Tag Archives: web 3.0

Predictions came true – tablet era ahead of us

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As I predicted earlier, the wave of tablets came from this year’s CES. There’s so many of them, both good and bad, that we surely can talk about a revolution in browsing. Some of them run flash, some don’t, some do it in a limited way. But the touch input will be the new browsing in the starting decade. And we should think about that while designing.

That might mean a small revolution in web design, towards a mixture of print and web styles, that are easier to grasp on tablets. Maybe “swipe to change page” mechanisms, more jQuery and Javascript, video and sound. And bigger, clear controls. We’ll see where it goes next, but since most of the internet is about consuming content, we might see a big transformation of the way in which the content is delivered. Exciting times!

E-paper / E-newspaper / E(nd)-of-paper

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ebooks

There’s a lot of recent developments in the publishing business. And some of it is pretty revolutionary. I finally had a chance to play a little bit with the Amazon Kindle and I actually love the E-Ink screen and the long lasting battery. It provides a reading experience very similar to a real book, especially if you have a nice, leather case for it that pretends to be a hardcover. But the point is to have your entire Library in your … well, bag – since it won’t really fit in your pocket unless you’re really really big ;)

But there will be changes (as I predicted a while ago). The whole thing occurred to me for a couple of reasons. And here’s what they are:

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Facebook as the second internet

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trends_google_facebook

The threat!

So here’s the deal. Right now A LOT (that’s an estimated number ;) of people are facebook users. And they share A LOT (also an estimate ;) of data daily. That is pretty impressive. But why? What’s so cool about farms, mafias and all those other stupid tests? Sure they work for a while but how to draw people in and keep them in ?

  • More than 200 million people?about one-fifth of all Internet users?have Facebook accounts. They spend an average of 20 minutes on the site every day.
  • By Facebook’s estimates, every month users share 4 billion pieces of information?news stories, status updates, birthday wishes, and so on. They also upload 850 million photos and 8 million videos. All of that is carefully shielded from Google.

Well they got it all figured out with external links that are viewable inside the facebook web app. Basically you can listen to a soundcloud song file, view youtube (and other) videos and read some news stories without ever leaving the page. And how do you get that stuff? Well your friends post it, and your friends are pretty much the only type of advertisement you as an experienced web user trust anymore. Aren’t they?

So basically you get all your funny videos, and all your most recent news from one place and you can comment and “like” it all in that one place, allowing other your friends to see it and spread the word. So facebook is becoming slowly a way to discover the internet and not only the social network of friends. Because before that we used aggregating websites to find certain type of content (funny videos, marketing tips, games) and right now they can all be embedded to become a part of the facebook machine.

Who should be scared?

The analysts at Hitwise claim that celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton now gets more traffic from Facebook than from Google – more than 7 million pageviews from Facebook alone. If that trend increases, then the current wisdom about web traffic is about to get turned on its ear.

Yes, it draws people away from google, and I think they’ve noticed (a little too late probably) and launched Orkut / or whatever it’s called now. Google Buzz? That’s it! It has potential of course (because it’s google) and it’s gonna be plenty useable combined with all the google cloud apps but it’s hard to break something that already works fine. And what’s more important it’s SUPER HARD to change the habits. Maybe they’ll succeed. Or maybe in a few years the internet will be facebook and content supplying “facebook apps” for it. Let’s all hope that won’t happen!

The problem with google is that it’s just a machine based on probability and algorithms to deliver you content. And social networks are based on the idea that no machine stands between you and the content. No. It’s chosen by the people you know and trust, and that’s why it’s actually better tailored to your tastes (well unless you’re spamming for thousands of friends you don’t know that is)

So you want to make a web experience?

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cereal-killer-website

Because making just websites is for underachievers.

Ok, let’s imagine for a second that we’re making a web experience of informing our potential customers about our brand, thus raising their brand awareness. Basically, we just want people to know and like the brand, what can influence them to pick our brand up the next time in their store or online. And at this point two things should matter to us as the let’s say … Sausage Flavored Cereal makers. Sure we have a cult following of our fans, and the product is great. Why wouldn’t it be? Everyone eats sausage and cereal for breakfast, and we innovated our way out of cornflakes by combining the two. So we know we have something good. And we know people move around the internet sort of like in a maze where they can also stumble upon our competition, the dreaded hamburger and pizza cereals!

iStock_000009805530XSmall

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Facebook now!

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facebook_now
We cannot deny the unbelievable reach that facebook has gained in the last year or so. It’s so big right now, it could be in the top 5 countries in the world, if it ever became a country. But all the bullshit aside, the guys at facebook must’ve realised that despite the potential, they’re not-really-earning-a-lot just like youtube. Sure, people love it, people use it, a lot of things are going on there. But the marketing potential was hard to use. Typical banner campaigns would’ve made the site bloated and “just like everyone else” and they didn’t want that. In fact I think that the lack of typical advertising was also one of the things that brought people to facebook in the first place. They realized that it’s a one-of-a-kind place in the web and wanted to be a part of it. But no, they don’t want to pay a fee. So what now ?

We’re starting to see facebook positioning (SEO for facebook would be FO – facebook optimization, or FPO – facebook popularity optimization since it’s measured in fans rather than clicks)

I am currently working on a PDF based document on how to use facebook to it’s full potential when marketing internet content (the test subject is gonna be this blog).
More on that soon, but there’s a big change coming in how we promote things online, so drop your banners and skyscrapers, burn the billboards and put your face in the book!