Web 2.0 for entrepreneurs
July 26th, 2007There’s a lot of talk about “Web 2.0″ on the Internet at the moment, in this post I try and cut through the hype and look, pragmatically, at what entrepreneurs need to do to use Web 2.0 to build exciting and valuable propositions.
In this post I’m deliberately looking at the impact which Web 2.0 has on users which makes it so appealing to a certain segment of the population. This information will help entrepreneurs know what to build into their propositions in order to take advantage of the opportunity today to steal a march on older style Web applications.
To bring the post to life I’ll be demonstrating how the principles I’ve uncovered can be applied to a classic Internet application - corporate email. I’ve arbitrarily chosen email as it is a example of an application which has not substantially changed in the last decade, by applying some of the Web 2.0 principles outlined below we’ll see how its feature set can expanded to make it more inclusive, fun and sticky.
My research into Web 2.0 has lead me to take a particular interest in how people are affected by “Web 2.0″, in short, rather than worrying about what it is, or how it is defined, I’ve tried to look at what impact it has on users. I believe that Web 2.0 affects users in 3 ways:
- Personal expression - It gives users a greater ability to express their personalities to others
- Efficient connections - It makes meeting new like-minded people more efficient
- Information discovery - It changes how people discover information
None of these dynamics are new or unique to Web 2.0 - they represent some of the core motivators of most humans - all Web 2.0 has done is make achieving these human objectives online easier.
This is much more than “AJAX and RSS”, and other technologies frequently associated with Web 2.0.
1. Personal expression
Web 2.0 gives people many more option to express themselves. We now have increasingly widespread adoption of capabilities such as blogs, wikis, Q&As (as well as technologies which have been around for much longer, including personal webpages, forums, etc). These enable people to communicate and craft their personalities more effectively. Practically, Web 2.0 style applications frequently make use of:
- Personal icons - From Windows Live Messenger, to the mybloglog link on this webpage, Web 2.0 expression often start with including an image to represent yourself
- Profiles - People now commonly include detailed information about themselves in the form of profiles, publicly available information about their interests and habits. Personal websites such as myspace and facebook extend these “profiles” to the point at which they are one of the core reasons for using the site
- Snippets - It is more acceptable than ever to express only a snippet of information. To add something small to a conversation or stream of thoughts, blogs, Q&As, forums, etc are all ways to achieve this
- Comfort - People are becoming more comfortable at expressing themselves online, the reticence people used to feel has been blown away, with people becoming increasingly happy to share very personal information with the community
All these changes give lessons to entrepreneurs. New propositions under consideration need to ensure that they give users ample opportunity to express their personalities, whether that be through personal icons, chat rooms, their own web-pages, etc.
Applying these effects to corporate email would add in:
- Simple personal icons which people select and appear in every email sent
- Give people control over their corporate directory entry, enabling them to include information about what they are an expert it, enabling others to leave comments for them against their directory entry
2. Efficient connections
This is one of the most fascinating areas of development for Web 2.0. We are now forming more relationships with more people at an increasingly faster rate. People actually seem to compete to build networks of friends (e.g. Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, LinkedIn and the rather exciting VisiblePath).
These services demonstrate the importance of enabling people to form connections between each other. Whilst this isn’t particularly new in the context of the web - discussion forums have been popular for years, there is one important change. These personal networks are being structured. Traditionally online forums where people used to meet were effectively like stepping into an enormous room of people and shouting your question out - Web 2.0 now enables people to build networks and therefore filter that communication down to people they know and trust:
Web 2.0 enables users to structure their network - rather than posting to a discussion forum, users can find information out from within their personal network. This does two things: it effectively filters the amount of information they receive, but because their network contains people like themselves, it filters the information leaving data which should only be relevant to them. For entrepreneurs it means we should design our propositions such that:
- Users can find other users on the basis of shared characteristics (be that location, interests, sex, goals, etc)
- Enable users can create structured networks
In applying this to corporate email, we’d make the following changes:
- The mail server would capture the structured network data, enable people to see who they email, and who they email the most (note this is effectively what VisiblePath does).
- Users could then search their networks for subject matter experts within their organisation - breaking down the barriers formed when working in large corporates.
3. Information discovery
Information discovery is an absolutely key area of development for Web 2.0. Traditionally information discovery on the Internet was performed through search, now Web 2.0 has augmented this with:
- The personal network
- Tagging of data
- Social bookmarking
- Trackbacks and cross-linking
Of these, the first - information discovery through your personal network - is a very underexploited area for entrepreneurs. Discovering information through your personal network is like applying a highly effective filter to the massive pool of information on the Internet. Amazon’s “customers which bought this, also bought this” is a prime example of this working. People who we choose to have in our personal networks are by definition like us in some way, and therefore their preferences will be similar - but different enough to be interesting - to act as a powerful filtering system.
In effect, this dynamic enables entrepreneurs to create new propositions which start to release the information which people currently hold in their heads. A service such as WAYN performs this function for travellers.
It is interesting to note that classic social networking sites really only pull together the first two Web 2.0 dynamics. Services such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace do not do much to capture the information which a user has in his or her head and share it with others.
Applying this principle to corporate email gives us:
- Enable mail users to selectively make corporate emails indexable by the server. The mail client would then enable users to search for, say, a prospect’s name and get back a list of other employees in the company who’ve already contacted them.
To summarise
Entrepreneurs wishing find new ways of approaching old propositions can shake up and old school “web 1.0″ businesses easily. To achieve this they need to:
- enable users to express their personalities through profiles
- enable users to build structured relationships with others
- enable users to discover information through the network structured by the system
Taking an existing business and applying these principles gives a unique Web 2.0 proposition which should significantly help drive traction, stickiness, usage and therefore value.
Email This Post
37,683 Views
Posted in business, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, linkedin, start-up, web 2.0 | Trackback | del.icio.us | Top Of Page
August 7th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Hey Matt,Happened to cross your article this morning. Thought let me add my bit.
I just drew little cuties for your article.
Consider embedding it in your art if you like them.
http://www.arvindtm.com/2007/08/what-is-web-20.html
cheers
Arvind
August 7th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Thanks Arvind! Great drawing there.
August 7th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
I really enjoyed your lucid and insightful views into the world of Web 2.0 and how it can help entrepreneurs by leveraging connections and people. I cross-posted to your piece in my blog at http://www.innovators-network.org which is a non-profit organization that aims to bring entrepreneurs, small businesses, intellectual property experts, and venture capitalists together to use technology and further their ideas. Please visit us to help grow our community and continued success.
Regards,
Anthony
August 10th, 2007 at 7:45 am
hey mate,
This is a great article..giving an insight into WEB2.0. I have been following this term pretty regularly but could not capture the essence of it until i came across this article.
Keep blogging.
avdhoot
November 21st, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Out of many things Web 2.0 have to offer Networking,Personal expression and Information discovery are the few things with the combination of Ajax ,We can develop web powerful applications and can get portability, Now we can access the spreadsheet application from any where with out any installations. Thus making Web 2.0 is essential even in small enterprises.