What is Web 2.0 ?

Web 2.0 has revolutionized the use of the Internet over the last years, releasing among Internet users a thirst for participation which was, to this day, hampered by the technological means available.

These new participatory practices have put the user at the heart of information, because he has become a producer and a broadcaster of its own information and took control of it through widespread social networks.

Some new counter-powers have appeared as much in opposition to traditional business actors as governmental organizations, and they have made possible a new form of collective intelligence thanks to the three major concepts that are:

• User-generated content
• Mass collaboration
• Cloud comptuing

Today, apply the Web 2.0 principles and tools to any type of business is not only possible but essential to development and competitiveness. It is necessary to consider how to transform  business and how to create a privileged relationship with users or customers to better innovate, meet demand, and grow.

For a new user relationship

In a Business 2.0 approach, the customer or the traditional user of a company providing a product or a service can not be processed anymore through descending communication channels .

The strike force that Internet communities (which are formal or informal) constitute, drawing from a background of hundreds of millions of users, makes a brand may be created or destroyed in a few days or weeks. There’s no lack of examples of societies having neglected the interaction with their users and having received tremendous counter-shocks following online disclosure of their products’ defects.

A modern strategy of relationship with users should make it possible therefore to create a participatory eco-system where the company is the heart and its users actors. From this constant and transparent interaction will uprise innovation, competitiveness and loyalty, major edges in a fast-changing economic world.

Agility, continuous experimentation , communities, participation, feedback, … are the new strategic vectors around which products and services must be built, with users still in the heart of the process. The tools to support these approaches now exist thanks to web 2.0 and have been massively adopted by hundreds of millions of people. Therefore, such a revolution in the relationship with users can’t be taken by any company without consideration.