Web 2'0 and what it means for business

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Web 2.0 and what it means for business

• Rich Miller
• Research Scientist
• LexisNexis New Technology Research
• RE Web 2.0 Working Group
• September 27, 2007

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Background and Focus

• Background
• Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology (1988)
• with intention to go into software industry
• Human Factors and UI design
• ATT Communications (1985-1991)
• LexisNexis (1991-1999)
• Structural Dynamics (1999-2000)
• Research Scientist
• LexisNexis (2000-)
• Recent Focus
• User experience, HCI, advanced UIs
• Web 2.0 and computing trends
• Visualization
• Rich Media

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What is web2.0, anyway??

• A collection of new technologies and approaches
• Network as platform
• Continually-updated software and services
• A change in behavior more than technology
• The read/write web
• The you era
• The web 2.0 video describes it well
• Supermarket 2.0 not quite as good
• Its just the web the newer parts

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The web 2.0 tag cloud
From wikipedia
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Web 2.0 visualized
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Web 2.0 is the web evolved
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Web 2.0 site/application types

• Knowledge sources wikipedia, GoogleMaps,
  del.ico.us, technorati
• Tools and Office suites - google, thinkfree,
  zoho, zimbra, writely
• Collaboration - socialtext, basecamp, Lotus
  Connections
• Dashboards/homes/portals - netvibes, google, ms
  live/spaces
• Places to put your stuff (PKB) box.net, gmail,
  basecamp, flickr, S3
• Integrators and Organizers get your stuff
  together and connect it to other peoples stuff
  del.ico.us, blummy, pocketmod, rememberthemilk,
  lastfm, lala,
• Clubs and networks myspace, facebook, linkedIn,
  lastfm
• Blogs and self-expression platforms - technorati,
  youtube, jumpcut, digg, or any site that promises
  15 minutes of fame
• TV-replacements and other less-useful offerings
• blogs that interest only the author
• advertisements disguised as something else
• anything that my kids are using for superflous
  communicaton with their friends (meebo,
  myspace, xanga)

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Web 2.0 behaviors

• Consume
• Asking questions
• Looking it up
• Monitoring, counting and organizing
• Create
• Expressing oneself - as yourself or your
  cyberself
• Creating and remixing
• Self-improving
• Connect
• Sharing
• Discussing
• Pontificating

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The web2.0 triangle
connect/share
As applications mature, they move toward the
middle, e.g. GoogleMaps adding mymaps
create
consume
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Web Trends 2007
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Who is participating in web 2.0?

• By now, every user by now has participated in
  some form
• Web 2.0 approaches are permeating the web
• Huge growth of participatory web sites
• 668 increase in last 2 years
• Now account for 12 of the web!
• Not just for youngsters
• Wikipedia18-34 tend to consume what 35-55
  produce
• Youtube 18-24 less likely to upload than are
  older users
• Participation is viral (like viral marketing)
• Example RE Revolve blog site
• Usage patterns continue to emerge
• e.g. top 3 Youtube users (source
  Hitwise/Claritas)
• Young Digerati
• Money and Brains
• Bohemian Mix

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How web 2.0 is changing the user experience

• Networked applications provide more context and
  continuity apps depend on one another
• AJAX-enabled interactions
• Staying in place
• Preservation of task flow
• Rich internet applications (RIAs) are emerging,
  displacing the page metaphor
• Powerful, smoother, visually-stable applications
• Animation provides more engaging experience
• Line between desktop and online blurring
• For the occasionally connected
• Users want more applications online
• Metadata-driven navigation
• Tagging and faceted browse (e.g. TotalSearch)
• Applications are now increasingly visual

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Brave New World of online communities
The participatory web is now 12 of the web
itself
Wheres LinkedIn?
Is there such a thing as web2.0 participatory
hangover?
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The web 2.0 social conundrum 1

• The pressure to make friends
• My last.fm social network

lt friends
nearest neighbors gt
Elin from Sweden
My daughter
me
buddy from cinci
Nathan A. W. from Canada
Dayton campus buddy
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The web 2.0 social conundrum 2

• Wondering if they will pay attention and like it
• Reactions to my youtube video

daughter
friend
friend
stranger
7 people rated it
approaching 1000 views
Now 8 ratings, 1100 views, 5 links, and
16 favorites
3 actually linked to it!
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new sites appear every day, e.g.
Q What does this have to do with anything?
A It demonstrates the lowering barrier of entry
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The lowering barrier of entry

• The barrier of entry for competing on the web is
  approaching zero
• Anyone wanting to start a web-based business can
  do so with very little startup costs
• Hosting services are getting ridiculously cheap
  and its not just space you are getting for your
  money
• tons of tools come along with the space

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Now how much would you pay?
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Ridiculously cheap hosting services
It can get as cheap as 4 !
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What does it mean for business?

• Web 2.0 is raising the bar of user expectations
• Users bring life experiences into the workplace
• Better applications are being created at an
  increasingly faster rate
• To compete, traditional businesses must
  selectively embrace the more nimble approaches
• Prepare to face difficult tradeoffs
• Strategy must include
• How to leverage the participatory nature of the
  web behind the firewall
• How to leverage the free web without
  compromising quality, security, and profit making
• Overall, fostering a web 2.0 mentality
• e.g, Cant beat em, join em

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Using analytics to guide decision-making
Required reading for New Technology Research
staff
Formula for success leverage the web be more
nimble use analytics-driven decision-making
process?
See also pre-book article
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RE Web 2.0 projects and products

• LexisNexis
• Patents and sentiment analysis applications
  offering rich user interfaces and
  charting/visualization
• Several projects in the works around social
  computing
• Elsevier
• Engineering Village for patents researchers
• Scopus
• 2collab beta offering collaboration tools for
  researcher
• del.icio.us-like interface includes bookmarks,
  tags, user-groups, and comments.  
• Plans for rich internet applications
• Reed Business Information
• Hotfrog self-publishing business directory

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What does it mean for UX?

• The best UIs are coming out of web 2.0
• e.g. Google Maps, flickr, del.ico.us, etc.
• Designers should live the web2.0 life
• Go ahead, its fun!
• The designers toolbox is being greatly expanded
  to include many more options
• e.g. AJAX enables a whole set of new interactions
• Tools are becoming easier to use
• Designers can get closer to implementation

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6 themes of designer role change

• See article Web 2.0 for Designers
• Writing semantic markup
• transition to XML)
• Providing Web services
• moving away from place)
• Remixing content
• about when and what, not who or why)
• Emergent navigation and relevance
• users are in control)
• Adding metadata over time
• communities building social information)
• Shift to programming
• separation of structure and style)
• 7 candidate? design for placelessness or
  ubiquitous computing

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Task-oriented UIs (3)

• The interface changes slightly
• to let you focus on likely tasks

From tutorial by trulia
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Task-oriented UIs (4)

• The interface guides you along a list of tasks

From tutorial by trulia
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Task-focused UI example lala
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Task-focused UIs at work (4)
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Task-focused UIs at work (6)
From tutorial by trulia
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Task-focused UIs at work (8)
From tutorial by trulia
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Task-focused UIs at work (10)
From tutorial by trulia
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From tutorial by trulia
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(No Transcript)
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Task-focused UIs at work (12)
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From tutorial by trulia
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Remember Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

• Companies that best satisfy human needs will win
• but dont skip the more basic needs e.g.
  security

4-hour work week
Blogs, LinkedIn, Youtube
MySpace, wikis
Privacy, Vidoop
See Rolf Skyberg (ebay) presentation
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The 7 original web 2.0 memes

• Rich User Experiences
• Harnessing Collective Intelligence
• The Web as Platform
• End of the Software Release Cycle
• Lightweight Software and Business Models
• Software Above the Level of a Single Device
• Data as the next Intel Inside

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Rich user experiences 1

• Definition and importance
• More engaging, interactive applications through
  leveraging improved capabilities of the web
• A more desktop-like experience drag/drop,
  highly interactive, smooth morphing of display
• Rich components can be embedded in HTML pages
• Related concepts, technologies and issues
• Transcending the page metaphor
• Visually disruptive
• Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)
• AJAX and eliminating page-refresh delays
• Stability of place and preservation of flow
• Adobe Flash/Flex/Apollo and MS Silverlight
  (WPF/E)
• Widgets and components widgetbox.com
• Charting, visualization, and animation

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Rich user experiences 2

• Examples
• Google Gmail/Office, Google Finance
• EditGrid, Thinkfree, ZOHO, office apps
• Backbase, Wrike PIMs
• Sales bubble chart (visual i/o)
• Flex Store (Adobe)
• LN TotalPatent
• Amazon book browser
• What it means
• People like them
• Broader canvas/toolset for design
• Break out of page metaphor, but seek optimal
  combinations of HTML RIAs
• Option for more types of richer interactions
• Stability of place and preservation of flow
• Keep issues in mind
• link structure, usage analytics, lack of GUI
  standards

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Rich Internet Applications (2)

• ? Apparent performance gains
• Smaller chunks of the page load faster than the
  whole page

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Rich Internet Applications (3)

• ? Instant feedback minimized reloads

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Harnessing collective intelligence 1

• Definition and importance
• The most important, defining meme of web 2.0
• Empowering user community to contribute its
  intelligence
• using links, user-provided content, and comments
  on content
• Leads to software that makes itself smarter the
  more people use it
• Generating information from the wisdom of the
  masses
• Majority of people sharing common experience tend
  to be better than experts
• Related concepts, technologies and issues
• collaboration
• user-generated content
• network effects
• database of intentions and architecture of
  participation
• the long tail
• blogs and wikis
• tags and folksonomies

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Harnessing collective intelligence 2

• Examples
• Wikipedia
• de.lici.ous and Flickr
• MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn
• Amazon tags / Yahoo myweb
• Elsevier Engineering Village RBI Hotfrog
• What it means
• Consider how user contributions might enhance new
  or existing applications
• Anticipate a new set of interactions
• Tagging, uploading, commenting, navigating via
  user-generated data
• Look for opportunities to
• Harness intelligence behind the firewall
• Use free web intelligence to enhance
  subscription web applications

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Architecture of Participation
Slide Dion Hinchcliffe
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Web as platform 1

• Definition and importance
• Building apps on top of web resources
• The place where our software and data is moving
  to
• Products and services of all types are
  increasingly connected to the web
• Related concepts, technologies, issues
• Web services e.g. amazon S3
• Mashups, remixability
• Open APIs

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Web as platform 2

• Examples
• Yahoo Pipes blog
• FlashEarth mashup
• Youtube video embedding
• Amazon S3
• What it means
• Think bigger
• New aspect of design is how to leverage and
  integrate networked resources
• How do opportunities change when your product
  requires authentication for access?
• Learn about and play with APIs and web services

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End of the Software Release Cycle 1

• Definition and importance
• A departure from traditional, discrete release
  cycles in favor of gradual rollout and
  improvement of applications
• The perpetual beta has been enabled by the web
  and SaaS (software as a service)
• Related concepts, technologies, issues
• Software as a Service
• Constant, 2-way connection to users
• Users as co-developers
• Users willing to accept accompanying
  imperfections
• Uptime and scaling very important

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End of the Software Release Cycle 2

• Examples
• Google the master
• Flickr has new builds every 30 minutes
• What it means
• Less reliance on pre-release usability testing
  and more reliance on collecting and analyzing
  usage analytics
• User expectation is one of gradual improvement,
  not big bang releases with list of whats new
  features
• More frequent, intimate interaction with users
• likely in cyberspace

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Lightweight Software and Business Models 1

• Definition and importance
• Simplicity and nimbleness over completeness
• The result of 15 years of web experience
• Simplicity of technology and standards leads to
  ease in understanding and compliance
• Related concepts, technologies, issues
• Arms race newer companies have advantage with
  newer tools and standards
• 10-20X productivity increases achieved
• Open-platform business models gt
  self-distributing ecosystems building on the
  shoulders of giants
• Spreading product beyond the boundaries of its
  site
• Through APIs, widgets, badges, syndication

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Lightweight Software and Business Models 2

• Examples
• RSS
• PHP and Ruby on Rails
• Declarative programming
• what something is like, rather than how to create
  it, e.g. HTML, Adobe Flex MXML
• Blogs and wikis
• Microformats
• What it means
• Easier tools means better teamwork between
  designers and developers
• Designers can get more technical
• Quicker and more frequent design iteration
• Trading off feature depth for development speed?

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Software above level of single device 1

• Definition and importance
• Supports ubiquitous computing from anywhere using
  any device
• Related concepts, technologies, issues
• Server-side office suites
• Vertical vs. horizontal models
• Vertical vendor-controlled ecosystem
• Horizontal open, cooperating ecosystem under no
  central control (e.g. blogosphere)
• Mobile 2.0
• Mobile devices getting smarter and more
  sophisticated, accounting for more net traffic
• New opportunities to serve, attract customers

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Software above level of single device 2

• Examples
• Google office
• iTunes not just for the ipod
• Sony Connect
• Zune Marketplace
• Adobe Flash
• The Blogosphere
• What it means
• Design above a single device
• Think server-side tools
• Anticipate various remote usage scenarios
• Users will increasingly expect device-independent
  designs

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Data as the next intel inside 1

• Definition and importance
• Information is the core value, more than software
  
• Databases are behind the market-leading products
• The race is on to own major classes of online
  data
• Many classes on data unclaimed e.g. identity,
  public calendar events, parental control data,
  etc.
• The best way to establish and maintain control of
  a hard to recreate set of data is to let users do
  it.
• Related concepts, technologies, issues
• Data-driven applications
• User-generated content

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Data as the next intel inside 2

• Examples
• Images, charts and graphs
• Geo maps and overlays e.g. NAVTEQ
• People
• Bookmarks del.ici.ous
• Books and merchandise - amazon
• What it means
• Remember that data can be the differentiator
• Use data to define and enhance the UI
• e.g. surface data interesting to individual user
  rather than display same links everyone gets
• e.g. create emergent navigation structures -
  navigation by tags or other user-generated
  metadata

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Web 2.0 gravitational effect
Slide Dion Hinchcliffe
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Common elements of success

• Data-driven
• Decentralized ecosystems
• Leveraged the user to add value
• Platforms, not applications
• Focused on The Long Tail
• Monetized successfully
• Motive force collective intelligence

source Dion Hinchcliffe
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The long tail

• Studying and servicing micromarkets
• Requires an automated customer self-service

source Dion Hinchcliffe
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Essential Web 2.0 Ground Rules

• Ease of Use is the most important feature of any
  Web site, Web application, or program.
• Open up your content and services as much
  possible.
• There is no future in hoarding information, only
  facilitating it.
• Aggressively add feedback loops to everything.
• Pull out loops that dont matter and emphasize
  ones that do.
• Continuous release cycles.
• The bigger the release, the more unwieldy it
  becomes.
• Organic growth is the most powerful, adaptive,
  and resilient.
• Make your users part of your products.
• They are your most valuable source of content,
  feedback, and passion.
• Understand social architecture and Architectures
  of Participation.
• Give up non-essential control, or your users may
  go elsewhere.
• Turning Applications Into Platforms.
• Original uses of software, services, and content
  are just the beginning.
• Dont create social communities just to have
  them.
• But do empower inspired users to create them.

source Dion Hinchcliffe
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Enterprise 2.0 1

• Enterprise adoption of web 2.0 fueled by Seminal
  2006 article by Andrew McAfee
• Web 2.0 tools as solution for collaboration
• Emergent, freeform, social applications for use
  within the enterprise
• 2 main problems w/ channels platforms
• Many users unhappy with email/IM channels and
  intranet/portal platform
• Current tools not good at capturing knowledge
• Solution make the practices and outputs of
  knowledge workers visible through the use of
  blogs, wikis and other tools

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Enterprise 2.0 2

• SLATES
• Search
• Linking
• connect information together into a meaningful
  information ecosystem using the model of the Web
• Authorship
• low-barrier social tools enabling users to easily
  make content consumable by others
• Tagging
• allows users to create meaningful, useful, and
  emergent organizational structures
• Extensions
• spontaneously provide intelligent content
  suggestions similar to Amazon's recommendation
  system
• Signals
• let users know when enterprise information they
  care about has been published or updated, such as
  when a corporate RSS feed of interest changes
• authoring creates content, links and tags knit
  it together and search, extensions, tags and
  signals make emergent patterns in the content
  visible, and help people stay on top of it all

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Why is enterprise 2.0 different?

• forces conspire to provide resistance to
  productivity
• - tools and process require too much effort

• maturation of techniques that leverage how
  people work best
• realization of the power of emergent solutions
  over pre-defined solutions
• nearly zero-barriers to use

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Enterprise 2.0 Products

• Blogging
• Movable Type
• Wiki
• SocialText, Confluence
• RSS
• Attensa, NewsGator, SimpleFeed
• Suites
• ConnectBeam, Blogtronix, KnowNow
• Lotus Connections
• Webex Connect
• Thinkfree, Zoho, Zimbra

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Connectbeam

• Demo video

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Product development 2.0
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Whats next?

• User expectations will continue to grow
• Dominant player and federation of losers for
  each major service
• Big shakeout of blogging/social sites
• Way too many offerings
• Offline/Online boundary continues to blur
• RIAs and HTML coexist in various appropriate
  combinations
• Web 2.0 hits the enterprise in a big way
• Watch out for mobile
• Virtual worlds continue to emerge
• Second Life continues to draw attention from
  businesses

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Questions?