By Tim Young

Web 2.0: It's a term that's been floating around with ever-increasing frequency since Tim O'Reilly and company brought it into the spotlight in 2004. It's the move from the web as a one-way street to a two way street. Oreillynet.com gives the examples of moving from Britannica Online to Wikipedia. From Ofoto to Flickr. From taxonomy to folksonomy. From publishing to participation.

It's the web moving from prescriptive to descriptive. It's a platform.

I'll admit it. Writing about Web 2.0 in a business publication is akin to pitching an indie rock band to an ad agency. Sure, it's good business. It's lucrative. However, it feels strange and somewhat awkward to be so cut and dried about the possibilities of companies that represent a more democratic version of the web. Web 2.0 companies are often the brainchildren of the young and brash. They aren't always created with profit in mind, but they are certainly capable of producing it. Perhaps it's naive, but it's easy to feel like the square who has found the keys to the hot rod.

Because Web 2.0 is different. Perhaps not in terms of content or makeup. Tim Berners-Lee famously posits that the whole idea of Web 2.0 being referred to as something new and different is wrong-headed, as some of the components have existed for as long as the Internet has. However, never before have they been so accessible.

Web 2.0 isn't going anywhere. Telecommunications companies need to "get" it, and soon. There are two things that telecommunications companies need to "get" when it comes to Web 2.0: Enabling it and capitalizing on it.