Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0: User Content and Lock-In
A couple of weeks ago I linked to Rich Ziade’s Reality Check 2.0 which highlighted how our Web 2.0 darlings compare to Web 1.0 counterparts. Yesterday, Colin, Mike and I had a discussion, which led us into talking about the brilliance of Myspace and their ability to keep you coming back.
Web 2.0 is about giving users the content and letting them run with it. APIs and RSS feeds keep content closer to us while in the Web 1.0 world you would never see something like this occur because to make money from advertising you need pageviews and what good is it to allow people to take the content off the site? When you get a new message or comment on Myspace you get an email simply telling you that you have a new message/comment. They don’t tell you what the message or comment is and their reason for doing this is due to “privacy” concerns. If a Web 2.0 app did this you would probably here a lot of complaints, but not in the Myspace world.
And that’s part of the brilliance behind it to me. Myspace does so many things wrong in our world, but they are about to become the most popular site on the web. So the question becomes have we listened to our geek peers too much in trying to make data accessible everywhere without thinking of keeping people coming back and greedily hoarding them to ourselves? As a user I think its obvious that we want data the way we want it, but as a businessman what do you do?
To us Flickr is the most popular photo site on the web, but they pale in comparison to Yahoo Photos and Webshots, but on Flickr I can export my photos while on the other two sites that becomes a major chore therefore keeping you on the site longer to avoid any hassles.
So in the end who do you cater to? Do you go for the glory?
I think the difference is in the marketing. Most of these other services that you mention are plugged into other applications that give the every day PC user a tool bar in their browsers which makes them automatically connected and feel like they have to go in that direction. Another issue is that I really don’t think the majority of people know what RSS is; I mentioned this on my site earlier today when talking about FeedBurner’s new email service. Also Tagging is a major deal to all of us but like RSS 99% of internet users couldn’t tell you what it is. Its all in the marketing, I don’t have an answer on how to market these items off the top of my head but I bet if a few of us put our heads together we can come up with something.
By Dennis Bullock on April 20, 2006 10:13 pm
Well, we learned from the reality check that web2.0 really hasn’t hit mainstream yet, so that would make us geeks ahead of the technological curve. Once web2.0 penetrates the internet, sites like MySpace will have to adapt, or risk losing their empire. But at that point, we will be wondering why some other site is succeeding despite not being web3.0…
By Kyle Posey on April 21, 2006 8:19 am
2 points: First, I think it is important to evaluate what is one’s definition of success. Let’s take it out of the website world for a second…Which store is more successful, The Apple Store or Wal-Mart? Which car, BMW or Honda? Which author, C.S. Lewis or Danielle Steele? Sure MySpace (or is it My Space; the site has both) is on its way to becoming the most popular site in the world, but that’s only one kind of success. Personally, I define success as doing something that I can be proud of while gaining the respect of like minded people, not world domination. Am I just making an excuse to remain happily obscure, or do I have my priorities in the right place? Second, those of us “geeks” that demand (and produce) free, accessible, well-designed information, cannot have it both ways. We cannot bad-mouth concepts like DRM, organizations like the RIAA, massive companies like AOL and Microsoft, and still hold them up as examples of success because that have or produce alot of money. We need to think as a COMMUNITY. Each of us with our own place and our own contributions.
By Joshua Mace on April 21, 2006 9:58 am
I think it all boils down to knowing what your customer (user, whatever) wants. Oftentimes this isn’t what you might think. In the case of MySpace people want “friends”. They want pictures of hot 19 year old girls and the ability to show that their “friends” with these girls. The girls want to flirt and make “friends” with rockstars (the real kind, not this silly Web 2.0 kind I keep hearing about). They want to express themselves, hook up, find old highschool buddies etc.
Things like “tagging” and “RSS” are technological terms that don’t mean jack shit to these people. Sure if you could give them the ability to label their friends with tags and show some value there, I’m sure they’d be interested, but adding “tagging” to MySpace is something only a geek would get.
(And no amount of marking is going to make people get Web 2.0. As well using “Web 2.0″ to market your product–as all too many people do–it just plain stupid.)
The reason why Flickr is great is because it’s easy for me to do simple things I want to do with photos. Create albums, send pics via my phone, export, comment, etc.
Web 2.0, Web 1.0…the technology isn’t what’s important here and frankly there are too many self-proclaimed Web 2.0 companies out there that are relying on that technology with little regard to the people who’ll use it.
This works fine with geeks, but if you want to grow beyond that audience you’ll need to learn what people really want. I get hundreds of emails every month from people who want me to post about their new Web 2.0 of Lifehacker. The vast majority of this stuff is technically impressive but doesn’t give me any thing I want. There is simply zero reason for me to use most of this stuff, let alone tell others about it.
But I know for a fact that people would be interested in how to hack together a better MySpace layout. Does that say something about Web 2.0?
This is not to say that MySpace can’t learn from Web 2.0, at least technology-wise. Only that they’ve got it right by giving people what they want first. They can always go back and improve the interface, the technology and all that later.
By Keith on April 21, 2006 11:27 am
Umm, yeah…So TAKE THAT Web 2.0.
By Keith on April 21, 2006 11:28 am
> So in the end who do you cater to? Do you go for the glory?
= Who is your market? What’s your business plan?
“Know your market, build for them.”
“You have an itch, scratch it, surely there are others with the same itch.”
“Build simple, then listen to your market and implement”
“Build simple, watch what you market does, make their tasks easier”
Can those be applied to Myspace (widespread popularity)? Can they be applied to Basecamp (dominant niche product)?
I think so. Nothing seems to have changed too much about the business rules.
By Mike Papageorge on April 22, 2006 7:04 am
I haven’t been up to anything today. I don’t care. I’ve just been staying at home not getting anything done. Basically not much happening right now. Maybe tomorrow. I guess it doesn’t bother me.
By Kaka19630 on April 26, 2006 3:22 pm
I feel like a complete blank, but I don’t care. Pfft. I’ve pretty much been doing nothing worth mentioning.
By Kaka19546 on May 9, 2006 5:03 pm