The BBC has reported that Web 2.0 is set for a massive boost from major enterprises over the next 5 years, as a new Forrester survey shows that over half of American and European businesses are setting social networking as a top priority. This news coincides with The Web 2.0 conference held in San Francisco last week, which hosted developers and businesses who are introducing new web technologies to maximize customer-employee relations online.

“The report found that consumer giants such as General Motors, McDonald’s, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance and Wells Fargo Bank will drive much of this growth and have already embraced tools like blogs, RSS feeds, podcasting and social networking.

Analyst Oliver Young estimates that another 56% of North American and European companies regard Web 2.0 to be a priority in 2008.

Forrester analysed seven Web 2.0 categories: blogs, mashups, podcasting, RSS, social networking, widgets and wikis. Of these, social networks will attract the greatest levels of investment but even then that will be dwarfed by the multi million dollar revenues the software industry commands”.

The article suggests that social networks themselves are attracting the most attention, as Web 2.0 developers are looking towards user fees from businesses to replace advertising revenue as their central monetization method.

The professional interest in Web 2.0 shown at last week’s event in San Francisco has many bloggers and developers excited, as increased interest in products, software and applications has the industry eyeing a $5 billion dollar boost from companies by 2013.

As the big boys move in and the capitalize on the very latest in web development and interactivity, avid bloggers are getting a sneak peak at the trends and gadgets that are set to transform how we use the web. This boon to the industry certainly has us at Apollo excited!

Were you at the conference? Feel free to share your experiences!


For more information about The Web 2.0 Conference, you can head over to

http://en.oreilly.com/webexsf2008/public/content/home