A blog exploring The Social Web – Learn. Explore. Profit.
Prosumer, is a combination of Producer and Consumer and perfectly describes the millions of participants in the Web 2.0 Blogosphere and Social Networking revolution.
Gifted Amateurs, Professional Amateurs and now Producer Consumers
Content is KING and is shaping our world. But where do we go from here? See the video for some potential insights.
Andrew Keen’s new book, “The Cult of the Amateur – how today’s Internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy”, examines this very issue.
I’m not entirely convinced that Keen is convinced by his own argument. However, The book is designed to be “biased” and finally sparks a debate about the case against amateur content and its proliferation through Web 2.0 technologies.
I do agree with Keen in some respects, in that it is becoming too easy to manipulate Google’s search engine’s results with Google Adwords and then using the results of popular searched words, as keywords on your site. The polite term for this is “Search Engine Optimisation”. I see it more as Search Engine Hacking. Search engines, such as Google are increasing their own usage with tactics such as Google Adwords.
However to the original point, are amateurs really killing the Internet and popular media?
Have a look at the video below, where Keen discusses his book at part of the Authors@Google series. I’m off into the garden to the read the book!
On Saturday 9th June, I attended a talk from Peter Ward from the travel / social networking site Where Are You Now (WAYN) at Brunel University. Peter is a passionate entrepreneur and his talk was very inspiring. He represents a growing number of UK entrepreneurs that are embracing Web 2.0 technologies to build their businesses.
Based in London, WAYN unites travellers from around the world. Founded in 2002 by friends Pete Ward, Jerome Touze and Mike Lines. WAYN secured initial funding from Steve Pankhurst, founder of Friends Reunited in 2003. Today, WAYN has grown into a travel social networking community with over 8 million active members!
WAYN offers a unique blend that combines social interaction and user generated content with location based services. Users can log their trips, see who is where and make new friends. The site offers travellers a way to interact, share experiences, keep track of friends and meet people from around the world.
WAYN Top 5 Fast Facts
Interesting, I would have thought the UK spent more time online! As for me, I can never unplug from The Matrix. I wonder, if I can have my little finger replaced with a USB drive?
More than 122m Europeans aged 15 and above use the internet each day at home, school or in work, says a report. The average European accesses the net 16.5 days in a month, and spends 24 hours viewing 2,662 web pages, according to tracking firm comScore.
The Netherlands has the highest net penetration, with 83% of the country online, the firm reported. Russia, which was included as a European state, has the lowest, at 11% of the population.
More than 221m people across the 16 countries surveyed are online each month, comScore said. Germany had the largest online population, with 32.5m net users aged 15 and above, the survey for net usage in May 2007 found.
EURO NET PENETRATION*
Netherlands 83%
Norway 70%
Sweden 70%
Denmark 68%
Finland 65%
UK 62%
*The percentage of a population aged 15 and above online
Source: comScore
The UK had the most active online population, spending more than 34.4 hours online each month and a peak of more than 21.8m people online in any given day.
Google was the most popular online destination in 13 of the 16 countries, followed by Microsoft in second place and Yahoo in third.
Internet penetration across Europe was 40% of the population aged 15 and above, with only Spain (39%), Italy (36%) and Russia (11%) falling below this level.
Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe, said: “Increased net usage is tied to broadband roll-out. The UK is an example of a country whose net usage has increased dramatically as broadband has reached more people.”
He said: “While the study reflects average net usage and penetration, 20% of users account for 60% of usage, with some people spending hundreds of hours online each month.”
He added: “As convergence takes place between TV and the internet, the nature of what is classed as online and offline will also have to change. “Is someone online when watching TV over the net?”
According to comScore, the United States has 156m people online, with 121m online on average each day.
Hat tip to Stuart Brown.
I joined Facebook on the weekend. I resisted as long as I could.
I couldn’t help but notice a recent surge of other people I know signing up recently as well – nor could I shake off the odd sense of déjà vu. It seems like such a short time ago that MySpace was the place to be in terms of social networking – now it seems that’s all over and Facebook is now the ’site du jour’.
It’s not the first time something like this has happened, either – there have been countless communities online that have grown, peaked, and slowly faded into obscurity. Like a roving band of wildebeest, it seems communities arrive en masse, graze for a while, and move on to pastures anew.
The current crop of Web 2.0 sites seem to have amplified this trend – there are more and more sites cropping up with a community angle, so now people hungry for social interaction on the web have a near boundless choice for their communal appetites.
As surely as Facebook has risen to challenge MySpace, and as Digg has all but displaced Slashdot, in the not-too distant future there will be other sites which rise to threaten the current generation. Perhaps the MySpace killer is already out there, just waiting for a chance to break the mainstream?
The early days of a community site are its most fragile -most start-ups will fail without ever making it past this phase. Those familiar with running forums or sites with a community aspect will know how hard it is to get a sustained level of activity without a solid user base – avoiding the tumbleweed can be difficult.
With work and persistence some sites will begin to make headway – a small, closely-knit community can develop. Many community sites will persist at this level, with no real reason to change – others may get lucky and find a break – whether it’s a link from a major blog (TechCrunch or similar), getting on the front page of Digg (or Reddit, Netscape, etc), or even a news report or feature in the mainstream media.
Such buzz can cause a massive spike in traffic – propelling the previously unheard-of site into the view of thousands more people, and potentially kick-starting a chain reaction large enough to push into the mainstream. Of course, there are no guarantees – a spike in interest from a single link can come and go very quickly, with little net benefit.
The social networking site Virb has had its fair share of buzz – it’s been on Digg, been featured on a few high-profile blogs, but has a fairly modest Alexa ranking of around 5,000 (at the time of writing). It’s firmly in the ‘crunch’ phase of start-up sites – the ‘Valley of Uncertainty‘.
For Virb, there are two possible paths – the first is unfettered and gradually accelerating growth, the other is to remain in the doldrums indefinitely. With such a great deal of competition in the social networking sphere, it could go either way.
Facebook is the perfect example for a site currently in the midst of meteoric growth – from an Alexa ranking of around 50,000 in 2005 to around 100 in 2006, to 18 today in 2007. Little wonder that people are eager to acquire the site – even at a stupidly high price.
Such rapid growth is unsustainable, of course – and ultimately such popularity will reach a peak. There are but a finite number of people to populate any given social network, and humans are notably fickle creatures. Ultimately the usage levels for any given site will stabilise – social networking site Bebo and social news site Reddit are both in neutral-growth periods – not to say that future growth is impossible, but without intervention the user base is unlikely to spontaneously increase.
For the top few sites that attain popular appeal, a healthy period of traffic and utilisation follows the peak in usage – established services such as Flickr, MySpace and Digg have such sustained appeal that they persist at a relatively stable level – the ‘Plateau of Ubiquity‘, if you please. How long a site persists here depends on several factors, principally including the fierceness of competition and the rate at which a site can evolve to keep its users happy.
The internet is a fast changing place, and to hold a position of dominance with so many fresh upstarts is not easy. While a community site can revitalise, innovate and hence prompt additional growth, life at the top is tough. For many once-reigning sites a slow yet inexorable decline is inevitable. The once mighty Slashdot is still very popular – it’s in the Alexa Top 500 – but slipping further and further away from the pole position it once held, with younger upstart Digg usurping its audience.
Social networking and community-led sites dominate the top ranked sites on Alexa, second only to the search engine contingent. With such massive reach and the potential for direct marketing, it’s not in the least surprising that the top of such sites are seeing such lucrative buyouts – $580m for MySpace, $1.65b for YouTube, and a touted $1b for Facebook. I don’t doubt that some of these acquisitions are worth it – the potential to reach people directly on the sites where they spend most of their time is valuable indeed.
I guess I’ll see you all on Facebook. For now, at least.
“With Web 2.0 increasingly being covered in the media,” said Andy Peart, Chief Marketing Officer at Mediasurface, “it was interesting to see that 41% of SMEs surveyed had not heard of it, implying that the message may be getting through to larger businesses but not as efficiently to the smaller business community. ”
He was speaking about a survey – carried out by Mediasurface in May at Internet World in the UK – in which 179 attendees, from businesses with a turnover of less than £5m, were asked some key questions about how they are using their websites.
“Emphasising this point, of those SMEs that had heard of Web 2.0, only 37% felt that it would have a positive impact on their business. There is still a great opportunity to show SMEs the true value of effectively managed web content and to illustrate that Web 2.0 is all about using the power of the web for business advantage,†Peart added.
Whilst 61% of smaller businesses do not believe that their website reflects their company’s brand, 52% of individuals in these companies are unaware how often their sites are updated.
These were two of the key findings of the survey that also revealed: A staggering 1 in 10 small businesses still do not have a web presence; 37% of companies update their website weekly and 11% undertake this monthly; despite the wide-ranging publicity on Web 2.0, 41% of people were still unaware of Web 2.0; and of the companies that are aware of Web 2.0, only 37% believe that it will impact their business.
It is also interesting to note, said Peart, that only just over one third (37%) of companies updated their websites more than once a week. Dynamic, current content is a key factor in delivering a positive impression to website visitors and to keep them returning so updating content regularly is a key factor.
The fact that 11% of companies who took part in the survey still do not have a website is a worrying statistic, added Peart. Since a website is a company’s ‘virtual shop window’ and often the first port of call for many potential customers, visitors are highly influenced by the look and feel, ease of use and accessibility of information. In any competitive marketplace, a company without a website can be overlooked and may not even be taken seriously; however the results of the survey reveal that 1 in 10 smaller businesses are still not taking advantage of this critical business and marketing tool.
I came across a CNET interview video with Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress and founder of Automattic, the company that runs the blog host service WordPress.com. As you might expect, Mullenweg has an well-formed perspective on blogging. So what’s the state of the blogosphere? He sees the field as “nascent,” despite the presence of large and influential blogs that are well on their way toward challenging incumbent media
He offers some interesting insights about blogging, freedom of speech, and how candidates’ blogs in the U.S. are usually not much more than platforms for “pre-canned ideas.”
Also in this interview: how to make money from blogs (hint: Google), ICanHasCheezburger, how big the blogosphere can get and what could stop it, the potential integration of Twitter-like services into WordPress
Mullenweg is interesting to watch. He’s outspoken, articulate, and has a great perch to see this medium emerge.
Microsoft’s new web development tool “Popfly” will be an interesting technology to play with. Popfly is designed to allow non-professional programmers and hobbyists to build mash-ups, gadgets, Web sites and applications using pre-built “blocks.†As of now, there are 40 of these Web-programming blocks from which they can choose, including Flickr, Windows Live Spaces, Virtual Earth and news service blocks. (More are coming from Microsoft and third parties) Popfly users can tie together these data-source, transformation and display blocks to create their own customized mash-ups.
Sounds familiar? Well Yahoo developed their Mashup aggregrator earlier this year with Yahoo Pipes. A great concept, though its still a little too techie to use.
Popfly looks (See video below) easier to use and easier to setup.
What does this mean for you, me and and SME? Well, I have been looking for sometime for a “framework” or tool that an can be used to link different Web 2.0 technologies. (Mashups are producing truly innovative uses of mixing and matching next gen web stuff). However, I’ve not found anything that connect “the dots together”.
I’m a hoping a tool like Popfly will make it easier, to build “golden threads” connecting all the different mashups together, in an easy to use, intuitive framework.
Ray Ozzie’s influence at Microsoft is truly inspiring innovation. Well, Microsoft never really stopped innovating, but they didn’t communicate about what they were doing effectively!
The recent news and beta release of Microsoft Silverlight plugin technology (Microsoft’s Adobe Flash alternative) means the company is taking web technology serious again.
Microsoft has started sending out a few Popfly alpha invitations and plans to allow the initial group of testers to distribute more invitations virally. When released, (no final release schedule as yet) Popfly will available for free.
Anyone with a spare invite? I’d be happy and grateful to test!
I’m on the Alpha!! Thanks to Steve Clayton and Microsoft
Cheers
Jas
Microsoft Popfly Overview
Watch the Popfly ScreenCast
Now this is great. Thanks to Alex and Kevin over at Diggnation for the tip.
Wouldn’t it be cool and very helpful to share your stuff with your friends or business associates? Tired of emailing stuff back and forth?
www.tubesnow.com has the answer.
Signup and download the small application file and create a tube to share. Think of it like a shared folder on your desktop, that you can share with people you want.
The folder is synchronised, so you can all share files in real time.
Signup today for FREE and receive 2GB of sharing bandwidth..
A nice video explaining how it works – http://www.tubesnow.com/tubetorials/FinalCreate/FinalCreate.html
Over recent weeks, I’ve had a number of informal discussions with people who have seen “SaaS” mentioned but have no idea what it means or the philosophy behind it. Therefore, this post is designed to help provide an explanation. Excerpts from(Wikipedia)
Software as a Service (SaaS) is generally associated with business software and is typically thought of as a low-cost way for businesses to obtain the same benefits of commercially licensed, internally operated software without the complexity and high initial costs.
Consumer-oriented web-native software is generally known as Web 2.0 and not as SaaS.
Many small businesses have little interest in software deployment, but do have substantial computing needs. Application areas such as Customer Relations Management (CRM), Video Conferencing, Human Resources, Accounting and Email are just a few of the initial markets showing SaaS success.
Key Point – The distinction between SaaS and earlier applications delivered over the Internet is that SaaS solutions were developed specifically to leverage web technologies such as the browser, thereby making them web-native.
Key characteristics of SaaS software are:
– Network-based access to, and management of, commercially available (i.e., not custom) software
– Activities that are managed from central locations rather than at each customer’s site, enabling customers to access
applications remotely via the Web
– SaaS applications are generally priced on a per-user basis, sometimes with a relatively small minimum number of users, and often with additional fees for extra bandwidth and storage. SaaS revenue streams to the vendor are therefore lower initially than traditional software license fees, but are also recurring, and therefore viewed as more predictable, much like maintenance fees for licensed software.
Drivers for SaaS adoption
– Everyone has a computer: Most information workers have access to a computer and are familiar with conventions from mouse usage to web interfaces. As a result, the learning curve for new, external applications is lower and less hand-holding by internal IT is needed.
– Computing itself is a commodity: In the past, corporate mainframes were jealously guarded as strategic advantages. More recently, the applications were viewed as strategic. Today, people know it’s the business processes and the data itself — customer records, workflows, and pricing information—that matters. Computing and application licenses are cost centers, and as such, they’re suitable for cost reduction and outsourcing. The adoption of SaaS could also drive Internet-scale to become a commodity.
– Applications are standardised: With some notable, industry-specific exceptions, most people spend most of their time using standardised applications. An expense reporting page, an applicant screening tool, a spreadsheet, or an e-mail system are all sufficiently ubiquitous and well understood that most users can switch from one system to another easily. This is evident from the number of web-based calendaring, spreadsheet, and e-mail systems that have emerged in recent years.
– Web systems are reliable enough: Despite sporadic outages and slow-downs, most people are willing to use the public Internet, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol and the TCP/IP stack to deliver business functions to end users.
– Security is sufficiently well trusted and transparent: With the broad adoption of SSL organizations have a way of reaching their applications without the complexity and burden of end-user configurations or VPNs.
– Wide Area Network’s bandwidth has grown drastically following the Moore’s Law (more than 100% increase each 24 months) and is about to reach slow local networks bandwidths. Added to network quality of service improvement this has driven people and companies to trustfully access remote locations and applications with low latencies and acceptable speeds.