Digital Renaissance

Reviving This Blog; Announcing My First Book

2012-01-26T01:43:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! Three years without a blog post. That is not good!

Well the fact is I had taken a long blog-posting sabbatical to devote my creative juices and energies for penning a book, my first one. The manuscript of “Gita and the Art of Selling: Memoirs of a Sales Yogi” is all ready; and, a contract with the publisher (Leadstart Publishing) all signed, sealed and delivered.

So I say in an Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque (and The-Terminator-like) vein: “I’m back!”

The Shrimad Bhagavad Gita ["Song of (the) Blessed Lord"], often shortened to simply The Gita, is a sacred Hindu scripture. Authored more than a couple of millennia ago, it is one of the greatest texts in the history of theology, literature & philosophy. It has been described as a lodestar of eternal wisdom that can inspire anyone to accomplishment and enlightenment.

The Gita embodies the teachings of the Divine One, Lord Krishna ‒ a reincarnation of Lord Vishnu, the protector of the universe in the Hindu pantheon of Gods. At the start of the Kurukshetra War in the epic Mahabharata, the warrior prince, Arjuna lays down his arms on the battlefield refusing to fight his own cousins. The Almighty dispels Arjuna’s tumult and turmoil through His discourse, the Bhagavad Gita.

But what is the tenuous relevance of The Gita to selling? How does a spiritual and philosophical magnum opus relate to business matters? The truths and the tenets espoused in The Gita are amazingly germane to the executive experiencing flap and dither on the battlegrounds of sales. In this book I hope to connect the dots between the precepts of The Gita and best practices of selling.

Selling is pervasive in modern society. It is an integral part of every walk of our social and economic lives. Professional selling revolves around trade and commerce; yet, the process of preparation for sales is a science and its execution an art. So mastery in the profession requires flair and finesse in the artistic, scientific and commercial elements of the craft.

There are umpteen books on the process, techniques and methodologies of selling. All of them invariably adopt a regimented, structured and scientific approach to the subject matter. Not only do these theoretical publications make for some vapid reading, but they also fail to flesh out the subtleties of sales and the artistry involved in its practice.

In this book, “Gita and the Art of Selling: Memoirs of a Sales Yogi,” I have attempted to use the fine art of story-telling to convey the essence of selling and sales management. It chalks up inspiration from ancient literary masterpieces, like Hitopadesha, Panchatantra, etc., which wed education and entertainment to convey esoteric messages on purity and morality.

The retro storyline of the book is woven around a protagonist, Mahesh Kumar, who joins a nascent outfit, BCL (Bharat Computers Ltd.) and moves up the rank and file of its hierarchy. He learns traits essential for sales success; and acquires qualities crucial for effective sales management. Mahesh narrates ordeals and occurrences from his stint at the fledgling enterprise that grows rapidly into a behemoth. His career progression too is equally impressive.

Thus Mahesh describes the unique sales culture and conventions at BCL ‒ termed 360°-Selling ‒ that create a shining example of entrepreneurial success in corporate India. He discerns the fascinating links between apposite tenets in the Gita and prudent sales practices.

Mirroring the Gita, this novel has eighteen chapters. Each chapter details a major event or a milestone in Mahesh’s life. All chapters are enjoined into one seamless narrative thread. The memoirs are based on a rhetorical mode of narration for story-telling; yet use exposition to explain sales theory. The insights expressed in each chapter links to a canon espoused in the Gita.

The novel has been penned as a funnily-serious or seriously-funny (despite the oxymoron) book that reads like a thriller, feels like a soap and serves as a sermon. In some ways, it parallels the mishmash of a typical Bollywood potboiler with four “-tions” in it ‒ action, emotion and recreation; and education added to the mix.

The book has been scribed with three cornerstones in mind:

1. Style: The body has a narrative style ideal for light reading. The syntactic and semantic presentation is such that the fictional story flows smoothly and reads like a “humorous thriller.” At a superficial nuts and bolts level, I hope the book makes for nice and nuanced reading in English. The plot of this memoir develops like a Sagen, but attempts to achieve the effect of a Märchen. It bridges the traditional chasm that demarcates fiction and non-fiction.

2. Substance: The exposition of sales-related content is non-fictional & non-pedantic. With its 'learn while you laugh' or ‘laugh while you learn’ mode, the novel aids learning. It unravels the processes & practices that are the bedrocks of sales. The building blocks of sales are described using straight-from-the-gut stories. Also exposed is the blueprint for sculpting a big-league sales team.

3. Soul ‘n Spirit: At a sublime, spiritual level, this essay serves as a self-help or motivational book, which professionals can use for selling skills improvement, personality development etc. The hope is that the novel will trigger sales success and business achievement for the reader. If the material provides inspiration for taking a leap into entrepreneurship, that is icing on the cake!

My target audience for this literary effort is the well-educated, urbane crowd in the 18-30 years age group. That is a raw, inexperienced group at the dawn of its professional career and can potentially benefit the most from the wisdom shared. Skills and knowledge I gained in my stints have been shared. I believe the sales insights presented also cater to the needs of the upwardly-mobile, 30-50 years-old demographic.

Will post again when the book hits the stand in all its print and paper glory!

Major Reason For The Success of Social Media

2008-06-24T01:05:00.000-07:00

In recent times, we have seen the emergence of ‘new’ media sites – aka social or citizen media. Based on the principles of a democratic Web, these sites have witnessed through-the-roof growth. Flickr, YouTube, Digg, etc. are prime examples of such sites that have gained tremendous popularity.

So, what did these companies do that made people flock around these sites? Is the opportunity to express oneself without editorial controls – ‘citizen journalism’ – the reason? Or, is it the ability to showcase one’s talents – exhibitionism – an adequate reason that explains the popularity of these sites. Is there some common denominator amongst the top sites that satisfactorily explains the meteoric growth of social media?

To examine these issues one has to understand how traffic gets generated on the Internet.

Generating Web Traffic
Web visitors arrive at a webpage (thus generating Web traffic) in one of three primary ways:

Typing the webpage address directly onto a Web browser. This results in “Direct Traffic.” Generation of a lot of direct traffic is contingent upon a lot of people knowing about the webpage and remembering its address correctly. Further, the webpage may be required to satisfy an existing need that compels the “surfing public” to return to the page repeatedly. Information about the webpage address and its contents has to be disseminated widely amongst Internet users either through promotion (by traditional means or otherwise) or through viral means (word-of-mouth, e-mail, etc.).

Clicking the hyperlink (to the webpage) provided on another webpage the Internet user has visited. Such traffic is termed “Referring Sites Traffic.” If the content on the webpage is useful, it is possible that Internet users may refer and even hyperlink the webpage (called ‘inward link’) in their own Web content. Thus, visitors looking up other Web content may follow links provided and arrive at the webpage. Such inward links also bump up the importance of the webpage (i.e., its “Page Rank”) and lead to higher rank in the listing of results for relevant searches.

Clicking the result (i.e., the hyperlink corresponding to the webpage) of a search on a search engine such as Google or Yahoo. This traffic is called “Search Engine Traffic.” As explained earlier, the more inward links to the webpage, the higher our webpage will rank in search results. And the higher a webpage ranks in search results, the more likely the user is to click the link and arrive at the page.

Now, the above explanation holds good for a website, which has multiple pages. So, the traffic of the website is the sum of the traffic generated by each of its individual web pages.

Generating Traffic for Social Media
Social media sites are typically content-intensive sites. Apart from lacking “stickiness”, social media sites with very little content are unlikely to generate any appreciable amount of traffic (particularly, referring site and search engine traffic). Besides, most users of these sites initially will be just content consumers (and NOT content contributors).

Further, old media has often provided the seed material (often copyright-protected print and multimedia content) for social media site owners during the initial stages. This has often provided the impetus for Internet surfers to flock these sites. Consequently, it is customary for social media site owners to seed their sites with content (relevant to the site’s theme / concept) initially. Seeding content has proven to be the best bet for attracting initial traffic.

Once the social media site gets seeded, its traffic's is likely to increase over a period of time, particularly if the site is actively promoted. Promotion typically means getting inward links into various pages of the site and attracting users through conventional advertising. Aggressively promoted sites thus get more eyeballs, which makes the sites attractive for online advertising. The social media site owners then capitalize on the opportunity to sell or earmark space on web pages for advertising.

However, it is simply not economically viable for social media sites to sustain traffic growth by seeding content on their sites. Eventually, they must rely on user-contributed content for traffic growth. But, what is the motivation for the vast majority of content consumers to go that extra mile for taking the time and effort to create and contribute content on social media sites? In the answer to that question lies the secret of the success of many social media sites.

Opportunity for Generating Traffic from Social Media Sites
The Internet as we all know is being used for a wide range of business-related activities (including, but not restricted to, online advertising). Clearly, a for-profit website needs to enhance its traffic – the more traffic a site generates, more the potential for revenue generation. Thus, owners of business-oriented websites will devote substantial effort to get eyeballs to their sites.

Individuals seeking to promote themselves (e.g., a speech or presentation; an amateur music composition) have also tended to use social media extensively. Often self-promoters (typically website owners) use “old media” content and copyrighted material to promote themselves (e.g., using a MTV video clip with their website address captioned on it). For owners of for-profit websites, social media offers a no- or low-cost means for site promotion. The absence of editorial control provides an opportunity for creating inward links into their web pages and for generating eyeballs.

Clearly, vested interests drive both ‘self- & site-promoters’ to use social media. Looked at differently, social media sites have proved to be a breeding ground for a new-genre of “spamming”. And, being non-disruptive, it also has a certain degree of legitimacy (without the ill-will) that conventional (e-mail) spamming never did.

Therefore, it is little wonder that much of the content on social media sites is promotional in nature!

Does Community Trump Content?

2008-03-30T23:50:00.000-07:00

The Online Publisher Association announced in January 2008 that it added “Community” as a category to its Internet Activity Index (IAI). Since 2003, the IAI has provided monthly reports of time spent with Content, Communications, Commerce and Search, and in January 2008, a Community category was added.

This is somewhat reflective of the prevalent feeling that “content” is passé and that “community” represents the future of the Web. This thinking may be driven by the astronomical valuations of community sites like Facebook, which have dwarfed the previous valuations (by no means insignificant) of content-centric social media sites.

Pure Community Site
To really examine this issue of “content vs. community”, let us first imagine a website catering to a community brought together by a common interest:

Without ANY content. Assume this hypothetical site is a doorway to a hidden, presumably vibrant private community. In other words, it does not have any content – effectively Web pages - exposed to the external world.
With registered members who can post information regarding their common interest (by, shall we say, filling out a form). Other registered users get periodic emails related to their common interest – in a way similar to a private e-group (such as Yahoo groups!). In other words, the subscribers to this site do not get to see any content either.

Such a site is unlikely to get indexed very effectively by some search engines because of the lack of publicly visible content. Other search engines might index it highly if the marketing efforts were to focus on the creation of inward links.

Due to aggressive promotion, the Website can derive its traffic organically through searches or through referrals driven by inward links. Traffic can also arrive directly with the Web address of the site. Regardless of the origin, the incoming traffic to the Website is likely to be volatile – pretty much “Get In / Get Out” (GIGO) traffic. The primarily reason for this volatility is the lack of content – consequently, retention of traffic is low as there is neither stickiness nor a compelling reason for the visitor to continue browsing. Thus heavy promotion of the site will be ineffective – visits might go up significantly, but not page views.

The lack of clarity about what the site is about (since there is no content exposed to users) will also result in low new user registrations. Even the few who do get converted will in all probability soon think the site generates excessive spam and terminate their subscription.

Fundamental Building Block
Thus content is the fundamental building block for any site. It drives stickiness and leads to successful community formation (by compelling users to return). In other words, content is a prerequisite for community besides being a component of community. After all, as others have pointed out communities are combinations of content, commerce, communications and search. Others have even declared that “When It Comes to Time Spent Online, Content Trumps Community.”

Has Facebook taken Microsoft for a ride?

2007-10-31T10:40:00.000-07:00

The Microsoft investment of $240 million to pick up a 1.6% stake in Facebook has attracted significant media attention. The investment obviously puts Facebook valuation at a whopping $15 billion. Let us take a look at some hard, cold facts to analyze the merits of the investment.

A Wall Street Journal (Online) report has indicated that Facebook expects to breakeven in 2007 with revenues of $150 million. The Journal also estimates Facebook’s 2007 earnings at $30 million. That equates the Facebook valuation (of $15 billion) at 500 times estimated earnings. Google in comparison is trading at $707 (Oct. 31, 2007) for a market capitalization of $164.66 billion giving it a value multiple of 49.33 (on earnings of $3.3375 billion) – less than 1/10th the valuation multiple of the Microsoft investment in Facebook.
If the same “100X multiple” on revenue were used on Wal-Mart Stores, the largest 2007 Fortune 500 company in America would have a market capitalization of $35.1 trillion – almost 3 times the GDP of US.
Facebook is believed to have more than 50 million users worldwide. Thus, their value works out to $300 per user. It can be estimated that with its Sept. 2007 global search engine market share of almost 57% (per HitsLink statistics), Google has almost 710 million users worldwide (taking Sept. 2007 Internet World Stats estimate of Internet users into account). At $300 per user, Google should have a market cap of almost $215 billion, which is 30% more than what Google’s current market cap is. And, oh, by the way that would take Google to a share price of almost $1000.
Valleywag reports click-through rates on Facebook are astonishingly low at 0.04% (Myspace is 0.10%). This probably is a clear indication of lower disposable incomes of Facebook’s user base. Further, taking comScore Sept. 2007 statistics into account, Facebook generates about 6.0 million ad clicks per month. In comparison, MySpace generates about 45.0 million ad clicks per month. MySpace revenue has been estimated at $525 million for 2007 or roughly at $1 per click per year. The corresponding figure for Facebook is $2 per click per year.
According to market research firm Parks Associates, few U.S. consumers are willing to pay a monthly fee to use social networking sites. This online survey of Internet users found 72% of social networking users would stop using a site if required to pay a $2 monthly fee. Likewise, nearly 40% would stop if a site contains too many advertisements. Clearly, Microsoft must have seen value in Facebook’s potential to generate ad revenues and NOT subscription revenues.

Facebook’s monthly burn rate must be in the vicinity of about $15 million. If it has indeed broken even, the Microsoft investment is just insurance money - something that reassures Facebook about its future. Thus, it really does not make a whole lot of sense why Facebook is supposedly thinking of raising additional capital from hedge funds. Do we know all that we need to know about what is going on within Facebook? Why would anyone value Facebook so high?

The Microsoft investment is clearly a bet by Microsoft – a “leap of faith” if you will. Microsoft is banking on the fact that eventually Facebook would be a better destination for online advertisers. Microsoft clearly thinks that unlike Google, Facebook knows a lot about its users, their profiles, hobbies, interests, activities and so on. This helps advertisers run targeted campaigns more effectively. On the contrary, Google does not know any of this information. Thus, Microsoft is hoping that Facebook with help them become a serious player in the growing market of "social advertising".

How will profile searches impact Facebook?

2007-09-30T14:18:00.000-07:00

Facebook recently announced:

“Starting today, we are making limited public search listings available to people who are not logged in to Facebook. We're expanding search so that people can see which of their friends are on Facebook more easily. The public search listing contains less information than someone could find right after signing up anyway, so we're not exposing any new information, and you have complete control over your public search listing.”

The decision (as announced) at face value is aimed at letting people search for friends who are on Facebook. It appears to be a logical enhancement of Facebook functionality. But, the ability to search for friends has always been available to registered users. Any user seriously interested in connecting with friends would not mind registering on Facebook at all.

So, why this sudden change of policy permitting (unregistered) users not logged in to search users. What are the other implications of this decision? I have a simple (but, speculative) explanation for this decision.

A recent Online Publishers Association report clearly indicates trends in Internet traffic. The report has shown online traffic to be shifting away from commerce and communications sites to social networking and media sites. Further, users on social networking and media sites spend time viewing other users’ profiles to leverage the possibility of connecting with other users who share interests.

Thus, the opportunity to increase page views might have prompted Facebook into offering the public search listing feature. The objective very well might have been to improve stickiness. Another reason could be to increase conversions. Afterall, a casual visitor is more likely to register if he or she finds another friend or buddy to be a user of Facebook and wants to connect with that person.

So, Facebook seems to have taken a leaf out of the MySpace book. Needless to say this is a step in the right direction. The functionality should have been made available a long time ago.

The decision clearly indicates Facebook is no longer a niche social networking site focusing on the student community, but a mainstream player. It is definitely going to be interesting to watch the “social networking showdown” between MySpace and Facebook over the next few months.

New Media Differentiators

2007-08-31T20:52:00.000-07:00

Robert Scoble in his "What is social media?" post explains “new, social, emergent media” nicely. It also sums up the salient aspects of social media by comparing it with “old, traditional media”.

Summarizing the distinguishing attributes of new media as compared to “old media” such as print media (e.g., newspapers, magazines, catalogs, paper mail, books), broadcast media (e.g., television & radio programs), digital media (e.g., CDs, DVDs, mini discs), Robert pointed out the following (I am rephrasing these points just to give a more personal touch to this post):

Old media once made public cannot be modified. For instance, the songs in a released CD cannot be changed.
Old media are mostly one-way communication channels that don’t let consumers interact with the producers of the media. For example, readers of blogs can leave behind their comments. In this regard, broadcast media is an exception since some programs do indeed permit listeners to call in and interact with the programming.
Social media lets consumers rate, remark, review and recommend stuff in almost real time. Other consumers can get a sense of the quality and / or popularity of the media item. On the contrary, old media gives consumers no idea of quality or popularity of any item until much later (e.g., a best seller list or Nielsen TV ratings).
With “new media” it is much easier to search archives and locate related content. New media also permits manipulation of material in ways that are just not possible with older media. Searching and locating related material in case of traditional media is relatively more difficult.
New media makes it possible to mix and match media types. For instance, you can have a video clip or a bunch of photos published with your web log.
New media imposes few or no editorial restrictions on the duration of broadcast or length of a publication. There is also greater freedom with topic selection and quality of production. For instance, one can publish a 20-page article on the Web or 100 articles on a given topic.
Social media also allows easy reuse, repurposing and republishing of material. For instance, I have linked to Robert Scoble’s post here and am adding my two-bit to it. Such reference to another article might be equally possible in a magazine. But, the difference is that the reader cannot quickly check the original article with the same degree of ease. Further, new media can be syndicated with great ease. I could have subscribed to Scoble’s posts through an RSS feed and republished them elsewhere.
New media can be combined or mashed up with other data served by other applications. For example, the publisher of a blog has no control over the advertisements Google serves or the stuff that get displayed in a widget. Such media aggregation is just not possible with traditional media.

Besides the above characteristics Scoble listed, here is a few more:

Social media has no constraints of circulation and distribution. Anyone with Internet connectivity can potentially access any article published practically anywhere in the world not only in real time but also at ANYTIME as well.
Old media by virtue of having been around for much longer than “new media” has a lot more material available on historical events, literary works and more.
In some instances, social media also permits the collaborative creation of material. New media can be edited at anytime. In most cases, social media published can even be reversed or retracted. This is next to impossible in most cases in the traditional context.

Facebook: A fortified garden

2007-08-13T08:34:00.000-07:00

The Internet world in the valley has been abuzz over the last 3 months about the Facebook (FB) announcement to give “an unprecedented amount of access to developers.” The Facebook API would permit third party developers to offer their applications to FB users. Users can browse through and use any of the third-party applications. They can even remove default FB applications and use third party solutions instead.

Besides letting these applications serve their own ads, Facebook has also added a viral element to this ecosystem. When your friend subscribes to a third-party application, it is included in the news stream of that user. So, when notified about your friend’s choice, you can decide to use the application yourself. In other words, your “social graph” (in FB parlance) – your network of friends – will push information to you.

The Implications
This strategy has been hailed for two reasons. One, it makes FB functionally richer and developers get access to the large FB user base. And two, friends can push you information that you might find useful. But, both these advantages have downsides.

To begin with this information push is fine with small groups. But as your network grows, it soon becomes information overload – often unwanted. It ends up becoming the equivalent of unsolicited mail albeit non-disruptive.

It is true that an open Facebook is unlike other social networks, which attempt to lock in users. The obvious goal here is to make available so much functionality on Facebook that users don’t feel the need to look at other platforms at all. This is very similar to the Microsoft strategy of using third-party application providers to gain competitive advantage.

This to them has been Facebook’s valiant attempt to knock walled gardens.

Is Content Still King?

2007-08-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

Dee in her post “Is Content Being Dethroned By Social Media?” said:

“…A well-known Internet marketing slogan is “Content is king.” But is content being dethroned by social media?

Social media sites like Digg, Reddit, Netscape, Del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon are changing the online business game. These sites drive huge amounts of traffic. And all you need is good content and a lot of friends. Notice I did not say great content.

… This brings us to the key to social media marketing. Friends, the more, the merrier…”

Her point was that with popularity of social media (including bookmarking) sites it was relatively easier for online marketers to fetch eyeballs to their websites. Even relatively pedestrian content can be used to generate a ton of “eyeballs”. Obviously she mentioned this in the context of using social media as a marketing channel.

Guest Eyeballs
I agree. You can indeed get a lot of visitors to your site with interesting, or as Dee puts it good, content and a little help from social media sites – Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, etc. Your traffic sees a growth spike for a few days, maybe weeks. You will love all the attention your site (or more specifically, content - good, bad or ugly) gets.

And, then the audience begins to erode - as swiftly as it arrived. Your content looses its novelty and, more importantly, gets buried under new content (or links) at those social media sites. Thus, the marketing challenge does not end with attracting this “drive-by traffic”, or as I like to call it “guest eyeballs.”

Resident Eyeballs
You are left with the task of getting more eyeballs. The marketing task then truly boils down to not just fetching eyeballs, but also retaining eyeballs. That is, converting your “guest eyeballs” to “resident eyeballs.”

This can only happen if your site offers fresh content (presumably good) that compels your first-time visitors to return. The only way to accomplish this is by having a constant supply of interesting and compelling content to retain your “(guest) eyeball stream”. And, obviously, the rate at which you refresh content becomes crucial. If the rate of refresh is too slow, your site and its content become stale.

Consumption Keystrokes
Besides refreshing, engaging content, marketers use “registration” as another technique for retention. Registration – which entails the use of “keystrokes” – is commonly used as a pre-requisite for receiving additional value. This value can be in the form of additional valuable content delivered one-time (e.g., a white paper), or on a continuous basis (e.g., a newsletter subscription, or RSS). The value offer can even take the form of additional rights accorded to registered users (e.g., right to rate or comment).

The marketing goal here is to generate return traffic – repeatedly and frequently, or in other words, increase devotion to your site. The value for the user is “information consumption.” I refer to return traffic generated through registration (in its many forms) as “consumption keystrokes.” The prime motivation here again is “content” or, better still, “addiction to your site’s content.”

Contribution Keystrokes
The discussions above are predicated on the site supplying content to attract and retain traffic. This means, eventually the supply of quality content will become a bottleneck. So, website owners will progressively find it more difficult to maintain traffic growth.

So, the ultimate marketer’s challenge is to have a self-scaling and self-sustaining model for traffic growth. Is such a scenario possible? Yes, it is possible if your (existing) traffic – that is, user base – generates content that attracts more traffic. This indeed is the secret sauce behind the successful social media sites!

Sites like YouTube, Digg, MySpace, etc. have thrived as a result of user-generated content – or “contribution keystrokes”. User contributions can be in the form of a rating or review of content; or the creation (e.g., uploading a video) of content. That to me is the quintessence of ‘community’ in the online realm – or the ‘democratic web.’ Once again, ‘content’ is the driving force.

Commercial Keystrokes
The end goal of any website is obviously is to generate revenue. Advertising and online commerce remain as the primary revenues models. In either case this will happen only through keystrokes – “commercial keystrokes”.

From a marketing perspective how well you transition eyeballs to keystrokes will determine your success. The more traffic your site generates, the more successful you are likely to be in generating revenues.

And, of course, that hinges upon your site’s ability to scale and sustain the offer of great, engaging, refreshing and compelling content over time. Thus, as you can see, content is not just the king, but the “emperor” of the online world.

Social networking is NOT the greatest thing since sliced bread!

2007-07-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

Social networking has exploded in recent years. The wave of social networking sites is reminiscent of the mushrooming e-commerce sites during the late 1990s. The entry barriers are so low that anyone can create the infrastructure for a social networking platform with minimal investment. What is more interesting is the frenetic pace of adoption of some of these sites.

So, what is all this frenzy about? Is it curiosity that drives people to become members of these sites and “network socially” through them? Or, is it just a bunch of kids with too much time trying to play with the latest online fad? Or, is online social networking indeed such a significant innovation that it warrants all this attention? Here's my take on the social networking phenomenon from an “innovation” standpoint.

Social Networking v. 1.0
Social networking in the physical world has existed throughout history. The new, virtual breed of social networking obviously has its roots in the Internet. So, how did it all start?

In my opinion, online forums and groups were the v.1.0 of the online social networking world. Fundamentally, the objective of an online group or forum is to give users the opportunity to converse and congregate in cyberspace, thus sharing ideas, opinions; debating issues, exchanging stuff, seeking advice, and doing any of a myriad other things made possible by the Web. The advantage of making group communication less disruptive (through daily digests and the like) is icing on the cake.

Characteristics
There are remarkable similarities in the way social networks and online groups / forums approach the same objective. Private online groups & forums are typically virtual manifestations of real-world groups (at least the private ones) – in which case they are brought into being primarily to facilitate non-disruptive communication. So, in these cases, relationships exist even prior to the group being set up. Otherwise they are no different from a group of e-mail addresses created in your Outlook.

It gets interesting in case of public online groups and forums because even strangers can join these groups. So, in effect they facilitate strangers with common goals, interests & passions meeting. Additionally, online groups provide a private space for sharing files, photos, etc., polling members, scheduling meetings, planning events, etc.

Present Wave: The key difference
The current wave of social networking (let us say v.2.0) pretty much offers the same functionality. The key differentiator though is that the present breed of social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, etc. allow users to not only browse groups and (public) discussion forums, but also lets them explore and discover other users who share the same interests and passions.

Thus, instead of networking with groups en masse you can connect with individuals separately. But for this difference the current breed of social networking sites is pretty much the same as the earlier breed. This to me is nothing more the same old wine with a twist.

So, what is all this ado about? It is just evolution of technology at work.

Marketer's Interpretation of Forrester Research on Online Participation Habits

2007-07-16T08:07:00.000-07:00

In a recent report from Forrester Research on "Social Technographics," authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff used the metaphor of a ladder to show user participation in social media. They estimate that 13% of adult online consumers are content creators; 19% are critics who comment on blogs and/or post ratings and reviews; 15% are collectors; 19% are joiners; 33% are spectators (often called lurkers); and 52% don't perform any of the previously mentioned activities (Refer figure below for details).

Based on this report, Business Week later published a graphical representation (see figure below) of online participation levels by age group.

What is the significance of these statistical insights on online user behavior to a consumer Internet marketer? Well here are some conclusions I have drawn about online marketing strategy on the basis of figures in these diagrams:

Interestingly, in a previous study, Jacob Nielson had talked about the "90-9-1 rule" for online social behavior i.e., 90% lurkers (or inactives); 9% infrequent contributors; and, 1% frequent contributors. The findings of Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff seem to reinforce these numbers.

It is remarkable that collectors are almost uniformly spread across all demographic segments. More remarkable is that fact that the ratio of collectors to creators is far lower for the youth (less than 26 years) than that for the (more) mature adult categories (greater than 26 years). Does this mean that the average user does not really care for syndication? Should RSS figure lower in product management and engineering priorities? Well, your guess is as good as mine.

The high percentage of specatators and inactives really reinforces the belief that social media's potential is still untapped (despite the mushrooming of applications). It also perhaps implies that the average online user is reluctant to adopt / embrace social media. Is this an indication of 'online social shyness' or 'do-not-feel-the-need-to attitude'?

Clearly the teens, youth and generation Y are the darlings of social media. It means the younger age groups feel a greater need for social expression and networking. Hence, it is also likely that these demographics spend more time online than their older-age counterparts (besides willing to be early adopters). Thus, marketers of social media applications need to necessarily focus on these segments for building vibrant and sustaining online communities. So, a social application that these age groups finds 'cool' (and useful) is more likely to spread faster virally than an application that is perceived to be not 'hip and trendy.'

The big picture that emerges for marketers is that their market entry strategy is more likely to be successful if it targets the younger generations. The 'joiner' percentages in these segments are far higher than the 'creator' percentages (with almost a differential of 15-30%).

In summary, younger social media users are 'early adopters.' They exhibit greater propensity to participate. Marketers of social media and online communities should keep these online behavioral insights in mind while chalking out their online strategies.

2007-07-13T14:31:00.000-07:00

KEEPING SOCIAL MEDIA SITES CLEAN

Recently social media sharing and publishing platforms have become ubiquitous. People use these sites to create and contribute content; or to critique and comment on content; or just to collect and consume content. Regardless of the use, people of all ages flock to sites that are in this realm (like YouTube, Digg, Flickr, etc.)

So, how do you keep these user-generated-content-sites clean for all ages and free of objectionable content? Do you remove all mature content? Do you display a warning before showing mature content? Or, do you filter content display depending on the age of the user? And, what processes do you provide for the community to flag mature content? These are some of the policy challenges that social media sites address regardless of media silos (of text, audio or video content).

Browser Preferences
As is well known mature material on the Internet is not just pornographic content. It also includes adult / obscene language, and violent or hateful material. Such content can be posted on social media sites as text, audio or video content.

Users do have ways and means of filtering such content on the Web using settings on their browsers. For instance, on Internet Explorer you can use The Recreational Software Advisory Council rating service (based on the work of Dr. Donald F. Roberts of Stanford University) to filter mature content. Some search engines also provide Safe Search preferences, which can be set to filter adult material.

These techniques basically place the onus on the user for setting viewing preferences. Suspect sites and / or offending content get entirely blocked.

Selective blocking
Social media sites feature content users generate. They do not provide editorial filters for approving content and hence have no control over the material that gets published.

So, while they would like to attract users belonging to all demographics, some controls are necessary to insure users do not accidentally view objectionable content on the site. Besides, they do have social responsibilities and moral obligations.

Best Practices
Social media sites need to have well-defined policies for flagging mature content. Getting users to declare mature content while publishing it is the first step. The media site needs to prominently flag all such mature content. A ‘mature icon’ may be displayed to warn users about the nature of the content and to prevent accidental viewing. Next, sites may have to incorporate date-of-birth based controls to prevent underage users viewing mature content.

A means for users (viewers of content) to report inappropriate content should also be provided. The media site should allocate resources and define processes for reviewing complaints and then taking appropriate steps including, but not limited to, expeditiously take down of the inappropriate content. Termination of the violating user’s account is also a step that can be pursued as an option.

Finally, social media site owners need to be vigilant about their site being used for publishing child pornographic material. Federal and state laws make it a crime to produce, possess, distribute, or sell pornographic materials that exploit or portray a minor. It has to be remembered that social media sites as service providers must report child pornography incidents to law enforcement authorities.

2007-06-30T14:51:00.000-07:00

How Many More Accounts & Passwords?

The blogosphere is replete with frustration over "centralized social networking sites" (e.g., Krishnan, jEN...). The reason is pretty simple and straightforward. The way the ‘social’ aspect of the Internet exists today, you have no choice but to open and manage accounts over several sites to network around "social media."

So when will this multi-account networking end? What will it take for us to network with people over the Web regardless of where they have their "virtual media homes" set up?

Personality Fragmentation
I believe "the social realm" in the virtual world has to eventually mirror in many ways the physical realm. In the physical world, when someone looks at me they see one persona. During interactions over a period of time, they may get to see different emotions, expressions and the ilk. But, all that behavior manifests eventually in one personality. So, over a period of time with continued interactions, they get to know my likes (& dislikes), interests, passions, friends, family, and so on. Those who get invited home even get insights into what I own, value and cherish – books, music, videos, etc. In other words, they get to build a 360-degree view of me over time.

In the virtual world, outside of the words that I use to talk about myself (profile) or about something and the few photos or videos (faked?) that I share about myself, there is no personality. Further, my profile & personality is split across sites depending on the use I am putting the site to. Thus people publish content (regardless of media), participate in threaded conversations, manage schedules, etc., on myriad sites.

Further, the lack of physical interactions is a big impediment in virtual communities. There is no sense of bonding, belonging or togetherness unless it is an essentially physical group with presence online to facilitate remote communication (e.g., Yahoogroups).

Unification
So, for a (truly) virtual community to become socially connected, and to congregate (albeit virtually), there is a need to provide each member with an opportunity to know as much about the other members in the community. In other words, it becomes important to consistently expose common profiles about members across social networks irrespective of the platform or site where the network congregates.

By the very nature of today’s fragmented social applications, this is impossible. For instance, it is not possible for me today to expose my Flickr photos and Wordpress posts to members of a YouTube amateur movie club that I am part of.

So, what next?
Thus, the need is to seamlessly network with social and professional circles without endlessly opening accounts, maintaining passwords, entering profile information, checking threaded conversations, viewing published content, etc. on various social platforms. Open identification seems to be a step in the right direction.

Maybe Digital Lifestyle Aggregation (DLA) is the way to get there. However, I kind of felt many of Marc Canter’s concepts of DLA have been around for some time. One question that pops up in my mind is: What if a service does not expose itself with an API?

So, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Blogger et al. are you listening?

2007-06-06T07:08:00.000-07:00

Media Convergence: Have we achieved it?

Ever since the Internet revolution began, industry pundits have waxed over the possibilities of using it to channel multimedia content. It was even predicted that this new media would eventually converge with old media on the Internet. With the Time Warner and News Corp. acquisitions of AOL and Myspace respectively, it finally seemed this “media union” was here for good. Other hardware and device-level innovations and developments have bucked this trend.

So, has the potential of the Internet been realized in the delivery of unified media? The answer is a big NO. The progress of this “new-old” wedlock has been anything but satisfactory. I believe the power of the Internet has been grossly under-utilized in the delivery of a convergent media. And, here’s why.

The Internet advantage lost
One of the great advantages of the Internet is the delivery of rich content over the same physical medium. Audio, video, text, image and other content can all be transmitted to the consumer over the same (communication) channel.

Yet, unfortunately what we see is the replication of old media techniques and approaches in the Internet realm. This is most evident in the “divvying” up of content-sharing and publishing sites along old-media-type lines. Blogging is the new-media equivalent of print publishing; video blogging for television broadcasting; podcasting for radio broadcasting and so on.

True power of the Internet
The true power of the Internet lies in the fact that it provides a common delivery backbone for a media mashup. In other words, the Internet can serve as a medium for dynamic delivery of video, audio and print content – all in the same channel.

How will such media convergence be useful? Imagine a single communication channel of democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, being used for publishing editorials on her views; broadcasting videos of her public addresses during the day; podcasting her radio interviews; publishing photos of her public engagements and so on.

This unique “mixed-media” publishing will prove to be the hallmark of Internet-based public communication. This media mashup would be the key differentiator between old media and “truly” new media (Internet) publishing.

Mixed-media for the masses
Sure enough, Hillary Clinton’s campaign can afford to invest substantially in infrastructure to set up a website to deliver (streamed or otherwise) such mixed media content. But, what about the average John or Jane Doe, or the average family in the American heartland wanting a channel to keep its extended family or community informed? That is indeed a challenge that the new-media technology companies need to address.

Disclosure: I am a co-founder of Cylive - a social application that empowers users to network in highly personalized ways.

2007-05-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

Personalization of Social Networks

In a recent article in NYtimes.com the technological landscape of social networks and its future are discussed. The author states that large social networking sites like MySpace & Facebook have attracted scores of people with dissimilar profiles and interests. New social networking players are creating social Web sites tailored to cater to niche interests. So, how are these niche social networking sites differentiating themselves from the large, monolithic sites?

Differentiation
The most common differentiation strategy of niche social networking sites is to segment the market - demographies (teens, tweens, singles, etc.), interests (travel, stock investing, etc.), affiliations (political, business, etc.), geographies (country, city, etc.), profiles (language, etc.) and so on. These new social networking sites incorporate features relevant to the market segments they cater to. So, in that sense the site is personalized to the collective needs of its user community.

Personalization
But, what about personalization of the social network at a more individual level? Many social networking sites offer users display preferences such as 'skin settings,' and 'profile settings' for personalization. Other sites feature filtering systems to display content of relevance and interest to the user.

In general, the personalization that most state of art social networking sites - both large and niche - feature is of a very rudimentary, even inconsequential nature. There is a need to take personalization to the next level. Sites have to go beyond letting users control what they get to see or what they display in their profile pages.

Future
Personalization in the future will focus on what users can do online in their social networks. This creative freedom will pertain to mixing-n-matching media in new ways - for example, publishing a music video with its music sheet and lyrics. It will entail displaying personal profiles in unique ways, such as publishing a list of favorite movies or rock n'roll artistes in the personal page.

Social networking sites in the future will permit personalized collaboration. For instance, some members in a social network might have editorial control over the content that others in the group might post. Personalization of communication channels is another area that social networks will focus on in the future.

Disclosure: I am a co-founder of Cylive - a social application that empowers users to network in highly personalized ways.

2007-05-08T08:28:00.000-07:00

The Future of Social Networking

Ever since the Web2.0 phenomenon, the favorite flavor of the current technology trend (at least in the consumer Internet space) has without question been social networking. Technology pundits (despite a fair share of detractors) have harped ad infinitum and ad nauseam on how the "read-write Web (or Web 2.0)" is going to revolutionize the Internet. Now that people (entrepreneurs, geeks, capitalists, professionals, businessmen, netizens, etc.) are all busy either churning out or forming social networks, where is the trend headed? What is social networking going to morph into?

Segmentation
Several bloggers have written about the segmentation of social networking (Alex Iskold; Wilhelm; etc.). Popular social networking sites are positioned to serve different segments of society. Common approaches of differentiation include media types (horizontal - e.g., Flickr for photos), industry verticals (vertical - e.g., stockpickr for finance), geographies (e.g,. Mixi in Japan), interests (e.g, Dogster for dog-owners), and myriad others.

Fragmentation
Now, each of us has a profile consisting of hundreds of attributes - sex, age, marital status, race, color, religion, caste, language, city, state, region, country, education, profession, employment, interests, hobbies, likes, dislikes, etc. So, eventually would I be required to network in a 100 different sites to reach out to other people who share my profile in some way?

So, with the ongoing fragmentation, when will people get overdosed on social networking? When will people get sick of splitting themselves into multiple user-IDs and passwords in the virtual world? I would say sooner than you think.

Deja Vu
The origin of social networking applications can be traced to the "online groups" and "forums" phenomena. While online groups are primarily geared towards private groups, forums are better geared for public (published) conversations. Social networks somehow appear to me to weld the two concepts together. Key differences though are that social networks enable non-disruptive public conversations and content-centric conversations. The icing on the cake is the democratization of the network with ratings and recommendations.

Analyzing the amoebic explosion of social networking sites, I cannot help drawing a parallel with the historical lessons of the previous boom (and the subsequent bust). Indeed, what we are witnessing today in the C2C (consumer-to-consumer) or P2P (peer-to-peer) space of "social networks" seems to be very similar to that seen in the 1990s in the B2C (and even B2B) realm. The social networking fragmentation is eerily similar to the online shopping sites of Web1.0. The companies that survived the earlier bust were those that consolidated quickly and offered one-stop services in their respective spaces.

Future
The exponential mushrooming of social networking sites is the result of the mad scramble for establishing niches in Web2.0. It is my belief that eventually sanity has to take over and the space has to witness convergence. Indeed, the future of social networking lies in the consolidation of the space.

Disclosure: I am a co-founder of Cylive.

2007-05-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

Non-mainstream Social Publishing

The last few years have seen a plethora of social applications mushroom all over the Internet. Besides featuring the customary "social networking" elements, many of these applications are centered around Web content sharing and publishing. But, almost all these applications are focused on "mainstream media types".

So, what is "mainstream media type"?
Most social networks revolve around multimedia content publishing such as images (e.g., Flickr), videos (e.g., Youtube), music (e.g., mp3.com), etc. Weblogs (e.g., Blogger) and bookmarks (e.g, Digg), while not necessarily being "multimedia" type, are extremely popular in the "social networking / publishing" realm. So, by virtue of being most popular amongst Web2.0 sites, these media types (images, videos, music, blogs, bookmarks, etc.) can be classified as "mainstream media types".

Then, what would be "non-mainstream media type"?
Besides the "mainstream media types," a lot of content on Web fall into unique use types. An example of such content is DYI (Do-it-yourself) or how-to, which might be composed with multiple media types (say rich text with a video and multiple pictures). Such "hybrid media" content can be classified as "non-mainstream media type."

Another class of Web content that might be considered "non-mainstream" is tabular content. For example, a comparison of X-Box and PS3 can obviously be presented in text format. However, if the same comparison is presented in tabular format, it is easier for the reader to comprehend the information. It is easy to author such a comparison on a Webpage (or Web log) with software particularly with enterprise content management applications. there are no Web applications that provide tools for publishing content in tabular format in a social context. Other examples of content that are better rendered in tabular format are "Oscar picks," "playoff predictions," and so on.

Is there a need for "social non-mainstream media"?
It is arguable whether there is a need for social (non-mainstream) media sharing & publishing. However, it has to be remembered that communities are engaging in such conversation (typically via e-mail) through groupware, forums and bulletin-boards today. So, "non-mainstream-oriented" Web2.0 provides an opportunity for communities to engage in that conversation in more meaningful and efficient ways.

Enabling "social networking" centered around non-mainstream media is also about according users the freedom to "express" and "congregate" over the Web in ways not possible earlier.

Disclosure: I am a co-founder of Cylive - a platform that attempts to empower users with the ability to "share and publish" any content in a collaborative context.

2007-05-02T10:58:00.000-07:00

How is Cylive Useful?

Since the time we launched Cylive Beta a few days ago people have asked me what the site is all about. On hearing details of the application, most have tried pigeon-holing the application into an existing Web2.0 space. And, they have had difficulty doing so because the application is very unique and different from what exists out there!

So, here is a little 1-on-1 about what Cylive is about.

"One Roof" Concept
In the physical world, most of my belongings - books, CDs, DVDs, albums, magazines, files, etc. - are all at home under one roof. All items are pretty much stored, shared, displayed and showcased from the same location. The same principle pretty much applies to digital content on my personal computer.

So, why is it that in the virtual realm of the Internet, I have to upload my pictures into Flickr, videos into YouTube, bookmarks into Digg, blogs onto Blogger and so on, with each site requiring a separate ID / password? And, if I have to share my "digital assets" with friends and family, I have to either form groups on these sites, or resort to some good-old link-forwarding via e-mail. Not at all elegant!

We developed Cylive to function as a single destination on the Web for storing, sharing, publishing and distributing any digital stuff.

Publishing Freedom
Imagine watching "Planet Earth" on the Discovery Channel without getting an insight into the effort and the technology behind each clip. Wouldn't such a "commoditized" clip lack some of its appeal? Unfortunately, social media publishing sites - Picasa, YouTube, and the like - all adopt a one-size-fits-all approach. This means I am forced to publish, for instance, each of my photos with just a title, a brief description and some tags. A picture may be worth a 1000 words; regardless, a 1000 words may still be required to describe it.

And, what if I wish to share an album of my best photos along with a audio clip attached to each photo? Or, publish a recipe in my blog with a photo to go with each step? Isn't technology supposed to enable such "out-of-the-box" creativity?

So, we designed Cylive to support personalized media publishing. In other words, Cylive permits users to remix media-types - thus enabling "media mashups."

Content Diversity
Last year I tried publishing a table (of Web2.0 memetic attributes) in this blog. I realized there was no easy way of dong it. In fact, I discovered that "social applications" are all geared towards mainstream media types, i.e., audio, video, photos, etc. So, if I have to pubish and share my Oscar picks with my buddies I had to get my hands dirty in cumbersome HTML code. In other words, I had to become a HTML geek. Why?

Therefore, we architected Cylive in a way that makes it real easy for a layman like me to publish any information in a structured manner.

Shades of "Sharing" Gray
Just to make sure I had exposed the richness of Cylive in this blog entry, I wanted my colleague (and fellow Cylive co-founder) to preview it. So, I forwarded a copy of this text (via e-mail) for his critical review. Evidently, the "social" element of Blogger applies only to the 'sharing' of published content.

Most "social media applications" are deemed 'social' because they permit a two-way dialog between the producer and the consumer. But, what about collaborative content creation, i.e., simply co-creation? And, I am not just talking about blogging wikis (or blikis), but also rich media here.

Thus, we created Cylive to serve as a collaborative platform. Content owners can control "who gets to do what and when with content." For instance, all the invitees in my New Year Eve party can upload snaps (captured in their respective cameras) directly into a common photo album on Cylive.

Conclusion
In marketing and Web2.0 parlance Cylive is a "social publishing and content-management" platform. Forgetting the geek-speak, it really is the "site of the free" - it gives you the FREEDOM to express yourself in any way you deem fit. Come, take a test drive and find out how easy it is to become a "multimedia" Web publisher on Cylive!

2007-05-01T12:19:00.000-07:00

Cylive Launch

I am very excited about our recent launch of Cylive (http://www.cylive.com/ - pronounced ‘sy-liv’) - a "social publishing and content management" platform. Cylive gives you “one roof” for ALL your digital stuff – photos, music, videos, bookmarks, articles, reviews, and MUCH MORE. You are now able to keep ALL your digital items in ONE place. You are always in control of what you do with your stuff and how & when you do it.

On Cylive – the “home of your digital stuff” – you can safely store ALL your private and confidential information. You can share ANY of your digital items with friends and family. You can also publish ANY stuff online and showcase it on the Internet for everyone to view...all with the click of a few buttons!

With your “digital home” at Cylive, you can work with your friends and family to jointly produce and publish digital material. And, you have the POWER to create material in your own new and unique way. For instance, you can create a photo album with a voice clip attached to each photo in the album about how and when you took the snap.

You can also control who can do what and when with your stuff. For instance, you can assign ‘add photos’ privilege to everyone in your family, but only give ‘view photos’ right to your friends. These privileges can be specified individually for your contacts on Cylive.

Summary:
So what can Cylive do for you? It is the easiest way for you to:

Create, organize and share ANY digital stuff;
Share and co-create content with your family, friends, or groups;
Plan, organize and coordinate your personal & group activities;
Publish your or view, rate & comment on other users’ thoughts and opinions;
Express your ratings and recommendations on any topic – books, movies, etc.;
Seek answers to your questions from other Cylive users;
Discover user reviews of various things and places, such as restaurants, vacation destinations, etc.;
Identify and connect with people who share your interests and hobbies;
Store safely and access your private and confidential information online.

2006-04-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 Memetic Attributes
(Contained in prior Web 2.0 descriptions of thought leaders)

Underlying Philosophy:

Web as a ‘computing’ platform:
- Web-based applications (online services-oriented, free ‘right-to-use’) instead of software packaged product (distribution-oriented, priced ‘license-to-use’);
- Multiple device connectivity (transcending a single device) and data availability;
- Open, public application programming interfaces (i.e., provide programmatic interfaces through Web services APIs, which accord formal semantic meaning to data). Adherence to open standards;
- Release data from ‘proprietary & copyrighting’ shackles, i.e. low barriers for data reuse (Relinquish control over and make data, code, content, services & even ideas shareable & transformable that permit their recombinant use). Permit screen-scraping.
- Leverage value-added data services (for e.g., in the form of mashups) for competitive advantage (e.g., housingmaps.com);
- ‘Perpetual beta’, i.e., continually updated application services software (juxtaposed to periodic releases of software products)
User Empowerment:
- Customer self-service (Do-It-Yourself) and ‘Point of Presence’ – users are present virtually on the Web
- ‘Hackability’ – flexibility to easily remix (and consume remixed) content / data in (presumably) innovative ways, i.e., rights granted to use the content in new & exciting contexts. It encourages ‘collective & cumulative creation’ of (emergent) systems with higher utility / usefulness. Support creation of mashups;
- Vox populi / Democracy-based, i.e. uses voting to filter content for quality (often doing the job significantly better than editors);
- Users, their creations & remixed ‘concoctions’ are radically trusted. They are treated like co-developers (e.g., Wikipedia) – erase the boundaries between producers & consumers (radical decentralization of power);
- Enhanced user participation, communication & collaboration, even connecting communities & facilitating (online) social networking
- Inversion of control: individuals and groups slacken copyright & intellectual property ownership rights to create a culture in which amalgamated, intermixed media has more value (not less).
Creator-Consumer(s) 2-way & multi-way interaction:
- Participation-enabled architecture (e.g., read and write systems such as Wikis, Weblogs, etc.) used to create network effects
- Harnessing collective intelligence – users contribute & add value, for e.g., annotating content to enhance richness of data, contributing to metadata definitions using tags, etc. which facilitates (unintended) discovery of exotic, ‘out of the ordinary’ content created in new contexts gets better the more people use it), etc. To promote this ‘(system) learning’ mechanism, implicit means are often used to collect user data (e.g. popular tags) during normal use of the application;
- Real-time monitoring of user behavior to study feature acceptance;
- Attention-based (democracy based) aggregation of content. Aggregators use the most-traversed navigation paths (i.e. most frequently visited microcontent) for determining relevance.

Data Exposure & Management:
- Open accessibility of and granular addressability of data / content (microcontent, regardless of media types, such as image, audio, video, hyperlink, blog, etc.), thus allowing data discovery & manipulation in new ways;
- Support data / content syndication (without being concerned about how such syndicated data gets aggregated) and lightweight user interfaces, development & business models. Features notification for syndicated content changes;
- Filtering of data in context sensitive ways using recommendations (contextualized trust, respect & relations), reputation (typically rooted in cultural contexts) and personalization (profile-based)
Mass service of micro-markets (i.e., the ‘Long Tail’):
- Increasingly cost-effective to focus on the interests of large number of small entities (individuals, groups, etc.);
- Large transaction volumes necessitate ‘operations becoming a core-competency’ and (cost-effective) scalability becoming a key success factor;

Glocalization of content:
- Making global information available to (conceptually) local social & cultural contexts and giving people the flexibility to find, organize, share and crate information in a locally meaningful (interests, goals, values, projects, even geographies) fashion that is globally accessible. In the extreme sense, ‘local’ is just the ‘individual’.

Enabling Technologies, Features & Applied Techniques:

Rich Web application UI: Semantically valid (X)HTML and / or microformats, Advanced UI languages such as XUL & SVG; CSS, XML, AJAX, Flash Remoting; Blogrolling / logrolling / link-logging; Separation of structure & style; GreaseMonkey
Web Services: RSS / ATOM (with trackbacks, permalinks & comments for syndication & aggregation), SSE, RDF; REST, SOAP or XML Web service APIs;
Techniques: Tagging for multiple overlapping associations, rather than rigid categories (folksonomy, not taxonomy)
Rich Media: Podcasts, Video-blogging, etc.
Application Framework: Ruby on Rails

Emergent Application Systems:

Social Applications: Search, Networking - YASNs (Yet another Social Network such as FOAF & XFN systems – Friend of a Friend & XHTML Friends Network respectively), Bookmarking, News, Media / Content Sharing, Knowledge Sharing, Recommendation Systems, Annotation Systems, Reputation, Calendaring, etc.
Collaboration Applications: Project Management, Event & Activity Planning, Fiction (or Non-Fiction) Publishing, etc.
Mashups: Auction mapping, Classifieds mapping, Local Business, Real Estate Listings, Business Directory mapping, etc.

2006-04-03T11:09:00.000-07:00

WEB 2.0: OLD WINE IN A NEW BOTTLE? A USER’S TAKE

Ever since Dale Dougherty of O’Reilly Media coined the phrase in 2004, several thought leaders have passionately, even animatedly, discussed and debated the meaning of ‘Web 2.0’. They have attempted to distinguish it from the ‘90’s manifestation of the Web’. Clearly, proponents of the Web 2.0 phenomenon find the term rejuvenating and the concept(s) paradigm-shifting. Contrarily, detractors find the term ‘Web 2.0’ repugnant.

So, Why another Attempt?
With the plethora of insightful Web 2.0 descriptions in the media, is there really a need for continuing to belabor the issue? Well, as an ardent observer of the exciting metamorphosis of the Web, I could not resist the temptation of presenting (or, attempting to present) a fresh perspective to the contentious Web2.0 discussion. Views of Richard MacManus (“…Web 2.0 is really about normal everyday people…”) [1], Susan Mernit (“The heart of Web 2.0 is the user…”) [2], Jason Goldberg (“…customers dictate what matters. Rolling up sleeves to help solve their problems…”) [3], Dave Rogers (“…users actually drive the success of Web 2.0…”) [4] and Paul Graham (“…using the way it’s meant to be used”) [5] inspire and bolster me in my endeavor.

I hope, being a zealous user of the Internet, and thus a stakeholder, qualifies me adequately for this ‘brave’ attempt. In providing a new perspective, I hope this literary piece will crystallize Web 2.0 thought further, regardless of whether I receive “bouquets or brickbats” in the process.

Prior Web 2.0 Descriptions
Several Web 2.0 evangelists, such as Tim O'Reilly [6, 7], Richard MacManus [8], Joshua Porter [9], John Hagel [10], Paul Miller [11], DeWitt Clinton [12], Jonathan Boutelle [13], Paul Graham [5], Jay Cross [14], Dion Hinchcliffe [15], Danah Boyd [16], Jared Spool [17], Dave Rogers [4], Brandon Schauer [18], Ian Davis [19], Paul Martino [20], Barb Dybwad [21] etc., have all made significant contributions to the collective attempt to retroactively describe the “Web 2.0 movement”.

The term has evoked a broad spectrum of emotions over time with Stephen Bryant [22] calling it a ‘little misleading’. Other “technology pundits”, most notably Nicholas Carr [23], Tim Bray [24], Russell Shaw [25], Andrew Keen [26], have disputed the ‘epochal’ existence of Web 2.0. They have condemned the hype around the trite term and they have even declared it ‘dangerous’. Joshua Porter [27] has asserted that “Web 2.0 is not necessarily a new phenomenon.” It has even fatigued a protagonist like Richard MacManus [28]. Furthermore, there is a lack of consensus in the version number, with the likes of Dan Gillmor [29] suggesting that ‘Web 3.0’ is a more apposite term for the present avatar of the Web. Charlie Wood [30] has derided it as ‘Bubble 2.0’. So, despite my agreement that the phrase is indeed vacuous, – we don’t refer to the hybrid car industry as ‘Auto 2.0’ – I will continue to use it throughout this essay as a ‘convenient catch phrase’, thus borrowing an expression from DeWitt Clinton [12].

Some of the Web 2.0 expositions are more discerning than others in understanding the essence of Web 2.0. Nevertheless, this collective explanation may fail to sufficiently enlighten – in fact, it may even confuse – the casual reader on what Web 2.0 means exactly. This confusion is evident in the Wikipedia narrative, which states “the term can mean radically different things to different people”. The nebulous nature of the phrase has even lead Tim O’Reilly [6] and Rashmi Sinha [31] to describe it with the help of quintessential archetype(s) and James Governor [32] to explain it through comparative differentiation. Abe Burmeister [33] has critiqued overly-optimistic, utopian visions of Web 2.0.

Notwithstanding the inherent diversity of thought, the copious Web 2.0 explanations are surprisingly (or expectedly, as some may argue) united in the philosophy espoused. While some Web 2.0 definitions are pithy, sometimes even vague, statements, others are more elaborate, verbose treatises on the topic. They collectively present a common denominator of memetic characteristics, which describe the present evolutionary state of the Internet. However, these Web 2.0 enunciations suffer from ambiguity due to a ‘mashup’ of characteristics pertaining to: (a) underlying philosophy, (b) enabling technology, features & applied techniques and (c) emerging application systems. D. Keith Robinson [34] and John Hagel [10], who have respectively reflected on context-driven meaning of Web 2.0 and the emphasis on “examples, components or dimensions” for defining Web 2.0, also apparently subscribe to this viewpoint.

I have published a summary of key Web 2.0 memtic attributes cited in the writings of Internet gurus and technology pundits. It is noteworthy, in fact ironic, that ‘versioning’, a legacy of the ‘desktop as platform’ era, is used to distinguish the ‘neo-Web’ from the ‘erstwhile-Web’. However, the exhaustive characterization of Web 2.0 cannot be disputed. In fact, Russell Shaw [25] has expressed reservations against this “broad-brushing of various incremental Web 2.0 changes under one general umbrella.” The trends that are embodied in the attributes not only characterize Web 2.0, but also clearly portend in some measure the future ‘avatar’ of the Internet.

Critique of previous essays
The excessive use of buzzwords and ‘geek-speak’ makes Web 2.0 definitions esoteric to the layman. They also make Web 2.0 seem like a revolutionary, chronologically discrete invention. The expression of ‘distinctiveness’ in Web 2.0 origins is epitomized in the Bill Janeway [35] statement: “Web 1.0 was about experimentation; Web 2.0 is about building lasting value”. But, ‘experimentation’ is an ongoing phenomenon. The characterization appears like a technological review of ‘Extinct vs. Extant’ phenomena and fails to recognize the ‘incremental’, evolutionary and progressive elements in the new ‘2.0 edition’ of the Web. Qualifying the clauses in the statement with ‘predominantly’ would probably convey a more accurate picture. Indeed, Paul Miller [11] is so accurate in his thought that Web 2.0 comprises of “equal parts of evolution and revolution”.

In reality, Web 2.0 represents a template of criteria, i.e. a recipe, for success learnt from the best-of-breed Internet companies since inception. Several proclaimed Web 2.0 philosophies were truly-speaking embedded in Web 1.0 thought, but were implemented with varying degrees of success and efficacy. Tim O’Reilly [6] is absolutely right in concluding “there’s something qualitatively different about today’s Web.” But, instead of elucidating on ALL Web 2.0 attributes – technical, technological, architectural, tactical & philosophical – the emphasis should be on only those aspects that are radically different and strategic in nature. In fact, such a fine-sieved filter would have removed the technical, technological & tactical attributes from Web 2.0 descriptions. The approach would perhaps even provide a preview of what to expect in the future.

To begin with, using the Web as a platform for disseminating information, publishing content or delivering services (ASPs, exchanges, marketplaces, digital storefronts, etc.) has been a hallmark of the Web over the years. Also, Web 1.0 is replete with instances of online applications, e.g., e-mail services, with free right-to-use. Web-based ‘read-write’ systems (Bulletin Boards, Newsgroups, Forums, etc.) for collaborative, contributive work have also existed since the very early days of the Internet, albeit with less sophistication. The ‘perpetual beta’, which kind of implies the application never matures, cannot be claimed (in spite of its predominant relevance in Web 2.0) as the exclusive preserve of Web 2.0. Conventional software (product) companies have also leveraged the Internet for distributing software updates continually and automatically (e.g. Virus software). And, needless to say, companies have not embraced the concept for general or major software upgrades for purely commercial reasons.

Customer / user empowerment has been an objective – probably an ill-served objective – of Web applications (e.g., Portals) for a long time. ‘Democracy-driven’ applications (User Ratings & Reviews, Recommendations, Polling, etc.) based on explicit user actions have also existed for several years. Web-based collaboration & communication applications (e.g. Instant Messaging, Forums) predate the ‘birth’ of Web 2.0. Providing ‘compelling experience’ (or, ‘compelling event-driven experience’, with the shift in focus of Richard MacManus and Joshua Porter [36] describe) is still a goal for increasing user traffic, enhancing revenue-generation potential and thus insuring ‘survival’ of the service. Indeed, presenting users with a ‘compelling reason to return’ is a challenge every Web 2.0 application encounters.

As Abe Burmeister [33] rightly points out, Web 2.0 applications are only partially opened, often under the garb of privacy & confidentiality. Control over data is never relinquished without restrictions, which often seriously impede commercial exploitation of syndicated data. Personalization (e.g., cookies) of the user interface has been a ‘work-in-progress’ since the very onset of the Internet. And, Web 2.0’s focus on the ‘long-tail’ is reminiscent of the obsessive compulsive disorder of ‘network traffic’ during the Dotcom era. Operations as a core competency is a prerequisite for every successful enterprise not just those in the Web 2.0 realm.

Consumer-defined content metadata (as juxtaposed to creator-defined content metadata prevalent in Web 1.0) and Social Bookmarking systems are innovations that may improve search quality. But, it is naïve to think that the Web 2.0 doctrine is a panacea for the ‘information overload’ problem plaguing the Internet. Andrew Keen [26] has even visualized the possibility of Web 2.0 exacerbating this problem. So, the ability to locate relevant content quickly (or conversely, ‘being findable’, as Stephen Bryant [22] puts it) continues to be an ongoing challenge for Web 2.0. Using ‘democratic’ means for identifying ‘pertinent content’ also suffers from the inherent hypothesis that treats pertinence and popularity as synonymous. ‘Democracy’ over the Web has to deal with imperfections emerging from the lack of an absolute, universally uniform scale for rating content. Glocalization surely seems to be a move in the right direction for eliminating some of these ills.

Finally, it is remarkably paradoxical that Web 2.0 companies attempt to use a socialistic foundation (social networks, participation, freedom from control, etc.) for building a capitalistic edifice based on either: (a) a revenue stream of subscription and/or online advertising, or (b) an exit strategy through an acquisition.

A User’s Perspective
So, then what are the novel tenets that really distinguish Web 2.0 applications from the earlier genre of Web 1.0 applications? In my opinion, the quintessential elements of Web 2.0, distilled from the quantum of attributes contained in the writings of thought-leaders, which I have cataloged separately, are:

Notwithstanding the lack of true freedom in the exposure, the opening up of web applications and proprietary content through programming interfaces is a colossal change in the attitude of application developers and content creators. This shift in outlook has empowered users to innovatively remix content and aggregate (syndicated) data.
The no-cost, right-to-use application is also a utopian concept that Web 2.0 may not have introduced, but is definitely championing. It is highly probable that this is just a ploy to secure a critical mass of users. As past track record indicates, once user acceptance of ‘web-based applications’ is acquired, service providers may introduce right-to-use charges (subscription fees or ‘pay-per-use’ charges).
The use of implicit means for collecting behavioral insights (e.g., content popularity) is a definite trend that Web 2.0 initiated.
The innate trust placed on the users’ ability to contribute to content metadata definitions (through tagging) and even annotate content in a ‘read-write model’ is another salient aspect of Web 2.0.

All the other attributes listed in contemporary thought are derivatives of the four ‘paradigm-shifting’ Web 2.0 cornerstones enumerated above. Despite the confusion about what constitutes Web 2.0, it cannot be denied that the underlying principles are about improving the Internet and using its power to solve human problems. And, regardless of which side of the fence you are on in the debate, the incremental advances in Web 2.0 have the potential to impact the very foundations of collective and collaborative human existence.

References
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