Web 2.0 Technology and Social Networking

Web 2.0 One can hardly pick up a technology trade magazine today without encountering the phenomenon known as Web 2.0. The interactive Web, or “living Internet,” has become the foremost technology trend of 2006 with the emergence of Web sites offering interactive and rich content that leverage cutting-edge technologies such as AJAX, SML, SOA and Flash. From social networking sites such as MySpace to photo sites like Flickr to travel sites such as Kayak.com, Web 2.0 has proven itself to be a user-driven medium thus far. Businesses, meanwhile, are seeking to capitalize on new methods to deliver on the promise of a more engaging, meaningful, and useful experience that can strengthen brand loyalty. Thus far, the attention and discussion around Web 2.0 has focused largely on the front end and the flashy technologies – no pun intended – that touch the user. Below the surface, however, a pressing question resides – Is the Internet ready for Web 2.0? The reliance on Web-based applications and increased adoption of interactive content as we migrate from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 brings with it increased risk of poor overall performance or, worse yet, application failure. Retail B2C Web sites, probably the most pervasive users of this type of content, are especially at risk as they aim to provide speedy, reliable, scalable, and secure delivery while mirroring the physical in- store experience. Enterprises have long relied upon content delivery networks (CDNs) to ensure the scalability, performance, and availability of their static Web sites. Unfortunately, traditional CDNs have not evolved to meet the delivery challenges posed by today’s interactive Web 2.0 content. Rich Internet Applications Bridge the Gap A new generation of Web applications, called Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), enables rich content to be delivered to a far-reaching audience of consumers. This content is increasingly dynamic in nature, enabling an unprecedented level of interactivity and personalization. In real time, any consumer-specific information entered into these applications is passed back to the origin server to enable interaction and further personalization. For instance, consumers can be presented with geographic- and demographic-specific content, content tailored to preferences they indicate, and constantly updated content such as stock quotes, sales promotions, pricing information and news feeds. While dynamically generated content offers an unprecedented opportunity to engage with consumers, it also presents businesses with a new challenge: the richer content takes longer to load in a Web page. As site traffic increases, generating pages on-the-fly for thousands of consumers simultaneously can lead to increased delays – and even failures – in delivering content. This development, along with burgeoning broadband adoption, has forever transformed the Web and interactions between businesses and consumers. Traditional CDNs Fall Short To ensure customer loyalty and to capitalize on all revenue-generating opportunities, businesses must deliver a high-quality and reliable consumer experience without fail. While many of today’s leading businesses rely upon traditional CDNs to help them ensure fast and reliable delivery of their Web images and text, these CDNs have not evolved to support dynamic content. One key factor is the restricted geographic distribution and size of these networks – this limitation prevents CDNs from routing traffic efficiently around Internet congestion. Just as important, traditional CDNs have not developed the advanced technology needed to cache and accelerate dynamic content. Without these capabilities, traditional CDNs are unable to address the unique business requirements of transactional and highly interactive Web 2.0 sites. Key Considerations When Serving Dynamic Content In order to satisfy consumer demands and business requirements for rich, interactive content, businesses must address the unique challenges associated with the delivery of dynamic content, including: • Pre-loading dynamic content on its servers before the user requests the content. • Caching content at the edge of the Internet to offload the origin server. A large globally-distributed network can speed up delivery by caching content close to the end users. • Moving content involved in the initial downloads from the origin server to storage on the edge of the Internet. This increases the speed at which content is retrieved for delivery to requesting users. • Determining the optimal Internet path for dynamic content by avoiding Internet problem spots. In many ways, the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies and the increased use of dynamic content carry with it the same challenge that technologies such as VoIP or streaming video did before it. Their quality and degree to which they are consumed will be determined largely by the infrastructure supporting them and the pipes through which they are flowing. Web 2.0 is like the fancy new house that just got built in the neighborhood. There’s a lot to look at and take in, but someone had better check the foundation to make sure it’s built on solid ground.

Successful Social Networking and User-Generated- Content Applications: What You Need to Know Executive Summary The explosive growth of and interest in social networking is powering a new wave of rich, personalized user-generated content. As millions of broadband-enabled consumers publish content to Web sites, companies are afforded new ad-revenue and brand-building opportunities. However, to take advantage of those opportuni- ties, organizations must overcome some of the challenges—both business and technical—associated with delivering, storing, and managing significant amounts of unique and dynamic content, as well as supporting unprecedented levels of Web site traffic. This white paper provides an overview of the dramatic shift in communication brought about by social networking and discusses how some companies are already capitalizing on this revolution. The paper also explains the business and technical challenges associated with running social-networking sites, and describes how Akamai’s unique network and solutions allow organizations to more easily deploy profitable social-networking sites. Successful Social Networking and User-Generated-Content Applications Akamai Web 2.0 Table of Contents What Is Social Networking ......................................... 1 History 101 of Social Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Opportunity in Social Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Value of Social Networking for Advertising and Marketing ........ 2 Turning Traffic into Revenues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Triple-Digit Growth Rates ............................................ 3 Advertising Revenue Attracts Investments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Social Networking Presents Unique Challenges ................ 5 Retention, Revenue, and ROI ............................................ 5 Pressure for Fast Innovation ............................................. 5 Scaling the Business while Controlling Costs ............................ 5 Exercising the Right Amount of Editorial Control ....................... 6 The Akamai Network: Optimized for Social-Networking Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 High Performance Boosts Profitability ................................... 7 Retention, Revenue, and ROI: The Akamai Performance Factor ......... 8 Akamai’s Flexible Platform for Fast Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Full-featured, End-to-end Platform .................................. 8 Accelerating Dynamic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Infrastructure On Demand—Unlimited Growth Potential with Predictable Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Delivering the Busiest Sites on the Web ............................. 9 Offering Unlimited On Demand Storage ............................ 9 Closing the Review-and-Approval Loop ................................. 9 Addressing User Generated Content Concerns ......................... 10 A Case Study in Social Networking: For Friendster, Performance Pays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 About Akamai ....................................................... 13 Successful Social Networking and User-Generated-Content Applications What is Social Networking? Humans naturally form communities in the physical world around common interests, familial relationships, geographic locations, and countless other factors. People are invited into communities, seek out and join them, or stumble into them. In much the same way, social networking is fundamentally about forming communities. On the Web, powerful new ways of communicating have allowed people to exponentially expand their potential community networks. Blogs, wikis, instant messaging (IM) and chat rooms, and video and photo sharing sites have all created an enhanced networked effect among Internet users that is changing the way people communicate, where and how they congregate, and the way they seek and share information. Among all age groups, Internet users are increasingly visiting social networking sites—sites that promote networks of relationships around users and information—for entertainment and news, business relationships, consumer product reviews, connecting with friends, dating, and more. But they’re doing more than just visiting. Instead, as members contribute site content in the form of journal entries, photos, videos, and blogs, they become producers, artists, storytellers, and authors. In the end, the value of these sites is derived not from content provided by the site’s owners, but from the emergent relationships among users and the content they create and consume. History 101 of Social Networking Some may remember a startup called Geocities, which in 1995 created a site for user-generated Web pages. Envisioned as a network of Web communities, Geocities provided simple tools that enabled users to create Web pages for their personal and business sites. Geocities’ vision of user-generated content as the “killer Web app” was prescient, and perhaps ahead of its time. The Web wasn’t quite ready for the user-generated model. To a certain extent tools like instant messenger and e-mail are early forms of user-generated content. Later on, technologies like RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) invited users to create new value through their participation on Weblogs (Blogs), consumer product review sites (such as epinions.com and C|net), and classifieds sites (like eBay and Craigslist). Fast-forward to today, and a combination of forces has sparked a new Web revolution of rich, personalized user-generated content that has enabled sites like MySpace.com to grow exponentially over the last few years (see figure 1). On the consumer side, the proliferation of broadband to the home—along with widespread use of digital cameras, camera phones, MP3 Players and desktop media publishing tools— has given consumers an easy way to produce their own media. Web 2.0 technologies such as RSS, AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML), Web services, and modern, standards-compliant browsers have filled out the picture by enabling new ways to experience dynamic rich internet content and applications. 90 (millions of units: unique visitors) 84.1 Figure 1 80 79.6 The expanding assortment of digital devices combined 70 with broadband contributes to an explosion of rich media 60 content created by and for 55.6 consumers as indicated by 50 the growth of MySpace.com 45.0 (sources: Nielsen/NetRatings; 40 ComScore Media Metrix) 31.

Web 2.0 is Here—Is Your Web Infrastructure Ready? Executive Summary The shift from static business-to-consumer (B2C) Web sites to interactive B2C Web sites—essentially the evolution from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0—has paved the way for increased interactivity between businesses and consumers. Those businesses that can deliver on the promise of a more engaging, meaningful, and useful experience have the opportunity to strengthen their consumers’ loyalty to the brand. However, without being able to rapidly, reliably, and securely deliver rich interactive content, the benefits afforded by this new level of interactivity will go unrealized. Many enterprises have long relied upon content delivery networks (CDNs) to help ensure the scalability, performance, and availability of their static Web sites. Unfortunately, traditional CDNs have not evolved to meet the delivery challenges posed by today’s sophisticated interactive content. This white paper outlines today’s B2C Web site trends and explains the challenges associated with dynamic content—whether dynamically generated or the result of personalization techniques. The paper also introduces the requirements for the speedy, reliable, scalable, and secure delivery of dynamic content, so that enterprises can maximize the value of their advanced, feature-rich Web sites. Akamai Web 2.0 Table of Contents The Evolution from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 ........................ 1 Rich Internet Applications Bridge the Gap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Technology Behind Web 2.0 ......................................... 3 Why Today’s Sites Fail to Deliver .................................. 3 Infrastructure Under Pressure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Consumers Are Demanding .............................................. 3 Traditional CDNs Fall Short .............................................. 4 Key Considerations When Serving Dynamic Content ......... 4 Akamai Accelerates Web 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 About Akamai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Akamai Web 2.0 The Evolution from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 As companies increasingly rely upon their Web sites to contribute to top-line revenues and maintain brand loyalty, they are finding that sophisticated site functionality and fresh Web site content are critical to maintaining consumer interest and encouraging return visits. Fortunately, today’s Web site technologies Yahoo! 1994 support these objectives. For example, in an April 2006 eMarketer survey, 27% of U.S. online retailers said they plan to implement interactive tools and 41% intend to use personalization on their sites.1 A brief look at the evolution of the delivery of content to distributed users provides insight into the reasons that today’s Web sites offer a new level of interaction between businesses and consumers. In the 1980s, enterprises relied upon the client/server model to deliver rich content to users. A fat-client GUI played a key role in the consumption of this content. While successful in its own right, this model required a significant investment in administration and infrastructure maintenance. With the advent of the Internet in the 1990s, organizations could deliver content to a broader audience without these time-consuming and costly maintenance requirements. While the Web interface essentially served as a thin client, the ability to deliver rich content was still limited by Web technologies, Web Yahoo! 2006 browser functionality, and end user access speeds. The result is that yesterday’s Web sites were mainly composed of static content that rarely changed—each site visitor was largely a passive consumer looking for information. A closer look at the Yahoo! site offers insight into the evolution of Web content. The original home page, launched in 1994, was little more than a directory listing of hyperlinks (see figure 1). Web visitors would click on the links and read the page content—that was the extent of their online experience. Today’s Web sites, comprising a mix of static and dynamic content, are more dynamic and richer in nature, allowing site visitors to increasingly interact with site content, as evidenced by Yahoo!’s newest design, unveiled in May 2006 (see figure 1). The directory listing is now one of multiple tabs at the top of the Figure 1. Yahoo!’s site has become page. In addition to browsing everything from news to video, users have access to localized and personal- increasingly dynamic over the years ized services such as Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! Movies. Rich Internet Applications Bridge the Gap A new generation of Web applications, called Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)—created using sophisticat- ed technology such as Macromedia Flash, Flex, and AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) – enables rich content to be delivered to a far-reaching audience of consumers. According to the Patricia Seybold Group, RIAs combine the usable and desirable rich interfaces that many are accustomed to on the desktop with the reach of a distributed Web application2. This development, along with burgeoning broadband adoption (68 percent of U.S. households now enjoy broadband access3 ) has forever transformed the Web Static Content and interactions between businesses and consumers. Images & Text Static vs. Dynamic Content • Static content: Static content is typically text and images served as is from cache to a requesting browser. • Dynamic content: Dynamic content changes—due to a program or script—at the time it is requested by the site visitor. Dynamic content, some of which is cacheable, can include personalized content based on information provided by, or known about, the site visitor. Increasingly, businesses are deploying these rich applications, which consumers interact with directly through their Web browsers. In fact, rich Internet applications have begun to dominate leading Web sites (see figure 1). According to Gartner, by 2010, at least 60 percent of new application development Static Content Images & Text projects will include RIA technology, and at least 25 percent of those will rely primarily on RIAs.2 Dynamic Content Interactive 1 Akamai Web 2.0 This richer content is increasingly dynamic in nature, enabling an unprecedented level of interactivity and personalization. In real time, any consumer-specific information entered into these applications is passed back to the Web infrastructure to enable interaction, further personalization, and compelling marketing offers. For instance, consumers can be presented with geographic- and demographic-specific content, content that is tailored to preferences they indicate, surveys and contests, and constantly updated content such as stock quotes, sales promotions, and news feeds, to name a few. Figure 2. Content is more dynamic and interactive in the age of Web 2.0 The Technology Behind Web 2.0 Whether these applications are developed using Macromedia Flex, Macromedia Flash, or AJAX, they share common characteristics: when site visitors first load their browsers, an advanced client-side Internet applica- tion or engine is also downloaded.