"The future is already here — it is just unevenly distributed".
Think about it!
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
The juxtaposition
presented by the my two recent posts on web 2.0 and reading a comment on Doc Searls' weblog, made me realize how appropriate this quote by William Gibson is:
Think about it!
Think about it!
Study finds weak participation on Web 2.0 sites
as reported by Tech News on ZDNet. It looks like not everyone is out there writing or uploading away with utter abandon!
More like reading and viewing what others provide. It's a clear sign that despite all the coverage web 2.0 has been getting for some time now, the vast audience out there has not yet caught on despite being crowned "Persons of the Year" by TIME Magazine in 2006.
There are no separate statistics on the travel sector but I'd venture a guess that the participation rates are probably higher than for the general audience reported here. Travel and tourism is not only the largest vertical online with the highest sales figures but is also a subject a huge number of people are participating in and are rather passionate about. While not everyone is going to upload their vacation photos on Flickr, many write reviews and comments about their trips.
This should produce higher percentages of participations in travel, however, it will take a while until it becomes a mainstream activity everyone engages in, if it ever will. Having said that, the implications on business are still considerable and can't be ignored.
More like reading and viewing what others provide. It's a clear sign that despite all the coverage web 2.0 has been getting for some time now, the vast audience out there has not yet caught on despite being crowned "Persons of the Year" by TIME Magazine in 2006.
There are no separate statistics on the travel sector but I'd venture a guess that the participation rates are probably higher than for the general audience reported here. Travel and tourism is not only the largest vertical online with the highest sales figures but is also a subject a huge number of people are participating in and are rather passionate about. While not everyone is going to upload their vacation photos on Flickr, many write reviews and comments about their trips.
This should produce higher percentages of participations in travel, however, it will take a while until it becomes a mainstream activity everyone engages in, if it ever will. Having said that, the implications on business are still considerable and can't be ignored.
Beyond Web 2.0 - The New Reality or from Customer-Focus to Customer Control
It's been said the web changes everything - and it certainly has.
How information is spread, how it is consumed, how it is exchanged. Web 2.0 has become a fashionable term in the short period of about two years since it was introduced. Social networking, wikis, tags, tag clouds, mashups, podcasts, blogs, user generated content, are just a few of the many new buzz words and expressions in our ever expanding web lexicon. The subject of this article, however, is not so much about definitions but about the effect Web 2.0 has on us - and in terms of business - on our customers. Companies like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube are representative of the new ways people are choosing to communicate and consume and more importantly, produce media. Media consumption has transformed and moved online at a staggering pace. A whole new generation has already grown up with the web as their main source of news and entertainment, and their primary educational and communication tool. Children growing up now will know nothing pre-web. A new term, information snacking has been coined which defines the intensive habit of consuming in ever smaller portions or snippets, compared to sitting down and casually reading a newspaper for an hour or more at a time.
Is it all hype, or is it real?
As with any new development on the web, there is always a bit of both involved. The hype exists primarily on the level of many individual start-ups claiming to be the next Google in order to get funded with venture capital or acquired by Rupert Murdoch for a billion dollars! But the reality is seen in how people are actually using the web and what tools are becoming available at an ever more rapid pace. How will these changes further impact human interactions and communication and, therefore, business and especially marketing? It used to be about customer-focus, but in actuality it still very much a product driven marketplace to this day. Marketers have always had a strong desire for control. Control over the product, the packaging, and for the message and to be effective, to break through the clutter by segmenting and targeting. It's a military-like discipline with military-like terms. That world is changing, or has already changed. But often it seems organizations don't realize how profound the change has been.
At first, some businesses responded by incorporating social networking tools like blogs as a new corporate communications channels. Some even started their blogs without accepting comments, but have since corrected course. It was hard to let go of the old “We’re going to tell our customers more about us….” mindset of traditional marketing strategists. A handful of brands have attempted to use social media as a new tool to manipulate gullible consumers, creating fake blogs such as McDonalds’ Lincoln Fry blog or Wal-Mart’s “Wal-Marting Across America”, and more recently Sony’s “alliwantforxmasisapsp.com” blog. In each case though, these companies learned that the blogosphere is closely policed by zealous ethicists. Disingenuous marketing tactics are not tolerated long in the social network; they commonly backfire.
As this social movement gains momentum, businesses must learn new skills. This is a daunting prospect, but one filled with opportunity. It's really not specifically about having a CEO blog, marketing podcast or online newsletter. These may be useful and sometimes necessary tools but it's about much more than that. It's more fundamental. There is already too much clutter, too much information -- and adding to what many consider a cacophony of noise doesn't really contribute anything positive. Companies can no longer control their message. They can join the conversation or stay on the sidelines. It is now a conversation not only influenced, but directed by the customer.
The key concept for businesses to understand in this new environment is to listen to people’s voices, not their wallets. “Customer-centric marketing” has been a much talked about trend for a long time now. However, the advances in database marketing, predictive modeling, and lifetime value segmentation are really a “money-centric”, not “customer-centric” approaches. Tracking purchases focuses marketers on the next product to sell and pushing it at the customer, while neglecting the relationship the customer wants to have with the brand. The collective “You” is demanding that businesses listen to criticism and complaints and honestly admit mistakes. Organizations need to be open to suggestions and participate in a collaborative process to build their brand.
How information is spread, how it is consumed, how it is exchanged. Web 2.0 has become a fashionable term in the short period of about two years since it was introduced. Social networking, wikis, tags, tag clouds, mashups, podcasts, blogs, user generated content, are just a few of the many new buzz words and expressions in our ever expanding web lexicon. The subject of this article, however, is not so much about definitions but about the effect Web 2.0 has on us - and in terms of business - on our customers. Companies like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube are representative of the new ways people are choosing to communicate and consume and more importantly, produce media. Media consumption has transformed and moved online at a staggering pace. A whole new generation has already grown up with the web as their main source of news and entertainment, and their primary educational and communication tool. Children growing up now will know nothing pre-web. A new term, information snacking has been coined which defines the intensive habit of consuming in ever smaller portions or snippets, compared to sitting down and casually reading a newspaper for an hour or more at a time.
When Web 2.0 came and passed, so to speak, it did so without any clear definition. But the web was changing rapidly and people apply names to things as a way to understand them. In this case it seemed to include all kinds of stuff of differing nature – meaning the web was changing in different ways simultaneously and a lot of those different things got clumped together under the misleading Web 2.0 label. There were big changes taking place in social networking – people talking to each other rather than just taking information down from web servers. On a slightly more subtle level it was also about people changing information rather than just accessing it. Web interfaces were also getting dramatically better with improved immediacy and a term we will now employ, direct empowerment. If anything, empowerment is the key to the changes that have taken place and will continue to take place.
The editors of TIME - who last year selected "YOU" as person of the year, see the dawning of a new era resulting from “the small contributions of millions of people” -- “You seizing the reigns of global media founding and framing the new digital democracy.” Powering all of this is, of course, are “consumer-generated media”, “social media” and other Web 2.0 buzz words from the debate about the changing media landscape. But TIME’s selection elevates awareness of this trend from the hot story of the day to the scale of a full-fledged social movement. TIME has recognized a momentous social development relatively early in its life-cycle as they did with “The Under-25 Generation” (1966), and “American Women” (1975). Unlike those cultural phenomena, however, “You” is not limited to a demographic segment of the country, but it is open to everyone.Is it all hype, or is it real?
As with any new development on the web, there is always a bit of both involved. The hype exists primarily on the level of many individual start-ups claiming to be the next Google in order to get funded with venture capital or acquired by Rupert Murdoch for a billion dollars! But the reality is seen in how people are actually using the web and what tools are becoming available at an ever more rapid pace. How will these changes further impact human interactions and communication and, therefore, business and especially marketing? It used to be about customer-focus, but in actuality it still very much a product driven marketplace to this day. Marketers have always had a strong desire for control. Control over the product, the packaging, and for the message and to be effective, to break through the clutter by segmenting and targeting. It's a military-like discipline with military-like terms. That world is changing, or has already changed. But often it seems organizations don't realize how profound the change has been.
At first, some businesses responded by incorporating social networking tools like blogs as a new corporate communications channels. Some even started their blogs without accepting comments, but have since corrected course. It was hard to let go of the old “We’re going to tell our customers more about us….” mindset of traditional marketing strategists. A handful of brands have attempted to use social media as a new tool to manipulate gullible consumers, creating fake blogs such as McDonalds’ Lincoln Fry blog or Wal-Mart’s “Wal-Marting Across America”, and more recently Sony’s “alliwantforxmasisapsp.com” blog. In each case though, these companies learned that the blogosphere is closely policed by zealous ethicists. Disingenuous marketing tactics are not tolerated long in the social network; they commonly backfire.
As this social movement gains momentum, businesses must learn new skills. This is a daunting prospect, but one filled with opportunity. It's really not specifically about having a CEO blog, marketing podcast or online newsletter. These may be useful and sometimes necessary tools but it's about much more than that. It's more fundamental. There is already too much clutter, too much information -- and adding to what many consider a cacophony of noise doesn't really contribute anything positive. Companies can no longer control their message. They can join the conversation or stay on the sidelines. It is now a conversation not only influenced, but directed by the customer.
The key concept for businesses to understand in this new environment is to listen to people’s voices, not their wallets. “Customer-centric marketing” has been a much talked about trend for a long time now. However, the advances in database marketing, predictive modeling, and lifetime value segmentation are really a “money-centric”, not “customer-centric” approaches. Tracking purchases focuses marketers on the next product to sell and pushing it at the customer, while neglecting the relationship the customer wants to have with the brand. The collective “You” is demanding that businesses listen to criticism and complaints and honestly admit mistakes. Organizations need to be open to suggestions and participate in a collaborative process to build their brand.
How 7 Basic Human Needs are Driving the New Social Web2.0
is the title of an excellent blog post in Influential Interactive Marketing. It touches on a number of key aspects in the fast changing web landscape described today in its many manifestations under the catch-all term of web 2.0.
As the hype surrounding it seems to peak, the inevitable evolution of technology is already moving in the direction of an ever more "common sense" web or the "semantic web" which involves the use of software agents to collect natural language information from disparate sources throughout the web and then puts those elements together in various ways for people to use that information more effectively and extract greater meaning from it.
As the hype surrounding it seems to peak, the inevitable evolution of technology is already moving in the direction of an ever more "common sense" web or the "semantic web" which involves the use of software agents to collect natural language information from disparate sources throughout the web and then puts those elements together in various ways for people to use that information more effectively and extract greater meaning from it.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Web 2.0 Expo
WebEx Connect seeks developers by ZDNet's Dan Farber --
Last year WebEx launched WebEx Connect, an on demand development platform for collaborative, composite (mashup) applications. At the Web 2.0 Expo, the company announced Connect Developer Network that includes tools, community resources and marketing programs for participants. WebEx claims that its distribution, integration and monetization platform will help to transform software "just as RSS, [...]
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