It’s been 5 years since Tim O’Reilly coined the phrase web 2.0 for a new O’Reilly Media conference that framed the momentum and put a name to the current wave of post dot-com innovation.

His original definition for web 2.0 was: “Web 2.0 is a set of economic, social, and technology trends that collectively form the basis for the next generation of the Internet – a more mature, distinctive medium characterized by user participation, openness, and network effects.”

He and collaborators since reduced the definition to the following compact version: Web 2.0 is “Networked applications that explicitly leverage network effects.” Wikipedia defines a network effect as the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people.” The notion being that, as number of people using the good or service increases, the value of it increases – referred to as a positive network effect (with “externality” sometimes being used in place of “effect”).

But, the bottom-line is that “web 2.0” has become a catch-all for a vast range of innovative technologies, processes, services, and ideas. It has spawned a plethora of related and sub-categories, including social media, cloud computing, collaborative applications, software-as-a-service, rich internet applications, enterprise 2.0, and on.

With all of the richness of diversity and five years of history under our collective global belt, nGenera has recently launched a research study to determine what has been learned about the factors contributing to success and failure of web 2.0 initiatives.

And just like the web 2.0 definition calls for, the more people that participate, the more valuable the study will be for everyone. So, please join us in this effort and take the survey. The study director, Tim Bevins, would like to know what you think and will make sure that all participants receive a copy of the management summary when the research is completed.

We hope you join us in sharing what you have learned about those factors that, in your experience, help assure web 2.0 success or, on the other hand, are guaranteed to bring the web 2.0 initiative down in flames!