Introduction to the Internet and World Wide Web - Web Development and Design Foundations with XHTML - page 17

Description, and Integration (UDDI) standard, http://uddi.xml.org, is backed by a
number of technology companies, including IBM, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems.
Essentially, UDDI provides a method of describing a service, invoking a service, and
locating available services. Microsoft's .NET platform supports Web services.
Microsoft and IBM jointly developed Web Services Description Language (WSDL) to
facilitate the use of Web services.
While the Web service initiative is driven by large corporations, the trend of keeping
a Web log, or blog, has been driven by individuals as a forum for personal expression.
A blog is a journal that is available on the Web—it's a frequently updated page with
a chronological list of ideas and links. Blog topics range from political journals to
technical information to personal diaries. Blogs can focus on one subject or range
across a diverse group of topics—it's up to the person, called a blogger, who creates
and maintains the blog. Bloggers usually update their blogs daily with easy-to-use
software designed to allow people with little or no technical background to update
and maintain the blog. The PEW Internet & American Life Project ( http://www.
pewinternet.org) reports that 42 percent of American adults read blogs daily and
about 12 percent of American adults keep a blog. Many blogs are hosted at blog
communities such as http://blogspot.com, http://wordpress.com, or http://www.
xanga.com. Others are hosted at individual Web sites, such as the blog kept by the
CSS expert Eric Meyer at http://meyerweb.com. Businesses have noted the value of
blogs as communication and customer relationship tools. Companies such as IBM,
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/, and Adobe, http://feeds.adobe.com,
utilize blogs in this manner.
A wiki is a Web site that can be updated immediately at any time by visitors using a
simple form on a Web page. Some wikis are intended for a small group of people, such
as the members of an organization. The most powerful wiki is Wikipedia,
http://wikipedia.org, an online encyclopedia, which can be updated by anyone at any-
time. This is a form of social software in action—visitors sharing their collective knowl-
edge to create a resource freely used by all. While there have been isolated incidents of
practical jokes and occasionally inaccurate information posted at Wikipedia, the infor-
mation and resource links are a good starting point when exploring a topic.
Blogs and wikis provide Web visitors new methods to utilize and interact with
Web sites and other people—referred to as social computing or social networking. A
trendy activity these days is participating in a social networking site such as Facebook
( http://facebook.com), MySpace ( http://myspace.com), or LinkedIn ( http://linkedin.com).
The PEW Internet & American Life Project reported that in a recent three year period,
the use of a social networking site by American adults increased from 8% to 35%.
The popularity of these sites seems to keep growing--Facebook welcomed its 200
millionth active user in 2009! While LinkedIn was created with professional and business
networking in mind, businesses have also found it useful to create Facebook and MySpace
site to promote their products and services.
Twitter ( http://twitter.com) is a social networking site for microblogging, or frequently
communicating with a brief messages (140 characters or less) called a tweet. Twitter
users (called twitterers) tweet to update a network of friends and followers with daily
activities and observations. The PEW Internet & American Life Project reported over
11% of American adults used a microblogging service such as Twitter in 2008. The
research firm eMarketer ( http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007059) predicted
that there would be over 18 million Twitter users by 2010. However, Twitter is not