When you look at the power of the Web 2.0 trend in the Internet economy, most people point to the success of Facebook, or the influence of Web 2.0 on business and e-commerce, but the most dramatic example was the political campaign of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, dubbed “Obama 2.0” by some:

• According to the Washington Post, Obama raised about a half a billion dollars from online donations.

• On Facebook, Obama has more than three million friends, compared with about 600,000 for McCain.

• Obama’s campaign videos on YouTube have been viewed an estimated 100 million times, more than triple the number for McCain.

Still, many people are unclear about what “Web 2.0” means. Some see it simply as a new style of web design — simple layouts, bright colors, tabbed navigation, larger font sizes, and boxes with rounded corners. Others equate it with social networking because of the use of Facebook and text messaging in the Obama campaign. Some people see it as just another Internet “meme” — a catch-phrase or idea popular in cyberculture.

For example, in the ancient days of the web (the 1990s), many sites offered you a way to create a personal homepage (e.g. Geocities) or a blog (Blogger.com), but Web 2.0 sites, such as the pioneering MySpace and the newcomer Facebook, offered a personal homepage that also included a blogging tool, photo galleries, and a way to find and add a network of links to other users. While email and instant messaging had been around long before that, the Web 2.0 sites integrated different tools for interactivity and connectivity.

Where did the term Web 2.0 originate?
The term Web 2.0 first became popular in 2004 after an O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 Conference (O’Reilly is a highly respected publisher of technical books). Even at that time, though, there were websites that offered interactivity and connectivity, and blogging had already been around since the late ‘90s. Facebook had just been launched that year, but it was only intended for college students, not all Netizens. Photo-sharing site Flickr was also launched that year in Vancouver, so it really was a watershed year for Web 2.0 in many ways.

Sites like Go2Web2.0 (www.go2web20.net/) list hundreds and hundreds of Web 2.0 sites. Web 2.0 is not just about social media, though. There are many types of Web 2.0 sites ranging from blogs to wikis (see the list of examples on page 55). As well, many British Columbia companies (and several on Vancouver Island) have developed Web 2.0 sites, such as Flickr, Flock, Udutu, Sitemasher, and DailySplice.

How can businesses benefit from a Web 2.0 strategy?
A recent article in BusinessWeek titled “Why Web 2.0 has Corporate America Spinning” lists the following reasons Web 2.0 is becoming such a popular buzzword in the business community:

• Corporate blogging. Executive blogs, such as those by General Motors and IBM executives, give companies a channel for informal dialogue with their grassroots customers and also provides a way to offer another perspective on what people are hearing in the mainstream media.

• Problem-solving. Web 2.0’s emphasis on social networking can create opportunities for collaboration and outside-the-box thinking in larger organizations. Wikis offer a way to share information and also track how that information changes as people add to it.

• Staying young. Older executives know that Web 2.0 attracts younger employees who are already interacting and sharing information online outside of work. It’s good for recruiting and retention and helps create a more youthful culture in a company.

Web 2.0 is also changing the thinking behind e-government
Over the past few years, the big buzz in public sector organizations was about how to use technology to transform government into e-government. But the popularity of Web 2.0 has started the public sector talking about something that’s being called “Government 2.0.” From the government of Canada right down to municipalities, governments are interested in how they can use social media, such as blogs and message boards, to engage the public, create citizen-centric e-services, and share information.

The city of Toronto’s Web 2.0 Summit, held on Nov 26 and 27, 2008, was held to share ideas about how Web 2.0 and social media (such as wikis, blogs, and social networking profiles) can increase civic engagement, reach all communities, and improve city services, as well as learn new ways for elected officials to engage communities on the services that affect their quality of life.

Here are some different types of Web 2.0 sites and specific examples of each type.

Blogs
• Blogger is one of the original free blogging services, now owned by Google.

Bookmarking
• StumbleUpon is an addictive software that you add to your browser to “stumble” on random websites, but you can also indicate your preferences with a rating tool or suggest sites that should be added.

Chat
• Meebo is the web messenger that lets you access instant messaging from anywhere, such as MSN/Live, Yahoo!, AIM, Google Talk (Gtalk), Gabber and ICQ.

Education
• Udutu was created by another Vancouver Island company and provides a free tool for authoring e-learning courses that can also be downloaded and distributed for free.

Emails
• Gmail is one of the most popular of the free webmail services, created by Google.

File Sharing
• Mediafire is a free tool for easily sharing files of any type or size over the Internet.

Games

• Trendio is an online prediction game.

Images & Photos
• Slide.com is like Flickr or PhotoBucket, but Slide.com makes it easy to link your slideshows to other social media accounts, such as Facebook.

Micro-blogging
• Twitter is a leading micro-blogging site that allows people to post short updates about what they’re doing, called “tweets,” and follow other people’s tweets, too.

Music
• Odeo is a kind of YouTube for audio files… users can browse, download, and share audio files.

News
• NewsGator allows you to read all of your favourite news, websites, and blogs all in one place.

Office Tools
• Zoho Office Suite is a growing suite of software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools that range from a simple word-processing tool to project management and customer-relationship management tools.

Podcasting
• DailySplice.com is a social media company created by yet another Vancouver Island start-up.

RSS
• FeedBurner helps bloggers, podcasters, and commercial publishers publish RSS news feeds or offer mailing list subscriptions.

Social networking
• LinkedIn is a kind of Facebook for business users, a social networking site for connecting with other businesses and professionals and is also used for job searches and hiring.

Video
• YouTube is the most popular free video-sharing web site and lets users upload, view, and share video clips.

VOIP
• Skype is voice over IP (VoIP) software that’s free to download and offers free-to-call long distance numbers.

Web Development
• Sitemasher.com is a development and hosting platform (created by a Vancouver company) that includes integrated content management and search engine optimization. Sites can be designed for free, and developers only pay subscription costs after they publish the site.

Wikis
• Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet with content created by its users.

Article originally published in Douglas Magazine.

I’ve tweeted this before on my Twitter pages @usabilitydesign and @socialmediamash, but I have to expand on this issue here because I think it’s going to be something that is going to become an issue for Twitter micro-bloggers.

In case you’re new to Twitter, or not familiar with how it works, when you post a 140-character-or-less micro-blog on Twitter that includes a link to something you’ve referenced, Twitter will either handle that link one of two ways. If the link is not too long, Twitter will convert it to a clickable link and leave the URL as it was when you entered it.

The usability issue

If your combined text and URL is greater than 140 characters, Twitter won’t convert the URL to a TinyUrl then count your characters based on the length of the shortened URL. You have to either provide a shorter URL yourself OR shorten the text part of your tweet, which is a usability issue. Why should a URL count in the 140 characters you’re allowed?  

However, your post is less than 140 characters long, but the URL itself is quite long, Twitter will automatically convert it to a “TinyUrl,” (see http://TinyUrl.com), which is a shorter format link that redirects to the link you had specified. Nice of Twitter to do that for you, but here’s the problem. 

The security issue

Anyone can set up a Twitter account if they have a valid email address, and unscrupulous people who are phishing for your personal data or trying to install a virus or worm on your computer can use TinyURLs to mask what URL they are sending you to. You don’t know what the URL is until you click on the TinyURL version and open the site. By then it could be too late for you,

The TinyUrl.com site actually offers a more secure way to share a link that is being rediercted by a TinyUrl. It’s called “Preview,” and if you use the Preview version when you are manually creating your TinyUrl, then people who click on your TinyUrl link are first redirected to the TinyUrl.com site where they can see the actual URL and decide whether they feel it’s safe to click through and go to the site or not.

When Twitter automatically shortens URLs to TinyUrls, however, we don’t have a way to let people review the link before they visit the site.

A reasonable solution for both issues: embedded URLs

 Here’s a solution that Twitter could implement, if they really care about this issue.

If Twitter gave their users the ability to embed a URL in the text of their tweet… e.g. instead of entering a long link such as http://digitalpractices.org/2009/04/15/twitter-links-are-a-major-phishing-risk that Twitter will shorten into a TinyUrl, the message could simply refer to this blog post that I wrote, and thus Twitter users wouldn’t have to use up so many of their allotted 140 characters to include an URL. This would solve a usability issue on Twitter.

As for security, Twitter followers and browsers could simply hover their cursor over the link to see what it is. That way, they can at least have a fighting chance at finding out whether the link looks like it point to a legitimate Website rather than a creepy phishing site or some shady IP address spreading malware.

What do you think? Are you concerned about phishing or malware attempts when you click on TinyUrl links in Twitter posts?

Here are 5 quick tips on naming your business, from the experts at BrandNewPerfect.Name:

1. We want the perfect domain name.

In the beginning, everyone pined over what seemed to be the perfect domain names – the obvious ones like realestate.com, entertainment.com and internet.com (how would you like to own the ‘internet’?). Then some creative upstarts such as Amazon.com came along and proved what everyone in the advertising world knew already…it’s not what your name is, but who knows your name. So if your brand came first before the Internet you’ll want to maintain that as your domain name (e.g. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer is MGM.com), but if you’re a new company, why now develop your brand with an original name, the way Twitter.com and Zoosk.com did (visit http://www.go2web20.net/ to see the names of new Web 2.0 companies). Coining a new name often makes it a lot easier to get the dot com you want, too.

2. Hey, that’s our name!

In many cases the “perfect name” for your company is already being used by another business, or else they’re using a similar sounding name. Before you even try to register a new business name or domain name, do a thorough search of the Internet, which can help you determine whether there are similar names being used anywhere on the planet. Check different spellings of the name, too. And even if they are being used, that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to use your version. Find out if the name is trademarked. Are they in the same business as you? If not, it may not be a problem for you to call your business Purple Rose Florists if the only other similar company is Purple Rose Tattoos. You can also do a variation in the spelling of the name, or include other words in the name to distinguish it or make it more specific to your business, e.g. Great West Technology can be turned into Gr8 West Tech, or Halcyon Communications can be turned into Halcyon Wordsmiths International. Avoid trademark issues by consulting a lawyer so they can do a search for you in your own country and other countries as well, where the laws may be different.

3. We wish this weren’t our name!

Sometimes your current name and brand is a liability when it sounds too similar to something with negative connotations. Imagine if you ran a store in New York City called Twin Towers Photography? In a real life case, Greenleaf Marketing in Springfield, Missouri, decided to rebrand itself as Red Crow Marketing because their original name sounded too similar to Greenleaf Companies, a real estate company being investigated by state agencies. In those kinds of situations, it makes sense to go through the effort, expense and even risk of rebranding under a new name.

4. We need something that sounds edgy, contemporary.

Rebranding yourself with an edgy, Webby-sounding name doesn’t usually work unless you completely re-style your entire company, and even then it might just seem blatantly superficial and disingenuous to customers and business partners. If you’re a drycleaning company and you re-brand yourself as “e-Clean”, you’d better find a way that people can order drycleaning pickups online or some other Web-related services, otherwise you’ll risk sounding foolish. On the other hand, it doesn’t hurt to style yourself after what you want to be and where you want to be rather than where you are now. Should a name say something about what your business does? Not always. It helps if the name is intuitive to people so they can tell what you do, but once you build a brand you don’t need any further descriptors. For example, does the Coca-Cola Company need to be called Coca-Cola Carbonated Beverages? Instead of simply describing your company by what it is, e.g. American Glassworks, try creating a name that describes its qualities, what it does for the customer or client, or what kind of impact it will have. As a name, Yahoo! didn’t literally describe what the company was offering, but it did describe the exciting experience of finding new sites on the Internet.

5. We want to see our name up in lights.

Not every name will have a symbolic or visual quality, but that’s an important consideration because when it comes time to develop your brand expression – e.g. your corporate colors and logo – how would you like your graphic designer to depict your company. And is that going to be the right image for your company? The name Lion Security lends itself to an instant visual, and it suits that kind of company because it portrays power and strength, but would the same visual suit a retail story selling baby clothes? Perhaps, if it were visualized as a cartoon lion sitting beside a lamb. The point is that the way your name will be visualized is also important in the selection process, not simply the originality or availability of the name. Let’s not forget that a product or service can have its own unique name and sub-brand, too. Rather than just calling your new product “Digital Widgets,” to use a hypothetical example, find out whether your marketing experts or consultants suggest creating a sub-brand with a distinctive name (e.g. Widgetmania) that can be promoted both together and separately from your corporate brand. There are pro’s and con’s to sub-branding…but that’s another topic for another post.

Disclaimer: This article is offered for informational purposes as a free public service and should not be construed as legal advice. Consult your lawyer on all legal issues relating to domain names and trademarks. ]]> http://usabilitydesign.digitalpractices.com/2009/02/23/how-to-win-at-the-name-game/feed/ 0 http://usabilitydesign.digitalpractices.com/2008/10/03/a-dailysplice-of-social-media-for-businesses/ http://usabilitydesign.digitalpractices.com/2008/10/03/a-dailysplice-of-social-media-for-businesses/#comments Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:46:30 +0000 Garth A. Buchholz http://usabilitydesign.digitalpractices.com/?p=180 When most businesses hear about the rise of social media – i.e. blogging, podcasting, social networks such as Facebook – their reactions can be paraphrased as “Interesting, but how is that going to help our business?” or “I don’t want my employees wasting their time socializing on the Web.”

With social media, the emphasis is on interaction, collaboration, and user generated content. Unlike broadcasting or publishing an ad, getting your corporate message out via social media requires an understanding of the technology, an embrace of creativity and innovation, and a willingness to launch your corporate message and your brand identity into the blogosphere (as the world of blogs has been called), then wait to see where it lands.

There are all kinds of “social media consultants” out there selling seminars and books about how your business can benefit from it, but businesses need to look no further than DailySplice.com, a one-year-old social media software startup in Victoria, British Columbia.

Founded in 2007 by a group of business and computer science students at the University of Victoria, the company has developed a product called Splice Station that makes it easy for organizations to record podcasts (a digital recording of an audio or video broadcast delivered over the Internet or downloaded to an iPod) then deliver them on their own websites.

The University of Victoria has two two Splice Stations, one for business podcasts and one that plays Software Engineering podcasts. Vancouver Island’s AbeBooks, recently acquired by Amazon.com, is also using Splice Station to channel audio and video content through a specialized player on its website.

“It’s innovative and easy to use.” says Richard Davies, PR Manager for AbeBooks.com, a Victoria company that was recently acquired by Amazon.com. “Book lovers can find the world’s most interesting book reviews and interviews by visiting the AbeBooks.com website and looking for the Shelfsound logo.”

As if those examples from the world of business and the world of academia weren’t perfect enough illustrations of how social media can be used, another type of organization in Victoria Island has also started podcasting using Splice Station.

The Saanich Police have become perhaps the first police service in Canada to use audio and video podcasts on their website at saanichpolice.ca. Click on “Podcasts” on the homepage and you’ll find links to news and information as it happens (such as a live report about Pat Bay highway traffic) to crime prevention, safety tips, unsolved crimes, media releases and media clips.

The department’s public information officer, Sgt. John Price, says “Podcasting is the fastest growing communication medium in history…the Saanich Police want to be part of that medium.”

This article was originally published in Vancouver Island Business. Garth A. Buchholz is the President and Chief Usability Analystof DigitalPractices Media Inc. (Garth@DigitalPractices.com)

We’ve all read in Wired Magazine and other publications about how you founded Wikipedia. What’s something we didn’t know about how it all began?

My daughter was born December 26, and Wikipedia was founded January 15. Her birth was a life-changing experience for me, which drove me personally to become radically committed to the goals of Wikipedia.

How will the new partnership with Yahoo! extend the reach of Wikipedia?

I don’t know if the partnership with Yahoo is an important step in extending our reach or not, but I’m optimistic about it. Our traffic has traditionally doubled about every three or four months. I don’t see any slowdown in that, and of course getting more traffic from people like Yahoo will help to continue it.

Wikinews is a newer offshoot of Wikipedia. Do you ever lay awake at night wondering about whether someone is posting something defamatory, uploading content that can’t be considered fair use, or posting some unattributed “news” item that’s a bunch of bunk?

No, I’m a good sleeper. The community is smart and takes care of itself.

Why doesn’t Wikinews offer an RSS or Atom feed?

It’s a simple technical matter, which will be addressed soon enough.

Wikinews scares some journalists the way news media were scared when they were told that blogs would replace newspapers. Is Wikinews a new revolution in grassroots journalism?

Not yet, but is has the potential. There are a lot of experiments going on now in the citizen/grassroots journalism world, and Wikinews is one of the important ones. We know from Wikipedia’s coverage of current events that this can work really, really well.

What’s in the future for the next version of Wikipedia? Is the main effort going into knowledge asset management on the site, or into systems that help verify the user’s identity to reduce graffiti and vandalism?

I am a carpenter, not an architect, so I don’t understand the meaning of phrases like “knowledge asset management”. I have no idea what that means.

There are no efforts underway to “verify the user’s identity” and we don’t feel that such efforts are a productive way to deal with behavioral problems.

Do you identify at all with the character Don Quixote de la Mancha? If so, are Wikipedia editors a kind of collective Sancho Panza?

Oh, well, hmm… I am very idealistic but I don’t think I’m impractical – Wikipedia is more popular than the New York Times online now, after all. And the community isn’t really my humble sidekick or anything like that.

Linus Torvalds has a famous line where he says that he’s really just a very lazy person who likes to take credit for what other people do. Like everyone, I laughed when I first heard the line, but now it’s actually the story of my life. Everywhere I go people thank me for my work but frankly, it is the community who does the real work and deserves the real thanks.

There’s an “open access” movement in academia to promote unfettered access online to sources of academic knowledge. Will Wikipedia ever be extended into academia for this purpose, and are there other communities on the Net that could use their own kind of Wikipedia or Wikinews, too?

Yes, Wikipedia will play an important role in the open access movement. There are many, many communities that can learn from the success of Wikipedia to generate high quality work from collaborative efforts.

I think there could be a similar model for that sort of thing, but it would have to be different from Wikipedia. As an example: one of the firm rules of Wikipedia is “no original research” – we simply aren’t qualified to evaluate it. That’s what academic journals are for. So, why are academic journals written in such an old-fashioned way? Can’t there be some dramatic improvements in that process now that we have collaborative authoring technologies? I think so! But exactly how to do that? Hmm, it’s an interesting problem.