The Web 2.0 Blog » Web 2.0

2007 - The Web 2.0 Year

Rather predictably, 2007 was a big year for the second generation of the web. Many saw it coming, and no doubt it will continue to grow with startups popping up all over the place. But what stands out from the past year? What made us stand up and take notice?

To help answer that question, we’ve come up with a set of awards. These aren’t your usual “Best in class” awards, because we get enough of those around this time of year. No, these awards recognise real achievements. I know you can’t wait any longer, so let’s get on with it.

The “Where Did That Come From” Award

Yes, it had to be really. Twitter really sprang out of no where right at the beginning of the year to become one of the most used, and most talked about Web 2.0 services out there. It’s such a simple concept, I don’t think anyone really predicted such success when it first launched. Fortunately for Twitter, they had some noteable names sign up early on. Like they say, it’s who you know, not what you know.

The “Oh My, It’s So … Big” Award

Looking around these internets, there are few sites that command the audience FaceBook does. While it is (debatable) still behind MySpace, 2007 has certainly been FaceBook’s year. From a fairly niche site, really not that long ago, to the all encompassing community we have today, it’s been a dramatic rise. It’s not all been plain sailing though, FaceBook has seen it’s problems increase along with it’s popularity. Mid-way through the year there were numerous stories reporting that many companies, schools, colleges and filtering companies were blocking FaceBook and later in the year there was a raucous surrounding the perceived invasion of privacy the new FaceBook ads brought.

The “Oh, Shiny” Award

Design in the Web 2.0 world is a bot of a touchy subject. People are still slightly fearfull when talking about it due to the early suggestions that the Web 2.0 was style over substance. So when looking at services that I deemed eligible for this award, I was really looking at not just the design but the ease of use. And as someone who deals with interface design on a daily basis, I have to appreciate interface design that simplifies complicated processes. And for me, the clear winner was Picnik. Their tagline is “Photo Editing Made Fun”, and while it may not be fun, it’s certainly easy and frustration free.

For those of you wondering, I also considered Google in this category for their Google Docs application. The reason it didn’t win is down to the fact that they did a great job of converting a desktop application into a web application, but didn’t really bring anything new to the table. It’s also lacking the intrinsic Web 2.0 “style” of Picnik.

The “All That And A Bag Of Potato Chips” Award

This is the category for the people that do everything. So we better fess up, there’s only one company that does blogging, documents, email, chat, search, advertising, maps, calendering, web hosting, online payments, analytics, news reading, feed reading, photo hosting, translation, video…

Yes, it’s Google. The remarkable thing, really, is that Google tend to implement all of these things really rather well. Yes, there are blips, but over all, they’ve got a group of market leaders.

I have a feeling there’s some more awards to come…

Permalink Comments (3 Responses) TrackBack

Web 2.0 Basics - RSS & Feeds, a Template for Increasing Subscribers

A more appropriate name for this post, if used correctly, might be “A template for boosting subscribers through education“.

Most bloggers are aware of the opportunity feeds offer them. It’s a guaranteed way to get your content in front of readers, readers who have asked to see it in advance. It’s very powerful, and the sort of thing money can’t buy. Unfortunately, the majority of Web users are still largely oblivious to feeds and the advantages they offer to them. Therefore, it’s important to come up with a way to describe feeds, which is actually a fairly technical solution, using words they can relate to, and understand. This is my attempt to do just that. Dare I suggest that you put words to this effect somewhere on your blog, just to ease the non-technical readers into the concepts involved in subscribing to a blogs content. Unfortunately, I think there’s this assumption amongst bloggers that putting subscribe links up all over your blog is enough to get subscribers. But, this will have no impact at all if you happen to cater for a niche where the audience is not particularly tech savvy. They need to know what a subscription is, how it works, what the benefits are and how they do it.

This site offers the ability for you to subscribe to our new content. What this means is that when we write something new and brilliant, it will be delivered to you. What this really means is, you can now get the latest from your favourite websites in the same way you get your mail. Imagine RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) is the mail man. When you wake up every morning, you don’t go to all your friends to ask whether or not they’ve sent you any mail, you wait for the mail man to deliver the mail to you. Now you can do the same with websites, just sit back and wait for the content to come to you. Subscribing in this way is free and you can unsubscribe any time you like. You also get to chose how you receive the content. If you like, it can be delivered to you through email or you can use one of the many News Readers out there, such as the excellent, and completely free, Google Reader. Regardless of what News Reader you decide to use, simply copy the subscription address from the site and paste it into the “Add Subscription” field in your reader. It may not be worded exactly like that, but these things are really easy. We hope you enjoy our future content, and hope you contribute to our blog.

I think the above uses a nice analogy to explain how subscriptions to users who may not be familiar with them. By introducing Google Reader, and explaining in simple terms that once you subscribe, you can unsubscribe at any time, you will encourage new readers to take the plunge. Of course, you will want to tailor it to your content, especially if it’s not for a blog. It’s also written in (hopefully) English-English, as opposed to American-English, see the “u” in favourite?

If you have any feedback, please drop it in the comments. I’m going to be adding text to this effect on all my sites that offer subscriptions over the next few weeks to see if it has any impact on subscriber numbers. Let me know if you do the same.

Permalink Comments (3 Responses) TrackBack

A.D 2007, What’s next?

There have been some rumblings recently about the Web 2.0 and specifically, where it’s heading. So, now we’re half way through the year A.D 2007, what more can we expect this year from the Web 2.0? I think the obvious, and easy answer is, more of the same.

Of all the launches, private Beta’s and development intentions we keep on seeing, very few offer anything unique. Two of the hottest Web 2.0 apps coming up for public release this year, Mr Wong and Pownce, are variations on a theme. Social Bookmarking and Web based chat clients. Neither offer anything particularly new, or anything particularly different yet both are set to be wildly popular. So what does this tell us? Certainly, the main point to take away from this is, we haven’t quite reached perfection yet. Yes, I know that’s stating the obvious but it bares thinking about. Moving from one web application to another represents a fairly substantial amount of effort on the part of the user. So obviously people are unhappy with their current selection of web apps to the point of feeling comfortable switching. I know that personally, I’ve switched RSS reader alone 3 times in the last six months, let alone my note taking app and calendar. And I’m still not entirely happy with my choices.

Now we’ve established this fairly fundamental point, we can use it as a basis for some potential trends that you can expect to see in the next few months.

Tighter desktop integration - We are already starting to see some of this. Pownce, for example, is offering a desktop client and Adobe have been pushing their web-desktop crossover platform heavily. At the moment, it all feels very “first go”, I’ll wait till I can get a desktop, web and mobile integrated platform before I even think about it, thankyouverymuch.
More specialisation - With the saturated nature of the current web app market, the only way to go is insular. So expect to see sites that offer the same feature set as other sites, but cater to a much more specific audience. Think del.icio.us but only with cooking bookmarks, or You Tube with only horse riding videos. The simple fact is, for the really popular activities, the big players already have it covered.
Differentiation - With such a saturated market, especially with such similar services, companies are going to to try more and more absurd ways to differentiate themselves from the pack. No doubt the two most obvious ways of doing this is through branding and interface design. Stikkit went down the interface route and have made a fair go of it. So long as it drives innovation, I’m ok with it.
More ownership consolidation - If you want a microcosm of the world’s economy, take a look at web apps. The best are being snapped up by bigger companies at a startling rate. Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are all buying in instead of developing and expect to see alot more of this.
There will be a few surprises - There are still some good ideas out there and someone, somewhere is currently sitting on one. Despite the fact that the trends point to more of the same, there will still be some young upstart that breaks the mold and lands the next big thing.

I think that list really covers the things I expect to see in the near future. It’s all just evolution not revolution at the moment. One thing I am hoping for is a tail off of product launches. It stinks of the period leading up to the Web 1.0 bubble bursting. We get a highly publicised launch regularly and some startling evaluations. I’d like to see fewer, but better judged launches with some web apps that really enhance the space, and don’t just fill it.

What are your views on the immediate future of the Web 2.0?

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

5 Usability Problems that Web Apps Need to Overcome

Looking through the hundreds of popular web apps that are out there, it seems as if the same few UI problems keep cropping up. Some have been solved to some extent where some have simply been ignored. So, I think its time to “out” those little problems so they can be beaten back with good interface design.

(more…)

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

How to get through today with Google Reader

So, we all know what today is. And, unfortunately, many tech and web 2.0 sites like to take full advantage. So, I bring to you a technique for avoiding all this silliness using Google Reader. Its quite complicated, sorting the wheat from the chaff isn’t easy at the best of times, let alone today, so bear with me.

Ok, first, bring up Google Reader in your browser.

Then, click this button Google Reader View All . This ensures that whatever you do next will be applied to all posts.

Next, click this button Google Reader Mark All As Read Button .

And that should be it, all done. You will, however, have to apply the same “fix” every so often for the next 24 hours.

Enjoy a peacefull Sunday.

Permalink Comments (One Response) TrackBack

Icons of Web 2.0

There are many Web 2.0 services out there yet only a few have become iconic. In this post, I’ll run through some of the iconic images associated with the Web 2.0 and just why they have gained this status.

(more…)

Permalink Comments (2 Responses) TrackBack

A New Approach … That Works

I really do have to confess my love for Stikkit. For such a simple premise it is executed incredibly well. Essentially it just lets you store small snippets of information, share it with others, create to-do lists, calendar items and people. The beauty comes from its intelligence, and this is what I fell in love with.

It’s occurred to me recently that allot of things about the Web 2.0 require work, hard work, work that we never used to have to do. Take bookmarks for example, before del.icio.us we would simply bookmark a site for later viewing and be done. Now, we have to worry about giving it appropriate tags and descriptions and sharing options. It’s allot to do. Stikkit, on the other hand, bypasses all this by picking up on natural language and doing all the work for you. There’s no jumping between fields and choosing options, its much more natural than that.

The power of stikkit comes from its ability to understand what you are writing. This is fairly arbitrary at the moment, and relies on certain keywords, but it feels natural. It feels better. The real benefit of a system such as stikkit’s is that it will encourage users who do not usually take advantage of Web 2.0 capabilities, to embrace them. Unfortunately, when it comes to this lofty goal stikkit isn’t quite there yet. Instead, it provides a quick and easy to use data capturing service for those who know how to use it. I think this is a crucial point to make. Hopefully, the ultimate goal of stikkit is to completely transpose the unstructured ramblings we type into structured data. Stikkit is making steps in this direction, if you type “Meet with Andy” it will know who Andy is and link the stikkit to the “peep” (stikkit’s term for people), providing they exist. The simple fact that the user doesn’t have to go and search for that person to link the two stikkits means that your less tech savvy users are doing something they’ve not done before, associating data. And bear in mind, in data terms, this is a somewhat complex idea. The net effect is that the user will end up with a better, more usable, set of data. If you consider the ease with which you can set up a meeting in stikkit, compared to something like outlook, it should be fairly clear this semantic interpretation is the future. In stikkit, you would create a new stikkit and type the details of the person you want to contact. Stikkit will realise this is a person and convert it into a peep. To create the meeting, simple pop up a new stikkit and type the meeting details. Stikkit will pull out the relevant details, such as the date and reminder and add it to your calendar. It will also notice that you invited the peep you created earlier and link them together. Now compare that to your Outlook workflow, where you would have to painstakingly complete all the fields across multiple screens and even then, you would have to manually link the calendar event to your contact.

Fortunately, stikkit isn’t the only service attempting to take advantage of this technology. We saw with 30boxes that you can add events using a sting of descriptive text. We’ve also recently seen with Gmail and gcal that events that appear in an email can be easily added to your calendar. The reason I stated above that you need to know how to use stikkit is that, in its current version, its not quite there. For example, to tag something you have to write “tag as …”, variations on that are hit and miss. The same goes for linking peeps to events, sometimes the “aka” (or shortname, if you will) works and sometimes the long/full name works. By using very tight phrases as triggers, stikkit reduce the possibility of error while also limiting the scope and usefulness of the service. This is a fine balance to strike and many have failed based purely on this point. I’m not sure what the future holds for stikkit, it will be interesting to see which direction they go in. For the moment, its simply the fastest way to input complicated data and relationships.

Permalink Comments (One Response) TrackBack

Quantifying the digg Effect

I’m a huge fan of digg.com, it provides me, and millions of others, with a constant source of interesting content to ponder. And for many sites around the internet, it can provide a much valued boost in traffic. Of course, when you start talking about digg.com and traffic the infamous digg effect always comes up. Put simply, this is the latest take on being slashdotted. When a popular site allows for user generated content, specifically links, there will no doubt be a surge in traffic to that site. In many cases this results in that site becoming unavailable. I’ve recently fallen foul of the digg effect myself, with a site becoming unavailable until I moved hosts. It turns what should be an exciting time into more of a worrying one. On digg itself there have been numerous comments mentioning that a large number of sites seem to be going down. So, given these two factors, I wanted to see for myself. In this post you’ll see what I found out by recording some important data regarding the stories that make it to the digg.com front page over the course of a single day, thats 24 hours and EVERY story that made it to the venerable homepage spots. Read on for what I’ve discovered so far.

(more…)

Permalink Comments (One Response) TrackBack

The dark side of the Web 2.0

One the the interesting things about the Web 2.0 is that users can easily contribute to the content they are viewing. An example of this is digg, where users viewing digg also control what appears on digg. its a very interesting concept and not one that can be recreated in other forms of media. One of the inherent downsides of this is that site owners have great difficulty in controlling what happens on their site. As seen with services such as YouTube, this can lead to inappropriate or copyrighted content appearing. The other risk is that sites are misused and abused. The classic example is digg gaming. This is where sites make it to the digg front page without diggs from genuine users. This can take a number of forms but usually revolves around multiple accounts being created to digg up certain storied or where influential users are paid to digg certain stories/sites.

(more…)

Permalink Comments (2 Responses) TrackBack

Web 2.0 Basics - Tags

With the Web 2.0 came a new way to organise your information, Tags. In the pre-tag world, data was typically only organised based upon one of its characteristics. This was akin to cataloging where, an article would belong to one and only one category. You can compare this to a library. If, say, you wanted a book on Spain you would look under travel. Within travel you would find all the books covering every country in world. Yes, they may be arranged alphabetically (by author or title depending on where you go) but thats still a bit hit and miss. The other possibility is that a book on Spain could be in a “Spain” category. Now that would allow you find the book fairly quickly once you got to the Spain section as there would only be a small number of books in there. Unfortunately, there would be so many categories, it would be difficult to find the right one. Almost returning us to square one.

So in steps Tags. Tags allow you to categorise information in multiple different ways. Taking our book on Spain as an example, we could tag it with Spain, Travel, Europe and anything else that is relevant. Searching for this book using tags then becomes much easier. You constantly narrow down your results with each tag you add to your search/filter criteria.

One of the key drivers of Tagging in the Web 2.0 world is a phenomenon known as folksonomy. Folksonomy is where tags are assigned by the consumers of the information as opposed to the creators. Traditionally, especially on the internet, there was a clear distinction between the content creators and the content consumers. This line is increasingly blurring and folksonomy, and tagging, is key to that.

Permalink Comments (2 Responses) TrackBack

« Older Posts