iNET’s attendance of the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo gave us the chance to interact with some of the people behind the most popular online services. As a developer, the sessions were extremely informative while humbling at the same time. Despite the ego check, I walked away with a handful of things that I feel are important for all web developers.

Semantically marked up data is where the action is. As torrential amounts of data are added to the web, it is clear that organization of that data must be improved. Semantics allow us to describe data based on what it is and does, instead of how the data should be displayed on a web page. Semantic markup increases the portability of data and allows any number of disparate systems to grep that data and mash it up with their own.

• Microformats - Microformats are standardized schemes of the more common semantic data markup formats. By setting standard ways of semantically marking up data, we increase the data portability substantially. New microformats are being created everyday. Keep track of the progress at http://microformats.org

A common theme extracted from all of the developer sessions was embracing open data exchange. Many organizations hold invaluable data sets that, if opened to the public, would enable the creation amazing new services. Freebase is an excellent example of this in action.

• Mashups and APIs - Mashups are a recently popular form of web applications that grab data from multiple sources and combine it into a useful service. APIs are the secret ingredient for mashups to be successful. Build APIs for your data and the third party developers will add incredible value to your product or service.

The recent uptime struggles of Twitter have made many people aware of the importance of scaling issues. Developers must design their applications to scale up front before it is too late. It is better to code in scaling capabilities up front than to crash and burn when your service gains popularity exponentially.

Web 2.0 design principles have ushered in heavy reliance on AJAX patterns and with it have come security issues. Security audits should be run on all AJAX code just the same as any other chunk of logic. Many developers are not aware of the risks involved with using AJAX; a little extra effort can help eliminate these risks.

Cloud computing is the next evolution for hosting applications and databases. Moving data off of single servers and into a redundant, highly available cloud of servers is quickly becoming the norm. Services like Amazon EC2/S3/SimpleDB and Google App Engine are leading the way for this new model of developing web applications.

OAuth is a protocol for allowing third party applications to authenticate with a user’s account. This is extremely important as API’s, mashups, and piggy-backing services proliferate. OAuth will provide a secure way for these services to operate without exposing the user’s private information.

It is a very exciting time to be a web developer. Keep your ear to the ground regularly to make sure you don’t miss out on any of the fascinating new technologies that are emerging!