How to exploit Web 2.0 for market intelligence and Information Research

A new white paper from Digimind takes stock

Blogs, wikis, online desktop software, RSS feeds, podcasts, personal search engines, customizable pages, networks and social bookmarks, folksonomies, tags...
The apparition of Web 2.0 represents a radical evolution in the web where the web user plays an active and collaborative role. Christophe Asselin, an acknowledged expert in the field, reveals in Digimind's new White Paper the usefulness of these information sources for market intelligence and information research.

Web 2.0: a new way to communicate

Thanks to simple and flexible publication techniques, even people without any particular technical knowledge can publish their own content, for example using a blog (Blogger, Overblog, Vox,…), file-sharing spaces (MySpace, Flickr,…) or a wiki (Wikipedia, Wikia,…) and broadcast it using RSS feeds.

Web 2.0 provides increased possibilities for production, distribution and consumption of content. Web users are no longer passive but collaborative: they become actors on the Internet and take part in producing, sharing, classifying and enhancing content, often initiating new types of relations as part of a collectivity or community.

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Information and applications provide added value for market intelligence

The information and opinions posted directly on the net by web users primarily serve to enrich and complete official content on the net. A kind of enormous focus group in real time, Web 2.0 enables users to test the water for certain phenomena, for example, read the views of a Swiss multinational's employees concerning social policies.

In order to sift through these vast volumes of diverse data, Web 2.0 has a wide range of search tools on offer, such as search on tags (Tag Central, SearchLess, Ketoag, etc), to find blog entries or comments (Technorati), photos (Flickr), bookmarks (Del.icio.us), or particular people on social networking services (Linkedin).

Another useful resource for the market intelligence professional: social bookmarks. They are one of the most characteristic sharing and collaborative applications on Web 2.0. Communities identify and qualify relevant sources (opinions from user groups, identification of leaders or the popularity of a source etc). If for example you are looking for an intelligence professional specializing in biotechnologies, the Del.icio.us site can give your search a considerable boost.

Over 100 pages of practical and illustrated information

To help you navigate through this "Terra Incognita", Christophe Asselin and Véronique Mesguich provide an array of explanations and answers in this new White Paper, presenting the potential benefits to be gained from the numerous applications of this 2nd generation web to improve information research and collection.

This Digimind White Paper is essential reading for professionals wishing to extend their intelligence scope, in particular in the fields of marketing, research and communication.