Web 2.0?

Apparently you learn something new everyday. I am unsure if this statement is true but I do know that I definitely did learn something on Tuesday 13th March at around 9.30am. It was at this time that I first heard of a concept alien to my ears.... 'Web 2.0'.

Since that fateful day I have been reading up on the concept mainly in the form of articles in PR Week and blogs wrote by Tim O'Reilly. I realise that I might be a bit slow with regards to picking up on this concept considering a posting by O'Reilly dates back to 2005 and he believes that it originated as far back as the dotcom crash of 2001.

I hold the opinion that Web2.0 is simply a new business buzz word which will fade into the distance, however the concept behind it will remain and continue to grow in momentum but as a young ambitious PR student should I be ignoring all of what I have been taught in the past 5 years about segmenting markets, stakeholder analysis, target messages etc etc?

According to Ashley Carr, MD of the ITPR group, (Carr, Ashley; 23rd February 2007, "...and blogs have yet to be proven PR-wise" PR Week, pp19) if blogs do not support an existing strategy, do not complicate things because as yet this is an unproven tactic. This is my belief with the entirety of Web 2.0, the usefulness and success rate of the majority of the components of this concept are yet to be measured and proven and should therefore not be relied on. This is backed up by the recent survey conducted by KPMG which illustrated 72% of 3000 people interviewed still use television and newspapers as their primary source of news. (Houlgate, Gavin; 9 March 2007, "Don't rush into a new media trap" PR Week, pp 16).

I am fully aware that I will have to swot up on the new media available to PROs however I do not think the time has come to start throwing away all of my textbooks and notes and begin ignoring all that I have been taught.

As a final note I would encourage all universities teaching marketing and public relations related courses to find a way to educate their students on emerging media formats as if it was not for the technology elective I am studying then I would never have heard of these new emerging concepts even after studying marketing at a highly accredited university for 4 years.

Debz

The links below will hopefully be of use to anyone reading this.

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
www.prweek.com/uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2