The other day I said to some friends: “I’ve made millions with the web and nickels with Web 2.0.”
They laughed and they knew what I was talking about.
But maybe I don’t really know what Web 2.0 is. I wonder. Does anyone?
Whether we understand it all fully or not, people are inventing new ways to use the Internet. And this is in keeping with the way new mediums always evolve.
Would you believe it took decades after the telephone was invented for the idea of just picking up the phone and chatting with a friend to take root? And it was users, not the engineers, who made that happen.
That the original telegraph technology was visual (marks on a strip of paper) and that it took a 14 year old kid from Kentucky to discover that the human brain had the capacity to translate audio dots and dashes into words and sentences in real-time?
Yes, it’s engineers who invent new technology, but it’s us – users – who figure out how to make their inventions into everyday mediums for communication.
I confess that I have not been able to fully wrap my mind around Web 2.0, especially in terms of finding commercial applications for it. Maybe there are none. Maybe like private phone calls, Web 2.0 is not meant to be intruded upon by advertising.
I don’ t know. (How liberating it is to say that every now and then. “I don’t know.”)
But here’s a guy, who has clearly given it a lot of thought and given us all a lot to think about – and in just under five minutes. Beautiful.
A video by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University.
By the way, if anyone is going to sort out practical applications of Web 2.0 for business, I’m betting on these members of the System 2007 faculty:
- Dave Taylor – The grand old man (but he’s not really that old) of the Internet who graps the core culture of the Internet better than anyone I know
- Marc Harty – From Madison Avenue to SEO to Web 2.0
- Sherman Hu – Total immersion in the world of blogs
You can hear what these guys have to say about Web 2.0 as it applies to us, the business owners of the world, here:
Click here for System 2007 interviews with faculty
– Ken McCarthy
P.S. For over 25 years I’ve been sharing the simple but powerful things that matter in business with my clients.
If you’d like direction for your business that will work today, tomorrow and twenty years from now, visit us at the System Club.
A thought-provoking presentation. Thanks for sharing that ‘spot’, Ken.
I think the problem here is we’re trying to find ways of making money out of web 2.0 instead of trying to find ways to improve and enhance our service to our clients using web 2.0.
When you focus on the end point – the ultimate outcome you want for your clients and the steps they need to take to get there then you can find a multitude of ways to use emerging technology.
I fundamentally disagree with what is currently believed to be the “bottom line” in business – financial profit measured in dollars.
Business was designed to serve people.
We should not be servants to business (or profits).
When you design your business with the fundamental of serving people in mind even if you don’t always make substantial profits you do always give something very valuable back to your society.
And ironically you’re far more likely to create profits and stability in a business that is centered around giving service to people.
Web 2.0 is not another way to make money – it’s another tool to serve living, breathing, loving people.
Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh
Dear Ken
This video raises a lot of questions, but one thing is clear: Web 2 centers on getting users to contiguously create niche material, while they view closely related material at the same time.
This saves a certain business subset the task of having to create anything.
I have never seen a business model like this before. The users create, and what they create also attracts them – in increasing numbers. Some of it social, some of it business, all of it magnetic and viral.
All ready to exploit.
Amazing.
I partially agree with Andrew Cavanagh and the ‘customer care point.
This transcends seeing Web 2 as some new sort of cash machine, and takes the longer ‘back end’ view: We need to this tool to further build the trusted relationship with our customers, a principle that will never change.
We have to ‘connect to collect’.
But I also suspect that this is where the main monetization model is hidden: A pattern is emerging – the same pattern as originated by the search engines: Freely given but disorganised material is managed and massaged by others who are clever enough to reorganise it, repackage it, and then sell it, without paying a dime for it in the first place. (Either by selling it directly or by running advertising in close proximity.)
Sound familiar?
There something very big in this. The next wave. The creations of the ad lib artists writers and film makers don’t just stay on these new ‘search engines’, but are redistributed on an almost infinite scale, by encouraging everyone to drop a tiny piece of code onto any website anywhere … such as the YouTube video on this blog.
This means the material has taken flight and left home, while carrying the content creator’s identity, and the distributor’s logo. A far more cost efficient distribution system than Hollywood or the TV channels could ever have imagined.
I had planned to come to the System seminar this year Ken to debate this point and learn about the greater possibilties, but family matters are taking priority.
So … looks like 2008. Hopefully you and the team will do it again then.
My best wishes for a successful seminar to all.
Jonathan
Web 2.0 is another TOOL using technology.
Money is made when VALUE is delivered,
not a ton of information or data. (A single new “tetra” hardrive can hold more movies and music than we could possibly watch in our ENTIRE life. What’s the value?)
The value that you can charge for is to be:
The FILTER!
Be the expert that selects the ONE book/audio/video that I barely have TIME to consume.
The new precious item is TIME. Data is a commodity that is essentially now FREE. Our history of copyright is based on TEXT on paper and its reproduction.
Change your focus, your mindset, your paradigm.
VALUE = Being the FILTER
(to save time, avoid wasted effort, speed to market, competitive advantage, provide expert advise, give confidence, and sharpen focus)
Wishing you all much success,
Martin Wales
http://www.CustomerCatcher.com
P.S. Ken – Thanks for being an awesome FILTER and finding gems like this. Everyone should learn from the presentation style and design alone. Not a single, solitary spoken word, yet kept me spellbound with rapid screen changes, colors, very appropriate music and concise, impactful use of text.
Very interesting presentation.
One thing’s for sure… the next few years should be an interesting time for us online marketers.
Thanks, Ken! I’m looking forward to the seminar this April.
Best,
Doberman Dan
http://www.dobermandan.com
Ken: Martin Wales hit it on the head. The most value is having a “Filter” to save us time. But soon we’ll need a filter for the “filters”.
It seems to me that web 2.0 is, or at least should be, about people. By concentrating on the business aspect we are defeating the main purpose.
People are the main focus even if it is only business that we are interested in. For, by focusing on people we enhance our businesses.
Rezbi
http://www.magnifyincome.com
“If you build value they will come” Yes the traffic will come, but if you cannot control the traffic-generated content, you can’t monetize it. Building value is not enough.
You must build a system to control and manage the traffic and content. A system to enhance the value of the content and provide a platform to monetize the users of that content.
Problem: Monetizing traffic from Web 2.0 technology with a one-website solution.
In order to monetize Web 2.0 traffic, it must be collected, managed and controlled.
Here’s how:
1. Pick a topic, theme, subject or niche you want to monetize and solicit user content around that subject.
2. Create a principal location to house the user-generated content so it can be easily found, enriched, and refined thereby increasing its value and easy dissemination.
3. Establish a centralized authority to manage, guide, and direct the integrity of the website.
4. Develop a platform and operating system that will collect, manage, and control the content, so it can be distributed using all multi-media features to launch multiple profit centers with ONE website.
This is an extremely simplistic description of a technically complex, yet easy to use system to monetize Web 2.0 traffic.
To summarize:
1. Identify a specific subject
2. Quality control and regulate the content for maximum value
3. Create an “Operational Authority” (website owner) to keep everybody on track while maintaining momentum and enthusiasm for the website
4. Build a platform and operating system to organize and launch multiple revenue streams. All of this can be done from one website using the right blend of social networking features, and adding proprietary marketing, research and communication tools.
How can you monetize something you cannot control. At this point, Web 2.0 traffic and content is the “tail wagging the dog”. The only way to have the dog wagging the tail is to develop a system to perform that function.
Look forward to seeing everyone at the System Seminar in April. My name is Jerry Frederick, please look me up.
Fascinating presentation. Extremely thought provoking and entertaining at the same time.
Ken, thanks for being such a valuable filter helping the rest of us make some sense of this rapidly changing medium.