The Perils and
Possibilities of Web 2.0
Matt Machell, Evidence Base
www.eclecticdreams.com

I build websites

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

From the excellent xkcd.com/

Or maybe a guide?

Peril #1: Getting
distracted by technology

Good technology
solves problems.
• “How do I?”
• “I wish I could...”
• “if only there was a way to...”

Latching onto buzzwords is
dangerous

“Make it look more web 2.0!”
“We need a blog and a wiki!”
“The kids love Facebook! If we
use it the awesome will rub
off on us!”

Possibility #1:
Remember it’s about
tasks and people

What problem does
your service solve for
“me”?

Social sites work best with a
purpose.
• What’s your site’s purpose?
• Just what are we here to do?

People talking
generates ideas

If you build great things
people will use them.

Peril #2: People spend
99% of their time
elsewhere

If a blog launches on
the web, does anybody
care?
• Technorati says the blogsphere doubles
once every 6 months.
• Blogpulse say that might only be 30% that's
active growth.

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

How do people find
websites?
• Google?
• Other websites
• Recommendation

Go where the
audience is

• Blogs, Myspace,
Facebook, Bebo,
Digg, Orkut, Twitter,
mailing lists, forums, and so
on, and so on
• Might not be on the
web…
• What’s appropriate for
your project?

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

Be part of the
community
• Go out and find your users
• Build mutually beneficial relationships
• Conversation takes time and effort
• People who meet in real life, have more long-
lasting web connections.

The Art of Successful
Blogging
• Talk like a real person!
• Be prepared to actually
listen
• Ask questions
• Solicit opinion
• People love lists...
Recommended: copyblogger.com

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

Link sharing is
everywhere
• Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon,
Ma.gnolia.com
• Comment constructively
on other people’s blogs
• Help people on forums

Peril #3: Believing your
own hype

“our site gets a
million hits a day!”

• A single page view can generate 50 hits
• What if the path to the good stuff takes
you through 5 pages?
• An elegant site might get fewer hits than
your poorly designed one.
• What about all the searchbots, spambots
and email harvesters?

• What do you need to measure?
• How do you measure it?

Meaningful interactions

• An event signup: No. of people registered
• A forum : Contributions favourited by users
• A blog : Inbound links, comments,
Technorati rank

Possibility #3:
Measure success in a
meaningful way

• Use a good analytics
package
• Discover who actually
visits your site and why
• Evolve to take advantage
of this

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

The web gives the illusion of
anonymity.
Anonymity breeds contempt

The users
are
revolting!

• Teenagers change online identities with
regularly
• People will say what they think, and you
won’t necessarily like it
• Some people want to talk about selling
Viagra

Possibility #4: Groups
can be self policing

• Set solid, but not anti-social, levels of
etiquette
• Reward good behavior
• Be careful of unintended consequences of
filtering

Akismet is your friend, akismet.com

Peril #5: Not Working
with the Web

Make it easy to link and
contribute

(re)use existing
technologies

Be agile and iteratively
improve.

Possibility #5:
With good people
building things is easy

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

Sometimes you can get
professionals by proxy

Example:
A Quick Mashup

Question: What might be
a good tool for linking a
library to teenagers?

• People have interests. They blog about
them. They categorise those posts.
• People want information about their
interests. Libraries can provide this.
• Provide a tool to recommend books based
on blog tags.

Techie Stuff
• Apache - PHP - Simplepie RSS – Amazon
web services
• Pull data from recent blog posts, send to
amazon as a search

• Could be done with any system that
provides simple hooks for open data.
• Time to implement: 1 evening

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

Does it avoid our
perils?
1. Task not technology driven
2. Can be easily promoted elsewhere
3. Can track success via book sales
4. Is ideal discussion material
5. Built with existing systems

Summary
• Remember it’s about people
• Look beyond your own site
• Measure meaningful outcomes
• Cultivate community
• Work with the web

Or...
• Engage with people
• Provide a valuable service
• Cultivate community
Sound familiar?