Let’s play a game. I’ll talk about a product currently on the Internet marketplace, and you have to decide whether it’s Web 2.0 or not.
The user-base numbers in the millions, with many concurrent users forming part of a large community. However, this community’s segmented — partially enforced by the community structure, partly self-organising. Community features include belonging to a particular group of users and having friends lists, chatting directly and in groups, and participating in activities together. There’s emergent behaviour — community members doing things that the organisers never envisaged, and sometimes don’t approve of!
There are other similar products out, and while this particular one has made some superior design and marketing products, its main lock-in is data. Customers invest a lot of time in their use of the product, and switching to a different product means abandoning this time and data; they also lose their community attachment, which can be a strong draw.
Finally, there’s a meta-community around the product. Rather than being limited to simply using the product, there are wider avenues for discussion, news, even third-party development. Being associated with the meta-community isn’t required, but being abreast of product developments and caring more about the product also increases user retention.
Was it obvious? The product I’m talking about is World of Warcraft, although many of the same principles apply — albeit on a smaller scale — to Second Life and other MMOs/virtual worlds. Generally the unique, hard-to-recreate data (i.e. your avatar and the time invested in building it up) is a major feature of MMO stickiness, as well as the draw of a ‘home away from home’ amidst a small segment of the community.
Where products like World of Warcraft and Second Life differ, however, is generally in the model they use. Both WoW’s flat-subscription and SL’s freemium business models are seen in Web 2.0 businesses, although you will find very few with the confidence of WoW to demand a $50 down-payment. That’s reflected in the value to the end user, though; WoW buyers get a physical product, a manual, etc. (although you can now digitally download it). SL is a purely digital product — fitting in a little more with Web 2.0′s expectations.
So, okay. We’ve ticked off a lot of boxes, most of which are pretty standard Web 2.0 concepts. Community – check. Data – check. Third party developer community – check. User-created content – check.
What’s missing?
A big message here at the Expo has been that of openness, accessibility and mashability. The importance of having an API and letting people run free with your product and your data — while retaining control yourself — is becoming fundamental to web 2.0. It’s getting to the stage where there are products doing far more transactions via their APIs than via their front-ends, though not every company has figured out how to monetise that.
Another difference is the ability to leverage the community. With sharded hosting (such as WoW uses) and very segregated customers, none of which behave in a way that’s going to be at all useful to outside parties, MMOs generally lack that. Those that edge into virtual worlds territory, with overlaps into the real world, provide more opportunities here — but the top-level concept of “use your users to figure out bigger stuff” just doesn’t apply.
In summary (and note, this is before I attend the virtual worlds panel!) many MMOs fall into a kind of “Web 1.5″ category. To truly become 2.0, you need cross-platform mobility, which is easy if you have an API. A long, long time ago I pitched a business idea for a MMO engine that would allow users to have different windows onto the core world depending where they were interacting from — a mobile user might be able to chat, or check their auctions, but wouldn’t be able to level up; a web-based user could put together a raid group but wouldn’t be able to move in the 3D world.
I’ve since seen people working on this, but until the bigger players start thinking about ways to get with 2.0 and offer a potentially huge amount of value to the community — value which will feed right back into their pockets — it’s not likely to happen until the “WoW-killer” comes along. My instinct is that said game will have to be multi-platform, almost pervasive in its manner, but at the same time the idea of having your addiction in your pocket slightly horrifies me.
[UPDATE: This was far more the sort of stuff I expected the virtual worlds panel to cover; instead it turned out to be a huge plug for a certain pre-teen-girl 'VW' product. Would have loved some more general discussion.]