Wherever the Web is heading, it's going there fast

James Skinner, Senior Advisor, MobJet.com
Business Times 26 Oct 09;

The most important trend in Web 2.5 is 'externalization'. It is no longer about driving traffic to your site, it is about driving traffic to your message and having your message in many places!

Web 2.0 is so old school!

Web 1.0 is the world of home pages and information. Most companies are still there. They have a company page that has information on the company and its products. Just because you use the Internet in 2009, does not mean you are in the Web 2.0 world. The biggest impact of Web 1.0 was to allow information on various computers around the world to be shared and indexed in a common format - usually HTML.

Web 2.0 moved us from information online to applications online. Google indexes information from pages all over the Web, YouTube, YouPublish, Scribd and others allow users to post their own content, and in the case of YouPublish to even sell it. Match and other dating sites let you search for other singles that meet your specifications, and often charge you for the privilege. E-bay and Yahoo run online auctions. Twitter and MobJet give you microblogs that can be used from your phone. And so on.

In other words there is something to do, not just something to see.

Web 2.5 is a universe filled with Web applications that are built using tools already on the Web. For example, your site may have a Twitter feed, embedded YouTube videos, paid content for sale from YouPublish, search within the site done using Google, a frame of your Facebook page ... In fact the whole page might consist only of content from other pages. In turn many elements of your page may be consumed outside your page. Content and location are now completely disconnected on the Web.

No control of the conversation

Part of what this means for companies is you no longer control the conversation about your company, products, and services. The content (information about your company) is divorced from the location (your company's page). This was true in Web 1.0 as user-generated pages allowed customers to share information, but it is even more true today. Conversations about your products are taking place on YouTube, Facebook, Blogspot, and any other number of places. A YouTube video that shows your product in an unfavourable light could be embedded in thousands of different forums and blogs. The best you can hope for is to be involved in the discussion as an active and interesting participant. Business based on customer control and customer ignorance is dead.

Giving it away

Let me put it another way. The most important trend in Web 2.5 is 'externalization'. This means linking your website in meaningful ways to the rest of the Web world. It is no longer about driving traffic to your site, it is about driving traffic to your message and having your message in many places! Make sure your site includes interesting and useful content that can be embedded elsewhere. Have a Facebook, Twitter, MobJet, BlogSpot, and MySpace account and use them. Put your content on YouTube, YouPublish, Scribd, and anywhere else you can think of. Participate actively and genuinely in customer and user forums. Make sure all the information on your site, including the content of user manuals and brochures, can be indexed by Google and other search engines.

The next step is to make sure that anything that can be done offline can be done online. For example, Toyota lets you build your own Toyota online in the same way Dell lets you build a computer. You don't have to go to the dealership anymore.

But take it a step further. Build an API (application programming interface) so that everything that can be done on your site can be done on any other site on the Web. Let people build sites that let other people build their own Toyotas! These new sites can add tremendous value, such as telling you what the coolest colour is for a Camry, and offering add-ons to pimp your ride. They also keep you relevant and in the consumer eye. Create affiliate programs that encourage people to do this and pay commissions. Let users access your estimated shipping time to build sites that show users which vendor can ship a part the fastest. Give users access to pricing information to build web sites showing the best price on the web for something.

As a rule, the less the conversation takes place on your corporate page, the more successful your web strategy is. If your web strategy depends on people coming to your page, you are already a dinosaur. Who wants to read a corporate brochure when you can be watching videos on YouTube!?

This is all counter-intuitive to white-shirt corporate types, who think the world lives in their briefcase. The world lives where your customer is. The Internet is just reminding us of this in new and more powerful ways.