Measuring and analyzing the openness of the Web2.0 service network for improving the innovation capacity of the Web2.0 system through collective intelligence

Abstract

Web2.0 users can create new services by combining existing Web2.0 services that offer open programming interfaces. This system of service composition forms a network, which we call the Web2.0 service network. A node of the Web2.0 service network represents a service. A link between two nodes exists, if another Web2.0 service (i.e. mashup) uses the linked services. The Web2.0 service network can be understood as an innovation system that creates value through the composition of services, representing the collective intelligence of users. Within this paper, we analyze the openness of the Web2.0 service network. Openness, which is an indicator for the innovation potential of a network, is measured using the Enhanced-EIS-Indexes. These indexes are based on Krackhardt and Stern's EI-Index. The analysis results of the indexes show that the Web2.0 service network is not as open as the evolutionary analysis of the Web2.0 service network suggested. The slight closeness of the Web2.0 service network has been identified by the Agent Behavior Index EISa , which highlighted that relatively more links are created within subgroups than between subgroups. It indicates that factors such as service ownership and type of service have an impact on innovation within the network. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.