What Does Web 2.0 Mean For 150M China Net Users?

[ChinaValue Beijing 2007-4-23]--As the only on-site “uniquely” China-based media observer, ChinaValue (www.chinavalue.net) participated in the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, April 15^th ~18^th 2007. The revolutionary seed that Tim O’Reilly planted several years ago is now an evolving worldwide giant web tree.

In this Web 2.0 conference, surprisingly, we noticed many big corporate giants also in attendance who defined the infrastructure building blocks of the Web1.0 era. Acting in roles as distinct complementary parts of the whole Internet ecosystem, both Web1.0 and Web 2.0 players covered a spectrum of exciting and engaging topics, such as social applications, high performance web pages, search engine optimization, mobile Web 2.0, and syndication.

For the 150M Net users in China, these characteristics of Web 2.0 mean a lot: openness, sharing, peer contributions, and decentralization. In China, in decades past, there was no real community defined in terms of citizen autonomy because Chinese society was under a fully planned economic system. To date, thanks to the Internet, things are changing dynamically and dramatically. Web2.0 is here demonstrating a new beginning; a more self-organized, rational, democratic and low-cost cyber society.