The web is not a channel

THE WEB IS NOT A CHANNEL Phil Whitehouse, Joined The Team last year from BT

I hang out with these guys - geeks, nerds, scientists They built the web, continue to do so In agency world people talk about the web as a channel or series of channels I’m going to present a different way of thinking about the web Help our clients and help them develop more fruitful relationships with their customers

Picture of web How the web works All traffic treated equally - Pope/President/you This equal nature of the web is the foundation on which it is built A million ﬂowers bloomed - Amazon, search engines, innovation

Happy person Even before Google and Amazon people loved it and signed up in their millions Pursued by corporations...pause.

Picture of brain Human failing: we take complex or abstract situations, and simplify them. We use familiar analogies to help us cope with them. That’s what happened with the web. It’s forgiveable...but wrong.

Picture of pipes Those corporations had a clear analogy handy. Clearly deﬁned frame of reference - channels Established lexicon: we monetise, we own the audience, we broadcast

Broadcast icon The broadcast model, this concept of a channel, really understates it’s potential That isn’t to say that you can’t have great campaign sites... Advertising is becoming less effective, but it ain’t dead yet But from the CEO perspective, that is just one capability, and UNLIKELY TO MAKE OR BREAK THE COMPANY

THE WEB IS A NETWORK Because the web is not just a channel or a series of channels. It’s a game changer that underpins everything. THE WEB IS A NETWORK It isn’t a one to many relationship, It’s a many to many relationship The power isn’t just held by the people who buy ink by the barrel, it’s held by everyone It is fundamentally different. We oversimplify it at our peril.

Question mark So...what should we do about this? How should we change, and help our clients change?

First of all, recognise that it is about behavioural change.

Good neighbours If you misbehave, people talk How would you want your neighbours to behave? Our job is to improve the interaction between clients and their customers Be nice - stranger in a pub Doc Searls: The wedge in our head

Picture of crowd The former audience isn’t just just talking to each other, they now have tools to self organise. If you consider the democratic nature of the thing...it was inevitable ...and this is how the web will continue to evolve, not so much favouring the little guy, but putting him on an ever more equal footing

Picture of ﬁlter Filters And tools..and these will improve (Facebook car park) And these improved ﬁlters and tools > web gets into more places “Anywhere the network goes” - XBOX, Kindle, iPhone, Fridge

Picture of data? A good website is still essential But the substance of the company that will permeate through the web is becoming more important than what you see on the web site If you act in a neighbourly way, help people out and share information people will trust you in return. Pet project: NHS Backstage.

Cap in hand Social networks => humility Twitter is not a competition If you’re chasing followers, you’re chasing the wrong thing. You reach a point where, the more people you follow (and follow you), the less valuable the connection. The less valuable the engagement. BUT Behave in the right way, your follower count will be naturally high rather than artiﬁcially high.

Observe and learn from these communities, if you’re lucky they’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong...it’s a meaningful dialogue

Examples of companies messed with communities and came off worse - Skittles, Habitat, Ryanair, even Yahoo and Facebook

Photo of free stuff Differing business models - might have to give stuff away Never before has so much valuable stuff been given away free of charge Increase your social capital by proving you understand

To the victors go the spoils...these organisations understand that the web is a network, and not just a channel. Google - give stuff away for free, supports their ad model Obama ’08 - inspired the American people by giving them control of his message BBC - Work hard to give away their content through the iPlayer and Backstage The Guardian - released their entire database for free to developers BART - did the same, now developers in SF make sure that info goes everywhere the network goes Twitter - 1/10th of their traffic goes very their website, the rest via apps built by someone else.

For those interested in learning more, I can recommend these books Here Comes Everybody, by Clay Shirky Cluetrain Manifesto, by Rick Levine, Chris Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger Long Tail by Chris Anderson The Future of the Internet And How To Stop It, by Jonathan Zittrain The Starﬁsh and the Spider, by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom

http:// philwhitehouse .blogspot.com Summary: Start thinking of the web as a network rather than a channel. Help our clients understand this. Help them plan their strategy around this. Be a good neighbour!

Thanks!

The web is not a channel

by Phil Whitehouse on Sep 08, 2009

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The web is not a channel — Document Transcript