Keeping Up with the Buzz: Web 2.0 Expo Buzz, That Is!
Attending the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week, I was able to pick up on the Web 2.0 buzz. Web 2.0 is a conference that centers on opportunities created by Web 2.0 technologies. Big names in the industry were there: Facebook, eBay, Google, Amazon and a vast number of startups, as well. Through walking the show floor and attending a variety of educational seminars, I picked up on quite a few hot topics currently buzzing through the industry. There were three that stood out for me in particular because of their implication on the future of the web and impact to users: crowd-sourcing content, social objects and interest measurement.
Crowd-sourced content is not a new idea, but is one that is being perfected by the likes of Threadless.com and Etsy.com. In this community model, users are in full control of the content that is available on a site. What’s interesting is how these companies built a passionate community; they did so by adopting a bottom-up notion of brand-building – this involves little control of the brand itself. The users are in full control; submitting, voting on and consuming their content with little brand interaction. By effectively running a crowd-sourced site and truly allowing the users to have control, a passionate, vibrant community can be formed.
Social objects are the concepts that bind a social network. For a social network to be successful, it first has to be useful. Without the correct social object to bind the network, users will not coalesce into a stable community. Take, for example, LinkedIn — for a time, the central object on LinkedIn was the user’s connections. This wasn’t particularly useful as it didn’t serve the true purpose of the site, which was to create a community centered on the user’s job. LinkedIn realized this and made changes to their site that focused on the job rather than the connections. When a social networking site is built, it’s important to understand its social object and how users interact with it.
Interest measurement is based on the idea that it is important to find what is most interesting to users. Recommender systems look at explicit and implicit user data to find commonalities in neighborhoods of users to show content that a user might like. But a question remains: how do you know what is highly interesting within a network? The answer is straightforward: by using a Page-Rank-like algorithm and applying it to, say, Twitter, value is given to content that is shared with the network. The more the content is proliferated through the network, the higher the interest score that content gets. Using this data could have broad implications as one could create a Digg-like site that would automatically sort stories based on user interest with no manual digging required.
Overall, the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco was a great place to meet people, learn about new products and pick up on the Web 2.0 buzz. I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to achieve these things. The web was built by the people and should continue to serve the people in exciting and innovative ways as we move forward. There are many ways that the web is growing and maturing. But even by looking at the Web 2.0 topics I mentioned: perfecting social networks through use of social objects and crowd-sourced content and providing more insight into what is users truly find interesting, the web should become an even more personal and compelling place. And that’s what the Web 2.0 Expo buzz was all about.
Eric Montag, Product Manager, W3i Holdings, LLC
Eric uses his experience in graphic design, mobile, and internet marketing to lead the charge in product research, planning, and execution, from both a consumer and business standpoint.
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April 7th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Thanks for the nice recap!
~ Janetti aka @janerri
Your friendly Web 2.0 Expo Community Manager