Grady's Blog

How To Use Wikis For Business

2009-12-01T10:12:00.000-08:00

Ezra Goodnoe
http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=167600331

Upon their arrival and a few years after, Wikis were seen as irrelevant websites filled with faulty information that anyone could alter or edit. Since then, they have completely changed and are now taken seriously and being used regularly. Businesses have adopted Wikis and found that they are much easier and convenient to use when managing documents than email, databases, or spreadsheets.

Though the first trials of wiki use in businesses were not very successful, in recent years they have become widely accepted and can now be controlled and managed effectively. Along with the simplicity of creating and updating a wiki, cost effectiveness is another advantage. They are drastically less expensive than enterprise applications needed to create websites and manage documents. Drastically meaning sometimes free.

Wikis also give multiple people the chance to interact and take part in certain parts of a business because of it ease of operation. Information that businesses have put on the web may have been easily accessed but only a select few who were computer savvy and knew how to manage web material were able to edit or update it. Now, anyone who can basically run a simple word processing application can use the wiki to update relevant information and make changes that could benefit the business, but only if they are given access of course.

Though the majority of business wikis are created by smaller businesses, there are many well known corporations, such as Disney and Kodak, who have used them successfully and continue to do so. All it takes is a matter of time for new technologies to be taken advantage of and used to their full potential, wikis being a prime example. It is great to see more and more technological advances within businesses because eventually, everything will revolve around the web somehow. Wikis, blogs, and social networks have proven that. Bring on Web 3.0.

Wikis Are Now Serious Business

2009-11-19T10:58:00.000-08:00

Marshall Kirkpatrick
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wiki_business.php

The first rule when locating internet sources for a research paper- Wikipedia cannot be used because it is not a credible source. I couldn't tell you how many times I have been unable to cite Wikipedia and ended up finding very useful information from it. Though sometimes the information may not have been correct, Wikipedia has some valuable information about almost anything you can think of.

Wikipedia was the first wiki to become widely recognized and used, despite its academic accreditation. Since its introduction, there are now millions of wikis used each day for tons of purposes. Kirkpatrick's article gives ten examples of how wikis are used for serious business these days and are no longer receiving such a bad reputation.

Many sites like Wetpaint and Wikimatrix have become extremely successful and profitable from the world of wikis. I was first introduced to Wetpaint wikis in this class as it is used as a simple way to publish a webpage. Wetpaint can be used by anyone who wants to create a webpage quickly and easily.

Organizations are also using wikis to coordinate events, discuss public policy, and revive archived information. It is easy to recognize how serious wikis have become when so many companies and organizations have used them. Even Barack Obama's campaign used wikis to help organize volunteers.

Other well known organizations have begun using wikis as well. KatrinaHelp.info helped promote disaster relief using wikis and was said to have been more useful than FEMA.

There are still many who have doubts about wikis. Sure, there are sites that may not be one hundred percent credible, but most of them still have relevant and important content. Wikis, like every other Web 2.0 techonology, will continue to grow and succeed and those who once laughed at them will finally put on their serious faces.

Can Facebook and Twitter Coexist?

2009-11-05T15:13:00.000-08:00

The world of social networking continues to take over not only the concept of Web 2.0, but the entire internet as well. Though MySpace has fallen off a bit, the two top runners in the social networking business are thriving and growing every day. Facebook and Twitter have become two of the most popular websites and the two most popular social networks.

Ostrow's article explains the relationship these two social networks have with one another. He also explains some of the reasoning behind the new Twitter application Facebook just recently released. Though Facebook leads the social networking universe, Twitter is constantly gaining ground, especially with the release of so many mashups and APIs created by third-party programmers.

Facebook's Twitter application allows users to update their Twitter account directly through Facebook. This sends more traffic to Facebook and decreases the amount of Twitter user logins. Ostrow explains how the application doesn't seem to cause alot of harm to Twitter itself, but to all the third-party tools like TwitPic. With traffic staying on the Facebook websites, users already have the ability to upload pictures, videos, and other documents without having to login to Twitter and adding multiple mashups.

This was a great move on the part of Facebook in the seemingly endless rivalry. It seems as if Facebook wants to be more of a companion than a competitor by integrating Twitter, but after looking deeper into the project, we can see exactly what Facebook is trying to do.

In a time of constant change in the world and the web, there is no need to befriend anyone in the same line of business. Facebook may say they are trying to coexist with Twitter and this could be the case. Though it is awefully hard to believe that when such a great idea becomes a huge traffic converter to their website and not their competitors.

Facebook Vs. Twitter: Should you Choose One?
http://www.twitip.com/twitter-versus-facebook/

Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet

2009-10-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/22/why-advertising-is-failing-on-the-internet/

We all hate those flashy, color filled ads that fill up the margins on each web site we visit and are forever popping up on our desktop. Most of us don't even take the time to figure out what it is they're advertising before we close them or divert to another web page. Regardless of whether you pay them any attention or not, they are making someone on the earth some money.

Though in recent years, internet advertising revenue has declined and continues to do so. The author gives three main reasons on why online advertising will fail in years to come. Consumers do not trust ads, do not want ads, and do not need ads. Agreed. But isn't this the case for all advertisements in general? (Except funny Superbowl commercials, of course.)

Sure, traditional advertising (i.e. full page newspaper ads and 30 second television commercials) cannot be carried over to the internet. Most internet ads are small and easily overlooked and do not have nearly the space for the information presented in traditional ads. Traditional advertising will never become obsolete just for that reason- it cannot be replaced by online advertising.

No matter what angry comments or responses you may read about this article, there is absolutely no one who loves to see/watch advertisements. A perfect point was made about channel surfing or waiting to get a snack to avoid commercials. How would any DVR system be successful if we all wanted to watch the commercials?

Regardless of the statistics and facts about the decline in internet advertising, there will always be a place for it. Some one is going to pay some one to display his or her product/service on some one else's website. Surely it will never reach the heights and success it once did because of customers reviewing products instead of purchasing strictly from advertisements, but online advertising will never completely vanish.

Capitalize on the Growing Online Advertising Market @ Yahoo! Video

Blogs Will Change Your Business

2009-10-15T16:47:00.000-07:00

Stephen Baker and Heather Green
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931001_mz001.htm

Another important part of the Web 2.0 world is blogging. Most people cringe at the sound of the word but even more read, create, and edit millions of blogs every day. People blog about every thing. Right now, I'm blogging about blogging. It's very easy to understand that blogs are here to stay and as this article explains, they can be an essential part to any business.

General Motors may not be having the greatest luck with the economy but they have embraced the blogging for business concept. Vice-chairman Bob Lutz heads a large part of GM's blogging and has received much praise from the public because of his balanced responses.

Though blogging can help and even change your business for the better, there are, like every thing else in the world, consequences. Blogs, unless opted to be private, can be viewed by anyone on the internet at any time. Be careful what you post.

Take programmer Mark Jen for example. Jen, an employee of Google, blogged about the company's health care and "free food." It wasn't anything serious at all, but Google fired him because of it. Jen now works for Plaxo, helping coordinate their blogs.

Along with helping business reach their customers on a more personal level and adding another way to advertise, blogs have become so popular they are even creating more jobs. Thousands of people like Jen are now being hired to create, manage, post, and edit company's blogs.

Whether you read and post everyday or are like myself and can't even stand to write a 300 word blog once a week, you must embrace the concept. Many of the millions of blogs on the internet are pointless, stream of consciousness personal blogs that have no significance to anything. Yet, there are plenty that are very useful and businesses have realized the potential they have.

2009-10-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

Social Networking Demographics: Boomers Jump In, Gen Y Plateaus
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2009/03/social-networking-demographics.html

For many years, the Baby Boomer generation has failed, and almost feared, to embrace the numerous advances in technology and the internet. My immediate family, with the exception of my sister, have just now begun to send text messages and emails. Others in the generation however, are jumping on the band wagon of even newer, more complex technology.

The statistics listed in this article are quite astounding. The idea that the younger generations are the sole users of the internet and its features can now be put to rest. There are many more Baby Boomers joining social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, reading and creating blogs, as well as watching and posting videos to websites like YouTube.

While the same number of Generation Y'ers are using Facebook, YouTube, and the like, the increase has slowed tremendously. There are only so many people in their teens, twenties, and thirties but the total number of Generation Y users probably crushes the number of Baby Boomers on the web. However, Boomers are constantly picking up the technology and adding more and more users each day.

I have noticed just in the past four months that the average age of my friends list on Facebook (almost to 800 friends) keeps increasing. Aunts, uncles, old grade school teachers, and even some of my friends' parents send me a friend request every other day. Facebook also has a new application that will list the ages of all your friends (if they choose to post it) and find the average age and most common age on your friends list.

Only now can we hope this trend continues and our elders will quit calling and pestering us with questions about "this damn computer/internet." If Baby Boomers are able to get involved in social networking and even creating blogs, their PC literacy will continue to increase and evolve. This in turn will speed up the already lightening fast progression of technology and cause even more objects and instruments to become obsolete.

Bring on the boomers

2009-09-22T17:15:00.000-07:00

Chapter 1: Users Create Value
Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide
Amy Shuen

You don’t have to be a genius in order to understand that the more customers a company or business has, the more profitable it will be. Web 2.0 technologies hold true to that theory but also give it a slightly new meaning. Exchange customers with the more tech-savvy word: users, and replace profitable with valuable. The more users a Web 2.0 company or business has, the more valuable it will be.

Web surfers now have almost no limitations to what they can search for and read as well as the different activities they can perform, edit, and interact with. The first chapter of Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide explains the business model of the Web 2.0 photo-sharing site, Flickr.

Flickr gives users the technology to upload, categorize, tag, edit, and share their digital photography. Users can choose to share their photos with the public or make them private where only certain users in the network can view them. “By 2006, Flickr’s platform allowed more than 2 million registered users to become active uploaders of more than 100 million photos.” Of these photos, around 80% were publicly shared.

The large number of users created an increase in value for the site. Many users have upgraded from the free account to the Pro Account, $24.95 per year, which gave them “unlimited storage, full-resolution images, and no advertising.”

Advertising also brings in revenue to Flickr. Users can “benefit from free products and services” while Flickr uses “contextual advertising” that monitors the rapid-growing of its users and turns “clicks into dollars.”

Using formulas to determine a user’s “lifetime customer value,” Web 2.0 technologies and websites have found ways to create value from each user account. Even non-paying users create value for Flickr and other Web 2.0s. The two million users of Flickr averaged a “$20 per user revenue over the next three to five years” when it was purchased by Yahoo! for $30-40 million in 2005.

The larger the customer base, the better the profit. The bigger the social network, the more valuable the website. Between subscription services, advertising, and revenue sharing, Flickr’s revenue model prominently depends on a large user base.

How to Use Your Users

2009-09-08T16:03:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 for Designers
By Richard MacManus and Joshua Porter

http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_2_for_designers/

Web designers have been known to spend hours on end creating and crafting the perfect web site. Whether they choose to create a static site with an artistic layout or a gaudy animated site made with Java Script, it was the designer’s job to make the site appealing and attractive to the users rather than implement the needed content. Web 2.0 has almost completely changed the responsibility of designers.

No longer are they worried about dressing up sites with animations, fancy colors, and unique arrangements. “The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we’re looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways.” Web designers now have to be focused on creating useful tools that collect and harness the extreme amount of content found on the web today.

The markup languages of HTML and XHTML are slowly becoming obsolete. Though designers can still use them, a new technology known as XML better reveals the method of semantic markup. The most popular XML format is Really Simple Syndication. RSS, as its name implies, is a very simple way for users to receive updates and new data from popular and frequented websites. “So, instead of browsing to your favorite site over and over again to see if something is new, you can simply subscribe to its RSS feed by typing the RSS URI into a feed aggregator.” Because of the ease of checking for updates, this bypasses the need for users to visit the actual source/URL where the information originates, making those long hours of designing flashy website useless. “XML is the currency of choice in Web 2.0, so words and semantics are more important than presentation and layout.”

Web 2.0 is the future of the internet and is changing the future for designers. They must now worry less about the “design” and more about the content. They “have to start thinking about how to brand content” and “get comfortable with Web services and think beyond presentation of place.” It seems as though designers are almost required to stray away from what they know best. Though they do need to update their technical skills and knowledge of the web as a platform, they must also find a way to blend their creativity with the Web 2.0 world.

25 Examples of Web 2.0 and Traditional Design Rules Coming Together

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/09/25-examples-of-web-2-0-and-traditional-design-rules-coming-together/

2009-09-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

What is Web 2.0?
Tim O'Reilly
http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=1

In this day and time when it doesn’t seem like there could possibly be any newer technology and ways of communication, throw in the concept of Web 2.0. Most people, like myself (until after reading the article), either have never heard of such a concept or didn’t realize there were any major differences in the web now compared to past years. Web 2.0 uses the internet as a platform and provides services on the web as opposed to static web pages and product applications.

There are certain requirements and competencies for a website to proclaim itself as Web 2.0. The one with the most significance seems to be the “services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability” competency. “One of the defining characteristics of internet era software is that it is delivered as a service, not as a product.” A very interesting battle could ensue from the up rise of Web 2.0 technologies. Web 2.0 versus the all-mighty, software powerhouse known as Microsoft.

Unless Microsoft plans to reroute its future into internet era software, Web 2.0 applications, Google especially, will cause a company downfall in due time. O’Reilly quotes an editorial from ZDnet which “concluded that Microsoft won’t be able to beat Google: ‘Microsoft's business model depends on everyone upgrading their computing environment every two to three years. Google's depends on everyone exploring what's new in their computing environment every day.’”

At the rapid rate Web 2.0 is growing, it is only a matter of time before all software companies, not only Microsoft, will have to rethink their business plans. If not done very soon, it may be too late to prepare for this “switch” to web applications. “We expect to see many new web applications over the next few years, both truly novel applications, and rich web reimplementations of PC applications.”

Users are sure to become familiar with Web 2.0, considering if they use any of the applications, they are considered as co-developers. Once the rest of the internet world catches on and realizes they can create documents, slide show presentations, and spreadsheets (via GoogleDocs) without having to purchase hundreds of dollars worth of software on compact discs, software companies will have no other choice but to reform.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Address Web 2.0 and the Future of the Internet.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/oct07/10-18Web2dot0PR.mspx