Web 2.0: MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and More

Introducing the Web 2.0 Technology Environment to the Catholic web site developer

For some Catholic web site developers who have known the Web as a means to email, join lists, surf for information, use the search engines, and download free software and applications, the Web 2.0 technology environment is something remarkably new and progressive. Before this newly evolved Web, Catholic web developers created mainly static web pages to share information. Now they are called to engage in sharing information also through various social networking activities: photo sharing, bookmark sharing, link sharing and home video sharing. This new technology has made it easier to post documents and files to a shared blog, and to publish a lot of multimedia content through a rss feed.

Introducing selected sites of this new technology environment

Gmail had set the pace of this new Web environment with a new type of web mail. With Gmail, you get more storage. You can also search from among your received e-mail messages through Gmail's search application. And, as you are given the opportunity to organize e-mail messages with tag-like labels, this makes it even easier to access them through the web mail's search button. It is a perfect web mail service for any Catholic web developer who wants all of his e-mails placed in storage for record purposes. For those who take more time online, Gmail also added chat, so that you can communicate with an e-mail contact once the contact is indicated as online. Gmail http://mail.google.com/

Another site that represents this new direction in the Web is Delicious.com. This site is one of the social bookmarking sites where people can share useful bookmarks - favorite web pages or sites that they are interested in, and want to share them also to others. When you bookmark a web page or a site at Delicious.com, Delicious will give a statistic and indicate how many have also bookmarked that web page or site. And as you also make tags (important key words) for your bookmarks, you will know others who have bookmarked the web page or site through those tags. Delicious.com http://delicious.com/

Diigo.com http://www.diigo.com/ and Bloglines http://www.bloglines.com/ are also social bookmarking sites.

Tip for Catholic web developers:
You can place a button on any page of your site or blog so that people can easily add your site in their favorite social bookmarking site(s). An example of this social bookmarking button is given below. The script for this button is available at www.seocentro.com

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/

I started as a Catholic web developer using mainly Web 1.0 technology in the year 2002. However, after discovering Facebook.com in June 2008, I was able to connect with family, relatives in the USA, and classmates of Catholic schools I attended or graduated from. Using the site is easy. To register, just give your e-mail address and its password, and then your first potential friends at Facebook are the people whose addresses you have saved in your e-mail contacts section. As as you then add the schools and colleges you graduated from as "networks", Facebook will indicate through their "People You May Know" feature, persons who also attended or graduated from the same schools as you did. (Another good social networking site, MySpace www.myspace.com)

"The New, Improved Web"

There are other sites that joined this new technology environment where there is a lot of interactivity and sharing. PC World Magazine http://www.pcworld.com/, February 2006 edition, featured these other sites in their article, "New, Improved Web", (by Scott Spanbauer). They have introduced these sites according to the following categories: web mail, web work sites, online organizers, collaboration and community, photo sharing, bookmark sharing, video sharing, search and maps. Author Spanbauer however cautions the surfer to be conservative in the use of these sites as many of them are still in experimental stage (beta) and may have possible security risks.

• Web Mail: Gmail, Windows Live
• Web Work Sites: JotSpot, ThinkFree, Writeboard, Google Docs
• Online Organizers: Backpack, Basecamp, HipCal, Planzo, Milk
• Collaboration and Community: Yahoo 360, Opera, Friendster
• Photo Sharing: Flickr, Picaboo
• Bookmark Sharing: Digg, Flock, LibraryThing, My Web 2.0
• Video Sharing: Blip.tv, ClipShack, Google Video, Ourmedia.org, YouTube
• Search and Maps: Odeo, Rollyo, Technorati, Wink, Google Earth, Geobloggers.com, Maplandia.com, Trulia, TerraServer, Yahoo Maps
• Microblogging site: Twitter

Additional note:

This introduction can help Catholic web developers learn more about Web 2.0 technology and its potential as a good social networking tool to promote a Catholic site and blog. Of all the sites listed above, I highly recommend the following Web 2.0 sites: Gmail, Delicious.com, Diigo.com, Bloglines, and Facebook. These are good Web 2.0 sites. You can also check the others as you see how they can be integrated for Catholic web development purposes.

Dennis Emmanuel Cabrera
Web Developer Methods
www.c-web-developer.net

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