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Dispatches From 2.0… The Web Is Well, Social

by | April 23rd, 2008 | Ambition, Career, Quotes, Reporting, Social Media, Web 2.0

Day One – 23rd April 2008
My first day at the conference; and the first full day of Web 2.0 Expo. After syncing with Terre and seeing some familiar faces, I was off to my first talk of the day, Polite, Pertinent, and… Pretty: Designing for the New-wave of Personal Informatics, given by Matt Jones (Dopplr) and Tom Coates (Yahoo! Brickhouse, Fire Eagle, specifically). The discussion mainly centered around the way people are choosing to “instrument our lives” through GPS-tracking shoes and even pills we can swallow that record the soundtrack of our – you guessed it – bowels. Obviously, there are a number of design challenges that come from this 2.0 push to use all the information coming at us to do a better job of being productive human beings. There were a few thought-provoking concepts thrown out for all to digest. Those I found especially interesting:

Presenters’ links:

Next on the agenda was Children of Flickr: Making the Massively Multiplayer Social Web with Justin Hall (GameLayers), Rajat Paharia (Bunchball), Christopher Chapman (Areae) and Gabe Zichermann (rmbr) (perhaps the most vocal, and insightful – at least on stage) where the discussion centered on adding video games to everyday life. Flickr actually started as a gaming site and it was interesting to get the perspectives of the panelists. Unfortunately, it was not as focused as the previous talk, but the speakers did talk generally about the concept of gaming and it seemed to carry over well to our objectives at MediaZone. They stressed the need for points systems or any form of “virtual currency” (see: Virtual Cash Breeds Real Greed) for users to take to gaming in a big way. They pointed to EA points as an example. They also noted a “landmark” study that found that people, especially women, do not like 3D user experiences. Interesting. I’ve tried to track the study down, but if you know of it, please share.

After lunch, it was on to Short Attention Span Theater: The Birth of Microblogging & Micromedia presented by Gregarious Narain (Blue Whale Labs), Jeremiah Owyang (Forrester Research), Brian Solis (Future Works and PR 2.0) and Stowe Boyd (The /Messengers) where audience members were invited to Twitter in questions. As a loyal (ardent?) Twitterberry user, I got to work and even had one of my questions addressed – you can check out some of my questions on my Twitter micro-blog at http://twitter.com/jenniferneeley. In a nutshell, Twitter’s as a social, and especially, economic value was discussed with mention of companies that have used it well (H&R Block, Zappos) as well as poorly (lots of links back to your site = disinterest). If you’re very interested in the topic, you might like to take a look at the ramblings on Robert Scoble’s blog, but otherwise it seemed like you got it or you didn’t and without Twitter having a fleshed out business model (their meetings with VCs during the span of the conference were well-dcoumented), there’s still a lot we don’t know. Still, I believe a few of the campaigns we’re trying to run could utilize or be entirely run on Twitter. Please ask me to pontificate, if interested.

On to psychology and a presenter, God bless him, with an unseemly affinity for the word “um.” Web Site Psychology was the name of the lecture, given by Gavin Bell (Nature). If you’re interested, I highly recommended taking a peek at the slides from his presentation. A lot of good, if academically presented, information. Some of my takeaways:

  • Usability needs to look at the consistent vs. the coherent.
  • Cognitive psychology plays a huge role.
  • Web experiences should model human behavior, designing for a good fit and also managing expectations.
  • He asserted that Flash makes users uncomfortable if there is no URL – no way to “go back.”
  • He also discussed: Schema, Congruence, Adaptation, Measured Stability and Affordances along the way.

After a break, it was on to keynotes, all of which I encourage you to check out online, but before that, Brady and Jennifer from O’Reilly Media explained some of the things they tried to make Web 2.0 Expo an “unconference”:

Making it an “open event” with social tools available to all (see the “stay connected” sidebar on the event home page). Examples:

Keynotes then began, with Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media starting things off by “reminding us why we’re there” – “Changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.” He also discussed how Web 2.0 is defined, according to VentureSource, it is:

  • Internet as platform
  • Harnessing the collective intelligence
  • Data as the “Intel Inside”
  • Software above the level of a single device
  • Software as a service

(This is all spelled-out better in another book I bought – Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations).

And, he noted, these are not short-term trends.

For business, one of the ideas he noted as key were:

  • Enterprises understanding that Web 2.0 is about turning themselves inside out.

Other thoughts:

  • Apps get better the more people use them (I think this could be said of most of Web 2.0).
  • The computer is every computer.
  • “Cloud Computing.”
  • Amazon.com used Web 2.0 to get ahead of the curve in a number of ways.
  • The programmable web.
  • Ambient computing.

“Big hairy audacious goal”
– Tim O’Reilly

O’Reilly’s examples of how Web 2.0 has been used in this way:

O’Reilly concluded with a poem he says he read to hos father on his death bed 20 years ago called “The Man Watching.” Take a read here:
http://www.cdra.org.za/creativity/Rainer%20Maria%20Rilke%20-%20The%20Man%20Watching.htm. Pretty inspiring.

Some other sites of interest:

After that, Charlene Li of Forrester interviewed Max Levchin from Slide. It was an interesting interview on his take on the value of social networking. I recommend checking it out online, but some thoughts:

  • Levchin defines Slide as a “Social Entertainment Company.”
  • He says Slide adds context to social platforms.
  • He considers widgets social software.
  • Believes the consumer gets “fun” – and that’s the only thing that will keep their products from becoming fads.
  • Says Slide will make money through advertising: Levchin says they’ve made strong brand connections from Paramount to Palm. He believes they will sell sponsorships and split ad revenue between ads and consumer service.
  • Billions are being made from virtual goods – especially in Asia.
  • Content and context are intertwined.
  • Engagement levels are close to, but above standard TV.
  • Madison Avenue is all about “engagement.”
  • Cited the thrown sheep as the thing they’re most known for (via SuperPoke!) and the pregnancy test, tied to a Juno movie campaign, as an example of a successful ad sales example.
  • Says Slide is well-liked by users and must have a base of loyal users for business to work.
  • Designing with privacy in mind (lessons learned from PayPal).
  • In terms of metrics, he says they do not need to know who their users are, but need to know their behavior (in general).
  • Says Slide has 170 million users.
  • Says their may not be as much conflict between the properties they widgets their products to as you might imagine; it’s all around who “owns”/engages the user.
  • Related to engagement, he said it’s more critical for the user to know you (e.g. the brand), than for you to know them.
  • Their focus is on something of real value – not easy to replicate – which users have the deepest connection to. He says if you can do that, there’s a lot of opportunity.
  • There was some discussion about “application spam.”
  • He believes users that uses apps to spam others will “be dealt with” better than it’s been done before with email.
  • There’s also the concept of what’s socially accepted, e.g. sheep being thrown vs. something else.
  • Talked about being featured on the cover of “Portfolio” with a light bulb over his head.
  • He was asked what motivates him to work on startups and said the drive to do so is, well, drive. He noted the first four companies he started destroyed his credit history. Slide is his fifth.
  • When he hires people, he basically looks for drive and people who can deal with failure.
  • He says he now judges his success by how many people make a million or more on exit.
  • He ended with a quote, paraphrased, from Winston Churchill, “never, ever, ever, ever surrender.” (see the full speech here: http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=393)

Next up, Microsoft, who showed a nice video, but did not explain the heavy-lifting that may or may not be required to make it work for users, as a means of announcing a new product – Microsoft Mesh (for an explainer, go here: http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/web2.0/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207401672).

On to the next speaker, Clay Shirky (one-time Colbert Report interviewee: http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=164882) and author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (I bought this one, too) gave an uplifting chat. He used the phrase “information porn.” What can I say?… love, love, LOVE the guy.

“What AIM Knows” was the next talk, given by Edwin Aoki – nothing really memorable to share. Tellme wants to get ahead of the mobile curve using voice commands (I really liked their speaker, Dariusz Paczuski) and there was talk of the “Myth of Innovation” by Scott Berkun (ScottBerkun.com). LOVED his book and bought it, too (The Myths of Innovation).

I encourage you to take a look at all the keynotes on Blip.tv. I plan to post the ones I found most interesting here, individually.