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...that's right, we're about to publish a new one, in association with our friends Text100.  It's gonna focus on the challenges and opportunities offered by 'Web 2.0' for professional marketeers and communicators.  Along the way we hope to dispel some of the common misconceptions surrounding the whole '2.0' bandwagon, and offer some best practise advice on how to communicate better on the web using the best of what '2.0' has to offer.

Here's a snippet (early draft!):

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What’s the Point?

So, let’s define what Web 2.0 is. 

To date, the best description we’ve found is by web developer and blogger Ian Davis.  In his words, Web 2.0 is “an attitude rather than a technology. It’s about enabling and encouraging participation through open applications and services.”  By this definition, ‘participation’ means the ability to contribute, share, mix and publish both data (technology) and ideas (content) through today’s web applications and services.  Practical examples include the ability to post a photo from your smartphone in response to a BBC News article on their web site.  Or taking the Google Maps API and mixing this up with some of your own code to produce a site that can predict the average cost of a New York Taxi Cab fare.  Or responding to a blog, or posting an MMS video on YouTube or a photo on Flickr.

As Davis points out, the ability to contribute, take, remix and repost is a step back in time to the spirit of good old Internet 1.0 – where the birth of the networked hyperlink “encouraged participation from the start.”  What’s happened in between times is that we’ve managed to apply traditional modes of communication through the medium – eg, webcasts (read conferences), banner ads (read TV ads), email spam (read direct mail), etc – and lose our way a little.  Any example of ‘broadcast’ communications on the web fundamentally misses the opportunity to exploit its connectedness, cost-effectiveness and scale.  And so Web 2.0 is offering a ‘back to the future’ style path upon which we can really exploit the Information Super Highway. 

Our point here is that rather than being born of pure inspiration, the best of Web 2.0 is created out of frustration – from the lessons learned since the bubble burst last time around.  IM is a response to email; XML, XHTML and CSS is a response to the knowledge that no single application framework will dominate the web; Social tagging and social content forums are a response to the failure of mega content networks (ie, mainstream media's efforts in this space).  As such, today’s innovation is predicated on a realisation that the connected, chaotic nature of the web is something to be embraced, not restricted.  AOL/Time Warner fails.  YouTube wins.  The future is all about creating ‘open’ web platforms and services, and standing back and letting the public loose on them.….Which of course is anathema to the way in which communication networks have been run until now.

Communications 2.0

OK, so if Web 2.0 is an attitude towards doing stuff on the web, underpinned by the provision of services that empower people to do their own thing, then let’s take a look at why this is useful for us as communicators…. 

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....I'm hoping it's gonna be of use.  Any feedback is wellcome!  Tell me what you think...