More from the "Web 2.0 and Beyond" Conference

This is my second post about this event. Further items of interest included:

• The current stats - 1.3 billion internet users, 400 million social network users, 120 million bloggers. When you add to this the 3 billion mobile telephony users, then in less than 8 years we have truly collectively created a global phenomenon.
• Google Alerts picks up about 75% of the web coverage on your organisation. There are paid for services like CyberAlert covers more.
• 20% of journalists blog. If you want to know who influences them, look at what they read on their blogroll.
• It was implied you can understand influencers by audit trailing them. TCC would probably disagree with this as the only only approach. We think the mix should also include quantitative and qualitative sampling to understand the motivations behind any audit trail. Later in the day reference was made to developing "knowledge currency" where you develop algorithms to measure usage quality and not just quantity. TCC would argue part of the quality is understanding motivations and the emotions that may drive them. This cannot be done automatically. Also later in the day mention was made of the creation of "social graphs" to track influencers - this already exists in a rudimentary form on Facebook.
• Online Videos can be very effective at spreading bad news. An example of a recent closure of a U.S. abattoir was cited. Videos can be very effective in backing up news blogs and can more effectively tell stories, thus strengthening your narrative. There is a trail off in viewers when a video is viewed, so the first 10 seconds are the most important.
• The name of an organisation or individual is likely to be used as a tag for sites like Flickr and Youtube, which means it will be difficult to control your visual image. Trade marking a name is unlikely to keep up with the rapidity of images being uploaded and distributed.
• Ted Talks is a great website on future developments in social tools. The Sir Ken Robinson lecture on children and innovation/creativity was mentioned and it makes important points as well as being extremely funny. The Ted conferences sounds like a U.S. version of the Hay Festival to me.
• Your new "first impression" in future is not as you walk through the door but your digital identity.
• Identity fraud is increasing. Have a look for what you can find about yourself and others on the web. Look at Wink, Zoominfo and QDOS and see how much of your identity is recorded on the Internet.
• Develop internal social networks. Visible Path is an example of this.
• Avoid simplistic metrics. Measurement of the success of web 2.0 products should be by business outcome not simple volume. Measure actual usage: edits and tags rather than just "hits". In other words measure the energy expended on using the webpage.
• Polls/Surveys of experience of a service should be immediate and not "moderated by time".
• If you are setting up a social network, pre-populate content as well as think of polls as well as customisable front pages to make it as interesting and interactive as possible. Reward contributions - develop a points system to encourage usage. Both the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns have this.
• In future parents might want to check out whether there was an available internet domain name when choosing the name of their baby. This may be the best way to protect online fraud?

Overall this was a good event with lots of thought-provoking ideas. It was certainly a conference of the future with a lot of us blogging it straight on to the web like this posting as well as it being podcast too. It even had a great definition. Web 1.0 was "watching the television", whilst Web 2.0 was "going down the pub". Will this eventually lead to "binge collaboration"?:-)