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Technology

hen Samuel Morse tapped out the first message on the telegraph, "What hath God wrought," in 1844, the modern Information Age took off like a drag racer who'd just gotten the green light. Within 30 years after Morse's world-changing transmission, the Earth was blanketed with 680,000 miles of wire above the ground and below the sea, linking together 20,000 cities and towns in what is now called the "Victorian Internet." The old, slow universe, where a trip from New York to Boston took a day by railway and steamship combined, was thrown, as Henry Adams wrote, into "the ash-heap and a new one created."

That universe is now being recreated, with Web 2.0 throwing the older e-mail and Web sites into the trash bag of history. Coined in 2001 by Dale Dougherty, a co-founder of O'Reilly Media Inc., "Web 2.0" officially became the 1 millionth word in the English language last June. The term represents the online technologies that have transformed the we-talk-at-you marketing monologue into an everyone-chimes-in democratic dialog. Also generically known as "social media," Web 2.0 refers to a torrent of tools that have emerged since the 1990s, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Today, millions of Web 2.0 sites span the planet connecting an estimated 140 million people, according to Comscore Media Metrix. For trade show exhibitors in particular, Web 2.0 is another arrow in their quiver to help them target customers more accurately in a depressed economy, permitting them, like the telegraph did, to reach more people with more information, extending trade shows beyond the limitations of mere time and space.

But mastering these new tools isn't always easy. "Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road," says Stewart Brand, the cyber-cultural guru who wrote "The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT." The first in a two-part series on how to use Web 2.0 without becoming roadkill, this story profiles three of the most game-changing social-media technologies along with examples of companies who are using them to enhance their presence on the trade show floor. Next month, we'll explore three more Web 2.0 tools you can add to your exhibit-marketing arsenal.