We have received inquiries from our clients regarding Web 2.0 technologies. I would like to address some of these technologies and their potential impact on our client’s business here.

Web 2.0, as defined by Wikipedia, is

Web 2.0 is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web.

It is most closely associated with social networks Facebook and twitter, blogs, and web-based applications.   At the same time mobile devices and networks have made tremendous gains in data handling capacity, sophistication, and speed.  It is a nexus of high speed mobile networks and social networking, location based services (LBS), where I want to focus for this article.

While location based services such as fleet tracking have been around for a while they have historically been too expensive for most businesses to use.  Enter social networking.  Location based social networking applications like Loopt and Google’s Latitude may be instrumental in bringing LBS to a broader range of businesses.  Both of these web applications use the GPS chip in today’s cell phones along with mobile data connections to provide detailed geographic information about the cell phone user.  Ostensibly they are friend finder services.  You want to know where your friends are? Just pull up the application on your phone and it will show you their location on a map.  The applications also let you text message these friends.  Like all Web 2.0 applications they are open and collaborative.  They let the users decide how to use them.

It is  the openness and low (in some cases, free) cost of these applications that can make them useful to our clients.  For example, suppose you run a business that has people in the field.  It could be vending machine restocking or copier repair.  In all likelihood you field folks have cell phones.  You could uses these LBS applications to dispatch or keep track of your field people.  If one of your technicians need a part for a broken copier he could pull up Loopt, see what other technician is close, and call or message her to see if she has one on the truck.  That is much better than running back to the shop for a replacement.  Your technician wastes less time and you customer is up and running faster – everybody is happier.

This is just one example of how Web 2.0 can solve business problems.  Let us help you explore other ways new technologies can benefit your business.