SEOmoz has a great post about a recent seminar in N.Y.called “The New Age of Web 2.0 Marketing”. One of the speakers, Judith Liebe, defined Web 2.0 as blogs, wikis, social networking, consumer generated content, podcasts, RSS, rich internet applications (RIAs), social tagging and bookmarking, publishing, social networks, product reviews, creating mash-up content.

Another speaker, Steve O’Brien defined it as:

A marketing buzzword used by vendors trying to justify incremental investments in Internet software and services.
A collection of technologies for creating interactive Web applications; e.g., AJAX, SOAP, RIAs.
A term coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004 to promote a conference about the post-bubble Internet.
A catch-all phrase for Internet services that encourage user-generated participation, like Flickr and MySpace.

The seminar participant writes that “I used to think that there were two main parts to a successful website: web design/development/usability and SEO/M. Now I know that there is a third part: analytics. Unlike web design and SEO/M, which are creative and multi-faceted, analytics is about trends and numbers. Analytics is a dedicated function. Successful websites use analytics to drive their web design and SEO/M tactics.” And: “The goal of a Web 2.0 website engagement. Engagement can be measured by sessions/visits, repeat visits, session length, RIA usage (ex. rotate, zoom), downloads, uploads, reviews, comments, votes, subscriptions, leads. The return can be measured by recommendations, registrations, and purchases.”

It’s getting harder to keep track of all the web 2.0 companies out there, so it’s a great thing that this new directory was launched.