Convergence of Web 2.0 and SOA: Taking Advantage of Web Services to Implement a Multimodal Social Networking System

The term Web 2.0 describes Web-based applications such as social networking sites, wikis, and blogs that facilitate collaboration, creativity, and sharing among users. Web 2.0 applications are often enabled by reusing content from other Web-based applications or Web services. This trend is largely parallel to the principles of service-oriented architecture (SOA), which encourages integration and reuse of online services. In this paper, we discuss the possibility of convergence of Web 2.0 and SOA, which is illustrated by a multimodal social networking system, built using Web services. We also present the results of benchmarking experiments aimed to study the latency caused by Web service composition and integration and its effects on the end-user experience.