trendpreneur

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.
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This morning, Dion Hinchcliffe spoke about Web 2.0 and its place in the online world, a presentation which (despite its overly-long jam-packed-with-slides delivery) had plenty of useful things to say. Here are a few of the key messages.

Firstly, what does ‘Web 2.0′ mean? A Web 2.0 application takes advantage of network effects — i.e. the more that other people have or use a service, the more value it has. Social network effects increase this value due to their immense potential for rapid growth and large reach. The small percentage of sites that manage to hit critical mass and use network effects experience astronomical growth, but others trying to compete in the space have a lot of trouble fighting established network effects.
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