| One of the key characteristics of Web 2.0 is | | | | general site maintenance. It gets better when the |
| participation, collaboration and moderation through the | | | | webmaster can promote participants into moderators |
| use of web applications. Web 2.0 sites derive their | | | | themselves, and more and more s/he becomes the |
| power from the human connections and network | | | | "silent puppetmaster" behind the scene without doing |
| effects from this characteristic that is made possible, | | | | much. It may not be easy, but the whole mindset of |
| and grow in effectiveness the more people use | | | | being a moderator is to gain confidence in just "letting |
| them. | | | | it be" and letting his/her site runs by itself. |
| The idea of "participation, collaboration and | | | | Now that the webmaster's motivation is addressed, s |
| moderation" can take many forms. If you look back | | | | he must find ways to avoid competition by finding |
| history, bulletin boards are one form, online forums | | | | new twists to contribute to the Web 2.0 bandwagon. |
| are another, online multiplayer games, content | | | | Much as new sites keep popping up in recent |
| management systems (e.g. Wikis, Joomla), dating | | | | months, somehow no 2 sites are made the same |
| sites and classifieds as well. If not for features that | | | | and they certainly enjoy a good amount of traffic |
| enable multiple users to create their own space within | | | | anyway. It would be better when you can boil down |
| a website via registering accounts or at least leave a | | | | social networking to the context of a specific niche, |
| message (like a comment in a blog), the | | | | like a site to exchange Mexican recipes or talk about |
| communication culture would have been one-way | | | | Ferrari car accessories or business opportunities in |
| (from the webmaster to the visitors) and remain | | | | Central Asia. You can better target the type of |
| stuck in 1.0. | | | | people you are looking for and it also gives them a |
| Why would a webmaster want to go Web 2.0? We | | | | sharper sense of purpose to engage with and within |
| learned that social networkers want to expand their | | | | your site. |
| personal network of online friends. On the other | | | | At the end of the day, social networking is all about |
| hand, the webmaster desires to build up a core group | | | | sharing valuable content and making friends. The |
| of active participants who unconsciously help to | | | | successful Web 2.0 webmaster is one who knows |
| sustain the 'liveliness' and therefore the longevity of | | | | how to tap on this human desire to the fullest and |
| the website and its agenda or interests while the | | | | consistently encourages such a desire to grow within |
| overall database of users expand. In this manner, a | | | | the culture of the social network he has created by |
| lot of the effort that goes into building the database | | | | offering further privileges for more prominent |
| (or list) becomes very much hands-off for the | | | | members. Really, there's no better way for them to |
| webmaster. There's leverage. This is also where | | | | build up credibility and make their personalities known |
| moderation comes in. The role of the webmaster | | | | than to be consistently 'alive' and 'happening' on the |
| naturally becomes that of the moderator, whose job | | | | Net. From the SEO standpoint of view, you can also |
| is to maintain some semblance of order (but not to | | | | accumulate more backlinks and subsequently more |
| the point of creating a restrictive environment) and | | | | traffic to your social networking site. |