Connecting The Dots of Healthcare

“The Web is dead; LONG LIVE THE WEB!”

Web 1.0 was the first King, but the King is dead and Web 2.0 is now King. And what a KING it is!

This Blog site is part of the domain of 2.0. Sure, I still have my website, a 1.0 relic of the past, and intend to keep it because it does serve a purpose. But 1.0 is dead, 2.0 is the new and improved KING.

Web 1.0 was the world of “brochure websites”. To be sure, a “brochure” not like other brochure ever before seen in the history of the world. A brochure that could be changed in the blink of an eye, but in its essence, still a brochure.

But this blog is 2.0 because it’s interactive with you, the reader. You can make a comment. You can decide that the information I write about is sooooo important to your life that you use RSS to notify you the very instant the blog site changes.

For those of you who didn’t know about RSS, people like myself up until last week when I asked my blog mistress, Tia, what are those little orange buttons under the heading of RSS Feeds on the blog’s home page? I was told it’s a cool way to know if content changes on the blog site, or any other website that has RSS feeds, almost instantly. Quoting Wikipedia, “RSS(which, in its latest format, stands for “Really Simple Syndication”) is a family of web-feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a “feed,” “web feed,” or “channel,” contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that’s easier than checking them manually.”

Web 2.0 is all about connectivity, community, communication, collaboration, and conversation. Web 2.0 is about search engines that are designed to figure out what it is you really value and provide more of that type of information to YOU, the reader. Web 2.0 is connecting-the-dots.

AND, web 2.0 requires two cardinal features that make it such a popular kingdom:

1. It’s FREE.
2. It’s EASY.

Free and easy works LOTS better than expensive and complicated. I can write a blog today not because I know html code, (after all, until last week I didn’t even know what a RSS feed was!), but because using a web-based program, (that I can access from anywhere I can get online), I can type text and have a program I don’t even pretend to understand, convert my text to html, and launch it into cyberspace to have it show up on my blog. It’s REALLY easy, and, (almost), free. But if I built my blog with Google Blogger, it would be entirely FREE. (You get what you pay for is indeed a truism). FREE and EASY. Staples doesn’t have a “That was Hard button.”

How is your business? Is it 1.0 or 2.0? Is it a “brochure” based presence, or are you out there connecting your own dots? Does your business, department, agency, practice focusing on connectivity, community, communication, collaboration, and conversation? Do you make connecting with your “business” easy? How about free?

The web is a mirror of what people want most and web 2.0 is delivering it. Take a moment to look into your kingdom. Are you a 1.0 King who’s reign is about to come to an end, or have you transitioned to a more enlightened 2.0 King whose reign accepts and embraces change desired, (read: demanded), by your subjects? Tyranny over customers may work short term, but it doesn’t work long term. Just ask King George III about his former colonists in the New World or Louis XVI. Louis thought he was a-head of the game, until he lost it!