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Chapter 7 Telecommunications, the Internet, and Wireless Technology 305

Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, pulls specified content from
Web sites and feeds it automatically to users’ computers. RSS reader software
gathers material from the Web sites or blogs that you tell it to scan and brings
new information from those sites to you. RSS readers are available through Web
sites such as Google and Yahoo, and they have been incorporated into the major
Web browsers and e-mail programs.
Blogs allow visitors to add comments to the original content, but they do not
allow visitors to change the original posted material. Wikis, in contrast, are
collaborative Web sites where visitors can add, delete, or modify content on the
site, including the work of previous authors. Wiki comes from the Hawaiian
word for “quick.”
Wiki software typically provides a template that defines layout and elements
common to all pages, displays user-editable software program code, and then
renders the content into an HTML-based page for display in a Web browser.
Some wiki software allows only basic text formatting, whereas other tools allow
the use of tables, images, or even interactive elements, such as polls or games.
Most wikis provide capabilities for monitoring the work of other users and
correcting mistakes.
Because wikis make information sharing so easy, they have many business
uses. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security
Center (NCSC) deployed a wiki to facilitate collaboration among federal agen-
cies on cybersecurity. NCSC and other agencies use the wiki for real-time infor-
mation sharing on threats, attacks, and responses and as a repository for tech-
nical and standards information. Pixar Wiki is a collaborative community wiki
for publicizing the work of Pixar Animation Studios. The wiki format allows
anyone to create or edit an article about a Pixar film.
Social networking sites enable users to build communities of friends and
professional colleagues. Members typically create a “profile,” a Web page for
posting photos, videos, MP3 files, and text, and then share these profiles with
others on the service identified as their “friends” or contacts. Social networking
sites are highly interactive, offer real-time user control, rely on user-generated
content, and are broadly based on social participation and sharing of content
and opinions. Leading social networking sites include Facebook, Twitter (with
1 billion and 140 million active users respectively in 2012), and LinkedIn (for
professional contacts).
For many, social networking sites are the defining Web 2.0 application, and
one that has radically changed how people spend their time online; how people
communicate and with whom; how business people stay in touch with cus-
tomers, suppliers, and employees; how providers of goods and services learn
about their customers; and how advertisers reach potential customers. The
large social networking sites are also morphing into application development
platforms where members can create and sell software applications to other
members of the community. Facebook alone has over 1 million developers who
created over 550,000 applications for gaming, video sharing, and communicat-

ing with friends and family. We talk more about business applications of social
networking in Chapters 2 and 10, and you can find social networking discus-
sions in many other chapters of this book. You can also find a more detailed
discussion of Web 2.0 in our Learning Tracks.

Web 3.0: The Future Web
Every day, about 120 million Americans enter 600 million queries into search
engines (about 17 billion per month). How many of these 600 million queries
produce a meaningful result (a useful answer in the first three listings)?

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