The Perils and Possibilities of Web 2.0

Matt Machell, Evidence Basewww.eclecticdreams.com

I build websites

The Web’s a pretty confusing place. You need a map.

From

the

exc

elle

nt x

kcd.

com

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Or maybe a guide?

Peril #1: Getting distracted by technology

Good technology solves problems.

• “How do I?”

• “I wish I could...”

• “if only there was a way to...”

Latching onto buzzwords is dangerous

“The kids love Facebook! If we use it the awesome will rub off on us!”

“We need a blog and a wiki!”

“Make it look more web 2.0!”

Possibility #1: Remember it’s about

tasks and people

What problem does your service solve for

“me”?

Social sites work best with a purpose.

• What’s your site’s purpose?

• Just what are we here to do?

People talking generates ideas

If you build great thingspeople will use them.

Peril #2: People spend 99% of their time

elsewhere

If a blog launches on the web, does anybody

care? • Technorati says the blogsphere doubles

once every 6 months.

• Blogpulse say that might only be 30% that's active growth.

Launching a new website means nothing if nobody can find it.

How do people find websites?

• Google?

• Other websites

• Recommendation

Go where the audience is

•Blogs, Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, Digg, Orkut, Twitter, mailing lists, forums, and so on, and so on

• Might not be on the web…

• What’s appropriate for your project?

Respect the spaces you enter. Be human, not a marketing troll.

Be part of the community

• Go out and find your users

• Build mutually beneficial relationships

• Conversation takes time and effort

• People who meet in real life, have more long-lasting web connections.

The Art of Successful Blogging

• Talk like a real person!

• Be prepared to actually listen

• Ask questions

• Solicit opinion

• People love lists...

Recommended: copyblogger.com

Possibility #2: Harness people’s passion for finding and sharing

Link sharing is everywhere

• Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, Ma.gnolia.com

• Comment constructively on other people’s blogs

• Help people on forums

Peril #3: Believing your own hype

“our site gets a million hits a day!”

• A single page view can generate 50 hits

• What if the path to the good stuff takes you through 5 pages?

• An elegant site might get fewer hits than your poorly designed one.

• What about all the searchbots, spambots and email harvesters?

• What do you need to measure?

• How do you measure it?

Meaningful interactions

• An event signup: No. of people registered

• A forum : Contributions favourited by users

• A blog : Inbound links, comments, Technorati rank

Possibility #3: Measure success in a

meaningful way

• Use a good analytics package

• Discover who actually visits your site and why

• Evolve to take advantage of this

Peril #4: Live by the crowd, die by the

crowd

The web gives the illusion of anonymity.

Anonymity breeds contempt

The users are

revolting!

• Teenagers change online identities with regularly

• People will say what they think, and you won’t necessarily like it

• Some people want to talk about selling Viagra

Possibility #4: Groups can be self policing

• Set solid, but not anti-social, levels of etiquette

• Reward good behavior

• Be careful of unintended consequences of filtering

Akismet is your friend, akismet.com

Peril #5: Not Working with the Web

Make it easy to link and contribute

(re)use existing technologies

Be agile and iteratively improve.

Possibility #5: With good people

building things is easy

Employ web professionals

(not your IT support guy, a windows programmer, some guy with Frontpage)

Sometimes you can get professionals by proxy

Example: A Quick Mashup

Question: What might be a good tool for linking a

library to teenagers?

• People have interests. They blog about them. They categorise those posts.

• People want information about their interests. Libraries can provide this.

• Provide a tool to recommend books based on blog tags.

• Apache - PHP - Simplepie RSS – Amazon web services

• Pull data from recent blog posts, send to amazon as a search

Techie Stuff

• Could be done with any system that provides simple hooks for open data.

• Time to implement: 1 evening

http://www.eclecticdreams.com/books/

Does it avoid our perils?

1. Task not technology driven

2. Can be easily promoted elsewhere

3. Can track success via book sales

4. Is ideal discussion material

5. Built with existing systems

Summary

• Remember it’s about people

• Look beyond your own site

• Measure meaningful outcomes

• Cultivate community

• Work with the web

Or...

• Engage with people

• Provide a valuable service

• Cultivate community

Sound familiar?