A discussion about the software industry and their coders

The 2.0 version number of the Web 2.0 is not a mere marketing slogan as some claim. Besides various areas outlined by Tim O'Reilly in his seminal write-up; Web 2.0 is very importantly about the social interactions, participation, even emergence of individuals like you and me on the Web. The proof is in the numbers. Content created by individuals is driving web-traffic like crazy!

Leslie Walker's article "New Trends in Online Traffic" on The Washington Post reports that the growth rate of traffic at Web 2.0 sites focused around Blogging, Social Networking and Local Information is blazing past GYM's. I am not surprised. According to statistics provided by ComScore Media Metrix in the article Yahoo, Google and MSN had a traffic increase of 5%, 21%, and 1% respectively from the period Feb 05 to 06. However, traffic gains of Web 2.0 sites left GYM in dust!

Specifically, the growth of traffic on the Blogging site Blogger.com (acquired by Google) is a stunning 528%. Myspace.com (acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation) a virtual community site frequented mainly by teenagers saw traffic grow by 318%. Wikipaedia.org the online encyclopedia had a traffic growth of 275%.

Although Yahoo! has assumed a leading role in acquiring Web 2.0 companies like Flickr and delicious and talking big about Social Search, it has not yet come up with a satisfactory blogging product.

Yahoo 360 is measly in comparison to Google's Blogger in terms of popularity; even though 360 has lots of extra functionality besides plain blogging. Yahoo 360 does not even compare well with MySpace in terms of popularity even though 360 is a social networking product quite similar to MySpace. Integration with the wildly popular Yahoo Messenger has also not helped 360. Makes me wonder why Yahoo! is allowing Google (read Blogger.com) and MSN (read MSN spaces) to power ahead and gain credibility in the Blogosphere? Blogger after all lead the traffic growth among Web 2.0 sites.