broadband strategies handbook.pdf - Khazar University

services as a result. As applications are designed and implemented, the issueof accessibility should also be kept in mind, so that those with disabilitiesare not excluded. The United Nation’s Global Initiative for Inclusive Informationand Communication Technologies offers support in this area andhelps to highlight how e-government and other applications can be keptfully inclusive. 34Social Media and Web 2.0Social media (for example, YouTube and Facebook) are applications thatfacilitate social interaction, using web and mobile technology. YouTube, forexample, is one of the most widely used social media applications andrequires broadband capabilities to be effective. Users generate video content,upload it, and share it with others. In 2010, some 35 hours of footagewere uploaded to YouTube every minute, with over 13 million hoursuploaded in total over the year (Scott 2011). Web 2.0 is closely related tosocial media and is a term generally associated with applications that featureuser-generated content and facilitate collaboration among users(O’Reilly 2005). Web 2.0 applications—including web-based communities,hosted services, web applications, social networking sites, photo- and videosharingsites, wikis, blogs, mashups, and folksonomies—are interoperable,user centered, and collaborative. Unlike the “traditional web,” they allowusers to generate, distribute, and share content in real time and typicallyrequire broadband connectivity. The availability of social media and Web2.0 applications is stimulating demand and is an important factor to bear inmind in developing demand creation or facilitation strategies.Social NetworkingSocial networking applications allow people who share interests to initiateand maintain connections, communicate with one another via variousmedia, including text, voice, and video, interact through social games, andshare user-generated and traditional media content. The highly personalized,easy, and flexible nature of social networking applications makesthem some of the most-used online tools and one of the main drivers ofbroadband demand. Since these websites tend to offer at least limitedfunctionality with dial-up or other low-bandwidth Internet connections,they help to drive broadband demand among users seeking to take fulladvantage of the website applications. Additionally, Web 2.0 applicationshave strong network effects, in which websites become more useful asmore people participate (for example, Wikipedia entries or reviews ofproducts on Amazon). Nonadopters who may not have found broadband tobe relevant in the past may seek out broadband services in order to interactDriving Demand for Broadband Networks and Services 279