The Web 2.0 Expo - They forgot about YOU!

You were the Time's person of the year in 2006. 

You wanted to contribute content, tell corporations what you wanted, express yourself, and connect and share with your friends and others. You helped propel this frenzy of making the Internet the platform. Yet, at the Web 2.0 conference in 2008, they forgot about you. 

 I was at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco all week and I was surprised to see that none of the sessions over the 4 days had a user's perspective. For Example - they had a panel of "community managers" sharing how they built successful communities, but no one from the community to share why they choose to become part of a community and what they expect from the community. They had people talk about different ways to monetize - through widgets, apps, and advertising. 

But no one was asking the users what they think of the Ads taking real estate on their page, or about all the silly apps being built for social networking sites. Maybe "none" is an overstatement. Two sessions stood out. O'Reilly in his keynote talked about using the Internet as a platform to make BIG changes, like making our governments more transparent to the people. Jonah Piretti, in his breakout session - the best one I attended - talked about there is no formula in making something viral. 

People (not particular persons) decide what interests them and what they want to forward and people are unpredictable. The success of viral events can be analyzed but not repeated. Of course, his presentation was engaging b'coz he himself was very funny and had very funny anecdotes to share. Google him and you will find some of his stories.

Facebook Apps - HOT or NOT?

It seems like in every conversation I have with friends these days, "Facebook" comes up a lot. Whether they like it or hate it, everyone seems to be on it. I have noticed though that the tone of negative comments is increasing, especially in the last 2 months. 

  Of course, the one thing that is annoying everyone is the Applications; being inundated with requests from others about things you really dont care to know. What bubblegum flavour are you? After knowing what kind of drug I am, what rainbow color I am, and which "Friends" character I am, do I really want to know the bubblegum flavour that matches my personality the most? 

 Most of these apps make you take the test and then ask you to forward it to 20 friends to know the result. I say, call their bluff. Don't forward it and go back to the application. You will know what color your heart is. Take the next quiz if you have to, do them all. Just this time no one else needs to know about it. Trust me, you would be doing yourself and your friends a big favour. I thought these applications were targeted to the hip and cool Gen Y or the Millennial Generation (seriously, do they know how much power they hold over making or breaking Web 2.0 companies). 

But at the Ad.Tech Conference in San Francisco this past week, I heard a panel of teens complain about all the silly apps on Facebook. They all had left MySpace for Facebook as MySpace has become over-saturated with advertisements and solicitations. And now the overflow of apps. While you want to keep an open platform so that anyone and everyone can build an app for Facebook, how do you do quality control so that it doesn't destroy your users' experience? 

Like Facebook, I would be struggling with this dilemma. There may be a switching cost, but it is not high enough to warrant annoyance. And if Flickr could find a way to share and interface with these social networking sites (I upload my photos on Flickr and they are available on Facebook (and other sites) so that I can tag my friends, etc), it would be golden! And that would lower the switching costs for Facebook significantly and put Flickr under the category "the web 2.0 site you could not live without".

The age of digital privacy

It seems like everyone is blogging these days. While some of these bloggers willingly share personal details of their lives with strangers, I am concerned about my Facebook profile, which I feel has too much information already. I

 feel torn about the status updates on Facebook. In a way, it's a good forum to express myself. But it's there for everyone, or rather every "friend" to read. There are some people who are my "friends" on Facebook who I wouldn't really call my friends. Should they really know about what I feel and think about every day? 

 This whole social networking thing has changed the definition of what a "friend" means and it certainly has changed what "stalking" means. Is it considered stalking if I follow a stranger's activities on a social media site, without them knowing? Unless they have changed their default privacy settings, I know which events they plan to attend, I know who their friends are, I know what movies they like and I know what they are talking about on the walls of their friends. Most of all, I can see all their photos. Is that stalking? 

Like it or not, this social networking phenomenon is here to stay. Welcome to the age of digital privacy, or lack thereof. For now, I am buying stocks of software security companies. While preference for Google or Yahoo, Facebook or MySpace may change, the need for secure information isnt going to go away.