Web 2.0 marketing, Web 2.0 Business
Web 2.0 Marketing (Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae):
It’s an excellent (and I believe a required) read for any marketers, online or offline. The concepts are the same for both. The information age has started to render the ‘big and slow’ companies obsolete in the way they do consumer business and marketing.
Copacetic » Blog Archive » Web 2.0 vs Web 1.0
* Web 1.0 was about reading, Web 2.0 is about writing
* Web 1.0 was about companies, Web 2.0 is about communities
* Web 1.0 was about client-server, Web 2.0 is about peer to peer
* Web 1.0 was about HTML, Web 2.0 is about XML
* Web 1.0 was about home pages, Web 2.0 is about blogs
* Web 1.0 was about portals, Web 2.0 is about RSS
* Web 1.0 was about taxonomy, Web 2.0 is about tags
* Web 1.0 was about wires, Web 2.0 is about wireless
* Web 1.0 was about owning, Web 2.0 is about sharing
* Web 1.0 was about IPOs, Web 2.0 is about trade sales
* Web 1.0 was about Netscape, Web 2.0 is about Google
* Web 1.0 was about web forms, Web 2.0 is about web applications
* Web 1.0 was about screen scraping, Web 2.0 is about APIs
* Web 1.0 was about dialup, Web 2.0 is about broadband
* Web 1.0 was about hardware costs, Web 2.0 is about bandwidth costs
For all this nonsense, web businesses that mirror traditional businesses are doing well (structured blogs that replace industry papers, classified sites, retail sites, web directories). Magical sites like Meebo, Pownce and unfortunately myspace (which gets points for its similarity to a phonebook, but sold for web 2.0 hype value) don’t have real business plans; they raise money but don’t have any real world value.
Even Google only operates as an advertising firm. Being web 2.0 is nothing and using web 2.0 marketing techniques is irrelevant. For all the gmail, google reader, google docs, grand central, radio automation, blogger etc… it’s only the ad sales that give them value. It seems like business hasn’t changed, it’s only found a new storefront.
Thanks for posting on my blog. I appreciate you taking the time. My only comment would be that while a lot of the fundamentals have not changed, the information age has given power to the people whereas before the only information that existed for us was in what magazines were available on a newsstand, what ads we saw on TV, etc.
Before, we were essentially told, almost like a jedi mind trick: “This is what you need. This is what’s popular. This is the next big thing. You should buy it now.” We are still told that sometimes now BUT we have more room to disagree based on our own research and data that is now available.
-Rich
[...] Hendry Lee wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptBeing web 2.0 is nothing and using web 2.0 marketing techniques is irrelevant. For all the gmail, google reader, google docs, grand central, radio automation, blogger etc… it’s only the ad sales that give them value. … [...]
I have doubts about the quality of information in these new outlets: Gizmodo and Engadget exist by aggregating press releases, Review aggs like Rotten Tomatoes still rely paper media and even kottke is more likely to link to analysis by the nytimes or new yorker.
I’d be impressed if I saw more online equivalents of early Wine Advocate publications (Parker took a financial hit publishing reviews of wines he bought himself without any advertising http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wine_Advocate). There don’t seem to be many true sources of information on the web; maybe in the future, but it is still amazingly shallow.
A good article on how those sources of information in the corporate world are just as questionable as they were before
http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/30/donald-mitchell-amazon-tech-media_cz_hc_books06_1201amazon.html
It would seem that the race to provide free content to draw a wide net of long-tail google search terms, with revenue supported by google ads - it killing the quality of content that google strives to provide.
Now all the top placements in google are swamped by web 2.0 content that is created by every unqualified armchair quarterback with a laptop and a digital camera, and RSS aggrigators that collect all this twittering fodder.
JUST like network television, sure, you can get free TV, but if you want quality entertainment, you pay for HBO. The PAID Web content business model is getting more and more sound as the free stuff races to the lowest common denominator –chasing google rankings to get google adsense pennies.
Cheers