As every year, the magazine TIME in its edition of December recognized the most important character of the year 2006, and even if it may sound wired, this it decided to choose Us... Yes, us, the Internet Users.

Internet users are The Character of The Year due to a main reason: because they are building a new “Digital Democracy”. The magazine founds its election in the fact that “The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game”.

How has this been possible? According to Time, with the development of what is known as Web 2.0, a Web orientated to the interaction and the social networks, with sites that act as point of encounter o user dependents, more than as traditional sites. The term Web 2.0 makes reference to a series of applications and Internet sites that use the collective intelligence to provide a net of interactive services giving the user the total control of its data. Web 2.0 main character is precisely the User. Millions and millions of users speaking up and generating the widest diversity of contents related to the most varied topics from any corner of the world.

Sites as Wikipedia, YouTube, Myspace and Second Life are the main components of the so called Web 2.0, the new version in Internet evolution. A net were users can post comments in their Weblogs and quotes crossed to other Blogs, videos and photos are sheared with relatives and friends using Flickr or MySpace, news is rapidly widespread by means of YouTube, on line encyclopedias such as Wikipedia are coedited in a participative way, site updates sites may be known instantly with the use of RSS, etc.

Which are then the characteristics of Web 2.0? To start with, it needs to be INTERACTIVE, including the design of intuitive systems of interaction. It must involve the user, giving him/she the will to comment, participate, resend, etc. This implies that the site has to be “open” permitting the easy introduction and extraction of information. The information must be controlled by the users. To end with, the most successful Web 2.0 site are the ones which can be entirely used form a Web browser.

To see the relevance that Web 2.0 has taken in the Technological field, it is enough to analyze some figures: YouTube, with a life of only 29 months was purchased by Google in US$ 1.650 millions, Google also signed an agreement to render search services to Myspace, to whom it will pay US$900 millions in concept of advertisement income. This acquisitions are part of strategy of Silicon Valley''''s Giant as to Web 2.0 that has already started 5 years form now with the acquisition of Blogger.

If all this data does not seem solid enough to determine the current importance of Web 2.0, in Google''''s annual publication about the most searched terms during the year 2006, the first and second positions are occupied  by the social networks, Bebo and Myspace, respectively, as other emblematic sites of the Web 2.0 coup the “Top Ten” of searches in the most popular search engine in the world: Metacafe (4º), Radioblog (5º) and Wikipedia (6º).

Exelsum is also witness of the growing demand of Web 2.0 applications in the market, as we have started to develop Blogs, Forums and On line Surveys for some of our clients.

Isn''''t it time to think in which way each site can be transformed into a Web 2.0 and in that way enter ourselves too as protagonists in the new stage of Internet?