Web 2.1- Right idea, wrong direction

So I blogged a couple days ago about Web 2.1. We are making progress in certain areas. I see others continuing to struggle to get it.

Let’s start with a couple that I am afraid do not get it. I read about the following in MediaPost this morning:

• Twing, a search site for forums
• Yidio, a search site for videos

Right idea, create micro-communities. Wrong direction, creating community around platform verticals (forums, video, whatever…) fails to focus on the customer. I may be very wrong, but is there a large enough micro-community looking for forums on any/all topics?

Instead, think verticals (or horizontals if you are visual and need to see another direction) based on micro-community by interests and affiliations.

Here are two examples of sites where I think they have it right:

• Spiceworks, a free IT tool for small and medium businesses
• Tennis.com, the online site for Tennis Magazine

Spiceworks’ micro-community is a collection of IT professionals with similar challenges, experiences, work flows, configurations, etc. Tennis.com has provided their micro-community a site with news, video, blogs, etc for the tennis enthusiast.

In each of these latter cases, the companies put a customer at the center of their micro-community strategy. The former two put a technology platform.

In the end, the customer will win.

Web 2.1- It’s not about Social Networks and Communities

Pull in the reigns, and slow that horse down. Everyone wants to talk Web 3.0. Before we get ahead of ourselves, can we please figure out the 2.x World.

From the people I interact with, to what I am reading, people are starting to get there. No one has yet clearly described it. So here I am to help.

You see it here first. I am coining the lingo. What we are venturing into is Web 2.1 - ‘Micro-Community’.

Web 2.1 does not take rocket science to figure out, as I did, and I am definitely not a rocket scientist (although I do know one).

It stems from physical communities and your ‘bubble’ within your current community. Take Austin, where I live. That is my community. However, most of my existence resides within my smaller ‘bubble’, my micro-community, in my section of town. Austin has the Tarrytown bubble, the Westlake bubble, the University bubble, the downtown bubble, the Lake Travis bubble, etc. Atlanta, New York, Denver, San Francisco- all the same. There are smaller micro-communities within larger communities, wherever you go.

Add to this the technology aspects:

1. Open sourcing platforms to encourage development on top of ‘platforms’
2. Decreasing costs of putting together more customized presences on the Web
3. Empowering users to create content and communities among themselves

And finally inevitable market forces--- from both sides:

• Social sites are trying desperately to figure out how to monetize their members. The smaller and more relevant the audience they can deliver (while at scale for their overall communities), the more appealing to advertisers and marketers. A company can then monetize the parts, at increasing revenue rates, while still managing costs of creating those micro-communities (heck, the smartest will let their members create and manage those micro-communities for them).
• Companies are looking to place marketing and advertising spend on-line, but want to do it wisely and with ROI. What better way than to serve your add to 10K target customers, rather than 10M eyeballs of all makes and sizes. A company should prefer to spend $100K of targeted spend, as opposed to $400K of random spend.

Wa-la…. We have Web 2.1.

Now, can someone please help stop the feminine hygiene products from being advertised on Extreme Cage-Fighting Championships?