An Analysis of the Openness of the Web2.0 Service Network Based on Two Sets of Indices for Measuring the Impact of Service Ownership

One of the important characteristics of Web2.0 is the collaboration between Web2.0 service providers. They allow users (i.e., providers, developers, consumers) to combine their services. The prerequisite for this collaboration is openness of the Web2.0 service system. Although the Web2.0 technology allows the linking of different heterogeneous Web2.0 services freely, it is only assumed that the Web2.0 system is socially open as well. Until now, it has not been studied whether it is socially open and, if so, to what degree. In this paper, we address this shortcoming by creating and analyzing the Web2.0 service network. The nodes of this network are Web2.0 services and links represent the existence of mashups. In order to measure how much the Web2.0 service network is socially open, we use six openness indices, which are based on Krackhardt and Stern's EI-Index. Our results show that the Web2.0 is not fully socially open. The reason is that users of Web2.0 services do not leverage the openness provided by the technology. Instead, they prefer using Web2.0 services of those providers that they already know, i.e. the ownership of the service impacts the users' choices.