GO2WEB20 a Fascinating Web 2.0 Directory

GOWEB20 is a directory of Web 2.0 applications and services. I had seen it before but had not taken much notice: I looked more closely after reading Kaiser Kuo’s laudatory post with the – for me – slightly disconcerting but attention-getting title, The most insane Web 2.0 directory ever.

The site, which claims over 2,295 entries as at April 17, 2008, is the work of Orli Yakuel, Web 2.0 Analyst at AOL/Relegence, and Eyal Shahur, VP R&D and User Experience specialist in Mantis ltd. Yakuel is editor of GO2WEB20 blog, currently boasting over 6,300 readers according to its Feedburner badge and Shahur has a very designer-ish website with various links, including one to his blog (for which it helps if you read Hebrew).

And on my re-visit to the site today I noticed for the first time the moving green box with a “window” that picks up each logo as you move the box around – yes, it’s pretty obvious, so put me down as slow to observe.

In the screenshot above, the box is hovering on the logo of the Web 2.0 service Quotably, which someone was telling me a couple of days ago that I should look at. Clicking on that opened a box at the bottom of the page, where I could read a bit about Quotably and then click through to the site.

Using the toolbar at the top of the GO2WEB20 screen, you can sort all the logos by name and they will re-arrange instantly in alphabetical order. You can also sort them by date.

You can search by entering a keyword or tag into the box with the magnifying glass symbol or you can click on the Select Tag box, which will bring up a tagcloud, so you can search by clicking on a tag in the cloud. The search results come up in the form of the logos of the relevant services or applications. Logically, the larger the word, the more applications/services logos you should expect to see.

I found the site quite fascinating and could see how, with my interest in social media/ Web 2.0, I could easily spend hours going through the directory, checking out the products behind the logos.

One small quibble I have is that, on several tries, the search function would freeze after I had typed in only one or a few letters, then come up with logos that were not necessarily helpful. By being patient I was able to eventually get the whole word typed in that I wanted to type in. Then the appropriate results came up, and very quickly too.

Out of parochial interest I searched for WordFrame, the collaboration/social media platform with which I’m associated and which is very Web 2.0, but it did not come up. The site has a Suggest button, in the menu at the bottom of the page, which links to an email address. I’ve sent my suggestion to the site owners.

A fascinating site.

Des Walsh

Business coach and digital entrepreneur. With coach training from Coachville.com and its Graduate School of Coaching, and a founding member of the International Association of Coaching, Des has been coaching business owners and entrepreneurs for the past 20 years. Over the same period he has also been actively engaged in promoting the business opportunities of the digital economy. He is a certified Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) coach, and a certified specialist in social media strategy and affiliate marketing.