News The Web, Take 2.0

Mr Amazon helps evangelise the future of the web at the WEB 2.0 expo in San Fransisco. This from PCWorld:

SAN FRANCISCO -- The next time you visit one of your favorite Web sites, you may be contributing to it as much as you're taking from it. That's just one of the trends speakers are discussing at this week's Web 2.0 Conference here.

Illustrating this trend is a recent study conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project. More than half of all Web site visitors contribute, whether by providing personal information, taking surveys, or offering feedback in some other way, says the study, which was cited by Web 2.0 Conference Chair John Battelle.

One site that has taken customer participation to heart is Amazon.com, whose founder and CEO Jeff Bezos spoke here. By publishing an API (application programming interface) that allows people outside the company to interact with its proprietary data, Amazon is able to offer its customers services that would otherwise be unavailable, he said.

During his presentation, Bezos described the ScoutPal.com service that lets people use a special cell phone with a bar-code reader to scan their books to determine their value on the site. The service was developed by a programmer whose wife's avocation was buying and selling used books. "If we had to hire a software engineer to build this, it wouldn't be on the top of our priority list," said Bezos

More here

So, are we ready for audience participation time?