Revolution 2.1

The second Internet revolution has clearly started to take shape. Remember the massive changes forecast by hundreds of tech-writers, including myself, for the past two years? While slower in coming than expected, the last critical stage for their mass adoption of these changes, their introduction, appears to have begun. Welcome to Revolution 2.1. Revolution, according to one definition offered by google.com/ig ) though its layout and functionality is very much different. Oddly enough, the release and functionality of Windows Live is not in itself an important milestone. Their contribution to Revolution 2.1 is the adoption of a user and/or group influenced personalization of information retrieval by the major search entities. Being the second to offer registered users the ability to create their own info-portal home page, Microsoft is pretty much ensuring that, assuming users go for it; others will follow the model in the future. Microsoft also released Yahoo Publisher Network is a massive initiative in grassroots publishing that Yahoo hopes will be adopted by citizen journalists and commercial publishers. YPN is an amalgam of what will eventually be dozens of Yahoo features and services with the ability to create and mass-distribute blogs. Yahoo leads the search field in the provision of in-house and user generated content for bloggers through the YPN. It also offers advertising distribution incentives similar to Google AdSense for YPN publishers. Over the past ten years, two general types of information have emerged from the Internet. One type is academic or social in focus and the other is commercial or politically focused. The first wants to learn and share, the second to lead and sell. Up until this point, both have existed in tandem, pretty much treated equally by search engines and Internet protocols. Quite often, at least in the realm of general search, the commercial side has exploited this equality, (SEOs and SEMs can insert a polite but self-effacing cough here), sometimes pushing quality but non-commercial information lower in search results than it ought to be. Concurrently, a new generation of software engineers grew up. Unlike previous generations, this new bunch has always had computers and the Internet as functioning parts of their lives. These teen and early 20-somethings relate to the Internet differently than their parents and even their older peers do. Like 30-something Gen-X'ers and their love-hate relationship with PR, mass marketing and advertising, today's younger net-user doesn't necessarily trust everything he or she sees online. Unlike previous generations however, this young set can immediately do something about it. Necessity is the mother of invention and frustration is often the muse of innovation. The Internet gave these teen and 20-something innovators the platform to build better mousetraps on and the ability to do so almost instantly. That's what the hype surrounding Web2.0 is all about. What they have created is a set of extremely interesting social networking and communication devices that rely on the input and acceptance of Internet users. On the academic front, the Friendster , MySpace , LinkedIn . Lastly, we need to start adding features such as Yahoo's MyWeb button or Google XML sitemaps to client sites to aid in their transition to the new web being weaved in Revolution 2.1. The funny thing about revolutions, especially ones that get played out without a coherent plan that has the full consent of the people, is that unexpected developments happen. The Internet as we know it today is a prime example. Back in the late 1970's and early 1980's, nobody could have predicted the massive social and economic changes brought about by the rise of the public Internet. Flash ahead thirty years to today. Anything can happen and the web that comes from today's changes will be far more functional. It will incorporate traditional media such as TV and newspapers and allow users access to tools used to create traditional programming. The revolution has been brewing over the past two years. Ever since a functioning business model based on paid-advertising turned tiny contextually delivered three-line ads into pure profit, software designers have been churning out a series of "killer apps" hoping the suddenly super-wealthy search engines would buy them or futures-hungry venture capitalists would fund them. For those who were successful in the development and those of us about to benefit from their success, the next Internet revolution has begun. Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of