Introduction

Web 2.0, while arguably overly hyped in the media, presents a powerful new opportunity for African organizations to make more effective use of their often limited Internet connections. Thanks to dynamic and user-friendly Web 2.0 services and tools, organizations can now more easily create a stable and up-to-date presence on the Internet, establish lasting and useful relationships with like minded organizations around the world and join a global conversation on issues and concerns dear to them.

The purpose of the Web 2.0 guide is to provide an overview for Kabissa members and other stakeholders seeking to harness Web 2.0 to strengthen and empower civil society organizations in Africa and around the world.

The guide introduces the concepts and terminology of Web 2.0 and then goes on to provide a resource bank where we showcase Web 2.0 applications developed in Africa for Africans including local ISPs and Blogs; a Glossary of Web 2.0 terms such as Blogosphere, Folksonomy and Tag Cloud; a general list of relevant Web 2.0 websites and resources.

WHY CIVIL SOCIETY?

Kabissa is particularly interested in working with African Civil Society Organizations since they have a critical role to play in promoting positive change in their communities. The concept of Civil Society is not in wide currency, so we provide here a definition from the website of the LSE Centre for Civil Society:

"Civil society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values. In theory, its institutional forms are distinct from those of the state, family and market, though in practice, the boundaries between state, civil society, family and market are often complex, blurred and negotiated. Civil society commonly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors and institutional forms, varying in their degree of formality, autonomy and power. Civil societies are often populated by organisations such as registered charities, development non-governmental organisations, community groups, women's organisations, faith-based organisations, professional associations, trades unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy groups."

Understanding Web 2.0

So what is Web 2.0? Put most simply, Web 2.0 is the name given not to a new version of the web, but to the new way people use the web. No longer do people go on the web expecting to merely access information provided by others. Everyone can expect to comment on what they read, change it, rate it, and put up information of their own - all using dynamic and user-friendly features on the websites they visit.

Millions of people throughout the world are now using the web to engage with one another and collaborate very actively on all sorts of activities. They are sharing music, videos, print-ready photographs and of course text, also known as content. They now approach the Internet not just as a place to go find useful information but as a social place as well where they can make and develop relationships, network professionally and socially, and create an image for themselves. So Web 2.0 might also be called the "read-write web".

What Makes A Great Web 2.0 Website

The best Web 2.0 websites appear to share the following seven characteristics:

1. Clear purpose and real utility
2. Creates a community around that purpose
3. Free to use or very affordable (usually tiered pricing with free lowest tier of service)
4. Easy and fun to join and use
5. Connects to or builds on other Web 2.0 sites
6. Allows anonymous (or pseudonymous) use
7. Contributors own and control their content and identity

The three sites mentioned above, Wikipedia, Flickr and Global Voices all share these characteristics for example.

Flickr: Provides storage for amateur and professional photographers, anybody with a digital camera interested in sharing photos. Encourages community building around topics, themes and geography.

A fast, user-friendly interfaces for adding titles or comments, managing photos and using photos in creative ways. Flickr provides a service to reproduce your photos onto mats, mugs, t-shirts and so on.

Global Voices: A sophisticated content rich aggregator of blogs with daily and weekly roundups from regions across the globe as well as podcasts and videocasts. Allows visitors to begin reading right away using a familiar online newspaper format, but also provides a useful set of tools for drilling down into the content by theme, country, blogger or other methods.

Connects to many thousands of blog sites around the world by drawing on their content and helping to share their voices to new audiences

Wikipedia: The collaborative tools are very powerful and allow contributors to do a great deal directly from their web browser. For those passionate about their subjects the learning curve is reasonable.

Wikipedia is developed using open source wiki software used by thousands of others, who also contribute to its constant improvement.

 

 

Creative Commons and Open Source Software

FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

Open Source Software is an important feature of Web 2.0. According to the Open Source Initiative, "Open source is a development method for software that is collaborative, progressive, flexible and free.

The Open Source software movement embodies the ideal of sharing and community with the aim universal access. Examples of Opens Source software are the browser and email client, Fireox and Thunderbird, created under the Mozilla Open Source Project.

CREATIVE COMMONS

One outcome of this evolution towards collaboration and universal ownershipis the widely used standard for licensing online content known as CreativeCommons. Creative Commons is thelicensing method that provides freetools to enable "authors, scientists, artists, and educators" to make decisionson the ownership of their work and the freedoms they want it to carry.

You can use CC to change your copyright terms from All Rights Reserved to Some Rights Reserved. We're a nonprofit organization. Everything we do -including the software we create - is free.

Creative Commons makes this possible for thousands of content creators on the Internet and thus ensures that content spreads widely and quickly, and that creativity is spurred rather than stifled.

The Creative Commons License appears on blogs, websites and Wikis as follows:

"This wiki is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0License."

In the case of Kabissa for example, the CreativeCommons License gives anyone permission to take the contents of the website and share them or create derivative works based on them - as long as they attribute Kabissa and release their work under the same license.

Wikis, Social Networking and the Blogosphere.

Let's learn some Web 2.0 terminology and look at three representative examples of types of Web 2.0 services. Via these examples we can gain an appreciation for the constellation of Web 2.0 services and the characteristics that make them powerful. We can then consider their relevance for Africa and the missions of African civil society organizations. You are encouraged to visit and explore the websites described.

Wikipedia

Perhaps the best example of the "read-write" web is Wikipedia, the self-pronounced "biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet". Wikipedia is indeed an extremely convenient source of information on a wide range of topics, with more than two million pages of information created and maintained by millions of volunteer contributors around the world. A quick wikipedia search can bring an answer or definition in moments.

The "wiki" tool used to create it is designed to facilitate collaboration and consensus building, so for example there is a discussion tab for every page where contributors discuss the page contents and hopefully resolve any disagreements so the information on the page is as accurate and balanced as possible.

Contentious topics can be nominated to be checked by editors for their neutrality, and the discussion pages for those pages tend to make very interesting reading. An example of this is the Ebonics page.

There is frequent debate surrounding the accuracy of information on Wikipedia, and while it is a very useful resource it generally is recognized (even by its own editors) that it should not be considered a reliable exclusive source for academic papers.)

Social Networks

A new generation of online community websites devoted to social networking is attracting a new generation of Internet users. Users may spend many hours a day checking their e-mail and exchanging photos and other information about themselves with their friends. "The process of using these sites is as simple as logging on, writing a bit about yourself and what you do, e-mailing your friends asking them to visit your profile, and before you know it, you're interacting with your friends, your friends' friends, and even people you've never met - all by sitting solo at your computer."

Typical examples of trendsetting social networking sites are MySpace and Facebook. Facebook is a social networking site originally created for university students to meet and keep in touch, while MySpace is more like an enormous bulletin board or forum where anyone can get an account and connect with others around shared interests. Two other well known social networking sites are Flickr for sharing photos and Youtube for sharing videos. All of the social networking sites allow for users to generate their own content - text, photos, video, audio and to allow other users to make comments and enter into discussions.

Blogs and the Blogosphere

Beyond social networking sites is blogging and the so-called blogosphere. Simply put, blogs are the published online content by an individual or a group of people. The Blogosphere is the collective space of blogs and the blogging communities. For example there is the global blogosphere - all blogs; the African blogosphere - all blogs by Africans; the Ghanaian blogosphere - all blogs by Ghanaians. Clearly there are overlaps as every blogger is a member of at least 2 or 3 "blogoshperes.

Unlike Wikipedia (which is hosted by a charitable nonprofit) and online community websites (mostly nonprofit networks or commercial operations driven by advertising), the blogosphere exists because many independent blogs link to one another, forming an organic network of shared interest and concerns.

The networking and linking of blogs is enhanced by innovative blog aggregator websites that make useful blogs easy to find and engage with such as Global Voices, Technorati, and FeedBurner.

Online Personalised Desktops

 

Websites such as NetVibes, PageFlakes and iGoogle incorporate an online personalised desktop with a search, email, calendar, "to do" features as well as a news and blog aggregator all combined within a social network.

 

 

 

Glossary of Web 2.0

This glossary covers Web 2.0 terminology and is an ongoing project. It is not intended to be exhaustive and we would appreciate feedback and any suggestions for additions from our readers.

AJAX

AJAX is a web development technique that makes websites a pleasure to use. To contribute to an AJAX powered website, you no longer have to submit content and wait for a whole new page to load up. This is particularly exciting for Africans accustomed to (for example) waiting minutes on end for their webmail to load up or who frequently see a white screen instead of a confirmation message that the email they have been working on for the past thirty minutes has been delivered successfully.

Badge

Badges (or banners) are a terrific, widely used tool on blogs and websites. When something particularly notable or outrageous happens that affects you, like Hurricane Katrina or the arrest of a blogger, you can show your affiliation and solidarity by placing a Badge directly on your own blog or website. Badges are also often used to promote particular human rights campaigns, such as "I blog for human rights" at Human Rights Watch and "Stop Violence against Women" at Amnesty International. Badges, as exemplified by Global Voices, also serve to simply bring together a community of bloggers with shared concerns.

Blog

According to Wikipedia, "A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order."

If you ever wondered "what's so special about blogging, anyway?" then you will find the answer by taking a closer look at the various links associated with specific blog postings. Whether you have your own blog or not, you can use these links to interact with and participate in blogs in completely new ways. Most simply, you can leave comments to express support or to argue with someone's assertions. You can also add it to a shared bookmarks site such as del.icio.us or digg.com for later reference or to show others you find it interesting. You can see who else is blogging about a blog using a feature called trackbacks or pingbacks. Permalinks are permanent links to blog entries that will not change - so you can share them with others with the assurance that they will see the plog entry the same way you did. Permalinks and trackbacks are particularly useful together since, if you have your own blog, you can post a comment on your blog about a particular blog and start a conversation between your two blogs.

Blogosphere

Blogroll

Blog Aggregator

Buzz

Content

 

 

Creative Commons

Let other people use your content without asking by labelling it with a free, open-source like license. Creative Commons has done the legwork for you by providing both human readable and legally binding licenses that you can use, and badges that you can use to link to them from your website. According to the Creative Commons Web site, "Offering your work under a Creative Commons license does not mean giving up your copyright. It means offering some of your rights to any member of the public but only on certain conditions." This is a powerful Web 2.0 strategy for releasing the benefits of your creative works to the world while retaining your copyright.

Crowdsourcing

Folksonomies, not Taxonomies

It is now possible to organize photos, blogs, useful links, and any kind of content using multiple keywords, commonly referred to as "Folksonomy" Tags and Tag Clouds. Folksonomies differ from traditional taxonomies because they include keywords that are made up by the ordinary folks (people) using the website. This might give a librarian a heart attack because it means dozens of different terms might be used for organizing the exact same content, but it also makes the organization of the content more user-driven and dynamic.

Open API and RSS

Combine content and features from multiple websites to create a new, interesting and maybe revolutionary way of looking at content. Made possible largely through new standards in Really Simple Syndication (RSS) of blogs and any other kind of website content and "Open" Application Programmer's Interfaces (API) for Web 2.0 sites. Prominent examples include Google Map and Flickr.

Thanks to the Flickr API, anyone with a blog or website can add an attractive photo slideshow to the sidebar. YouTube also provides similar functionality to allow people to display YouTube videos directly in their own blogs. A simpler example is RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds, which enable anyone to grab the latest headlines from a Web 2.0 website and display them attractively in a newsreader or on their own website. RSS feeds are the bread and butter of many Web 2.0 websites like Technorati and Global Voices that add value to blogs by delivering RSS Feeds to people in innovative and useful new ways.

Web 2.0 websites place a particularly strong emphasis on usability of web interfaces, meaning that they are intuitive and easy to use. It is so important that "Usability expert" is a new job description.

Web 2.0

The term itself originates from an years-long discourse among techies about the evolution of Internet technology (Web 2.0 as a step up from Web 1.0). In fact the underlying technology driving the Internet and web browsing is nothing new. The purpose of the web was always to facilitate the sharing of information, and the fundamental standards and principles established for this decades ago still stand. But today Web 2.0 has come to represent a growing perception and excitement among investors, enthusiasts and practitioners that the promise of the Internet as a tool for collaboration and information sharing is now finally being delivered.