present at the event shared their views on the technology and each panelist gave different and thought stimulating definitions of the technology. Managing Director of Adobe India, Naresh Gupta said, ”Web 2.0 is the technology of the future. It is the evolution of the Web. After the Dotcom bust of 2000, the real power of the Web is evolving in a user friendly and interactive way. While Web 1.0 focused on one-way communication, Web 2.0 presents a two-way communication with the user. It is about communities and conversations.” Mohit Hira, Director, Times Internet had a slightly different view. He took the example of one-way and two-way streets to explain the technology. “Web 2.0 is just like a two-way street where information flows from both the ends. It’s the technolgy which involves people to create, share, and distribute content. Here, the consumer is the editor as well as the reader.” “In a business context, it’s a transformation of the Web. Web 1.0 was only about ‘content’, while Web 2.0 is about ‘content’ and ‘commerce’. It also includes a social element where users generate and distribute content, often with freedom to share and re-use. This can result in a rise in the economic value of the Web as users can do more online,” said Krishnakumar Natarajan President and CEO, MindTree. Jaspreet Bindra, Country Manager, MSN India, Microsoft, said that Web 2.0 is just an evolution of the Internet with which the cost of producing and disrtibuting the content comes down. Apart from social networking which is hot today, one can also look at education, Bollywood, Hollywood, sports, and amongst others and come up with ideas. However the major concern which came up for discussion in the conference was the failure of Web 2.0 companies to be commercially very successful. The experts strongly opined that the new technology still has to pick up momentum on the marketing side. According to the experts, the Internet Advertising market in India is expected to touch Rs. 2,250 crore by the end of 2009. However all of this will not get converted to profits as broadband penetration is still too low in the country. The biggest obstacle for growth of Internet companies is the lack of growth of broadband connectivity. When the Internet truly opens up, Indian Internet companies will surely catch up with the international companies,” said Jaspreet Bindra. Another big obstruction for the proliferation of Internet is the language barrier. There is still a major gap between the number of English knowing users and the actual potential of the technology. The number of Internet users in India is almost stagnant since about three years and is hovering around 40 million. Even when the companies came up with regional language content they were not very successful in attracting more users, the experts said. They also predicted that local advertising will dominate the Internet market space as well, as they do in the print media. It can be expected to make up more than 50 percent of the Internet advertising market in India in the next two years. Over 45 Web 2.0 experts from leading companies like Microsoft, India Times, Yahoo!, Net Magic, SAP, Sify, Adobe, Intel, Web Trends, Aptech, Infosys, HCL, Oracle, and Cisco spoke about various aspects of this technology in the two-day conference which was attended by more than 750 delegates. More than 50 percent of the participants were from countries across the globe. The SmartTechie was one of the media sponsors of the conference.