The ideas and concepts that make up Web 2.0 offer enterprises real opportunities to improve collaboration and communication. The basic concept of Web 2.0 is one of end-user empowerment; replacing a rigid set of standalone applications with a Web-based framework allowing end users to self-organize as they create, control and share content using the Web as the medium for communication. In effect, Web 2.0 brings the "internet" architecture based on dumb network and smart endpoints to the application layer.
A key characteristic of Web 2.0 is leveraging social networks to aid in problem-solving and information management. Some of the more popular Web 2.0 applications include:
• Blogs, which allow individuals to easily post to an on-line journal, with comment systems as well as links between posts on different forums.
• Wikis, user-editable Web pages that came to prominence through sites such as Wikipedia, and which offer anyone the ability to easily create and edit a Web page.
• RSS (Really Simple Syndication), which takes information from sites such as wikis and blogs and pushes it out to end-users or other Web sites.
• Community tools such as social bookmarking and tagging, which let users quickly mark or find items of interest based on how others tag content.
Source: BPM Today, http://www.bpm-today.com