The mirror inlaid in the cover of Time magazine’s 2006 person of the year issue has immortalized Web 2.0. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and Second Life are all concrete online spaces where people create their own content. Internet users are no longer happy as passive consumers of information and as observers of life outside of their real-world network. They are creating, self-publishing and expecting feedback. This is Web 2.0.

The move of Web 2.0 into the mobile space is shaping the use and expectations of a generation of future business customers. In a recent report Sabine Ehlers, an analyst at Berg Insight writes: “These days, to not know and keep up with what happens on the mobile scene is an oversight that no one, basically regardless of business, can afford.”

The report, Mobile Internet 2.0, says that mobile internet winners will be the players that not only give people what they expect from the internet today, but capitalize on the added value brought by mobility. Today’s mobile internet providers are expected to offer internet browsing, email, IM, media and social networking. Mobility adds context, in the form of location, personalization, and immediacy.

“The western mobile internet user is also a heavy user of fixed internet, shaping behavior and expectations on services and interfaces,” the report states. “However, mobile surfing is not a replacement activity for fixed access, but rather a complementary channel with a different user experience and context.”

Facebook’s mobile site lets users view their home page, update their status and receive SMS alerts of their friends’ activities. The real key for all social networking mobile internet sites will be to find the mobile context that gives users more than simply a connection to their networks.

Ehlers writes: “To the web 2.0 generation, the business customers of tomorrow, mobile internet is not a conceptual and futuristic abstraction but an expected staple tool in the infrastructure of their lives.”