What will be the next big thing on the Web? This was one of the questions asked in the State of the Web Development 2006/2007 Research by SitePoint. About 5000 web professionals took part in the survey, and below is a sample of the most interesting, insightful and creative answers.(Of course the I’s don’t refer to the author of this post)

I don’t envision a “next big thing” so much as an evolution of current trends towards standards compliance, responsible use of technologies and semantics, which will hopefully aid in creating a more tightly woven web of relationships between resources. I think we’ll continue to see simplistic elegance and functionality reign supreme. Interested? Read on!

Web 2.0 Tagging and Blogs

Do you use Web 2.0 tagging websites? Well, I do. They are so much handier than the traditional browser bookmarks! I can easily access my favorites’ list at home, at the university campus, at cyber cafes, at airports or train stations. I can always find something interesting by looking at what other people tag. By now millions of Internet users have discovered the advantages of the social web sites like Digg, Fark, Del.icio.us and others. These websites bring huge benefits to webmasters as well. When your visitors tag your content they affirm that it is actually interesting and useful. And since most of the social websites allow favorites lists sharing, or use tags as a scoring parameter to rank news entries, thousands of other members can easily discover and visit your site. So social and tagging websites are indeed a great way to promote a site. By adding links to Web 2.0 tagging resources to your posts you remind the visitors to bookmark your content. Besides, including the post url and title as parameters into the link code simplifies the task of tagging.

How can you do it in your Wordpress blog? Quite easily. You don’t need to have PHP or CSS skills; although you have to understand what your Stylesheet and Main Index Template are for. Interested? Read on!