At the Cisco and Trovus seminar  today we asked our audience for their questions around web2.0.

We are outlining these questions on our blog and throwing them open for debate. The first question was on what distinguishes the businesses who are innovating around the web.

The second question was on how do you set up a blog/ wiki.

The next question which we answer here is:

Please comment on Web 2.0 redefines to the techno immigrant the meaning of "community", "friend" and "the truth". All of which can now be achieved at arms length without physical contact

Thank you for the question Michael - thats a lot of question - where to start…

Well its certainly a significant shift for the techno/ digital immigrants to consider the meaning of these words in the context of what they mean for a digital native (who are by and large naturally comfortable with these concepts being acheived online).

The shift is clearly a cultural one and challenges an immigrants natural perception of what these 3 words mean. Let me suggest some differences between how the two groups might view each of these concepts and some of the typical reactions we get to each of these:

Community 

To a native I am not sure the word "community" necessarily comes into play - its all driven by the benefit and what do they get from it - for natives Facebook is Facebook and its a part of their lives - its just part of their everyday life as is their mobile phone.

For the immigrant the word community and what is happening comes as a real challenge and if we use the example of a generic network such as Facebook, we often hear the question: Whats the point of Facebook - I dont get it - why would i do this.

For many natives it is second nature and the fact that it is being challenged is almost an insult; I recall one conversation with a recent graduate on this very point. The answer was that Facebook just is, it works and my friends and network are on there - its the second internet.

Can these differences be reconciled? I don’t see the position of the natives changing on this one, so for Immigrants the choice is to engage with it or leave it. Interestingly, 41% of people on Facebook are over 35

Friend

What defines a friend in the real world?

Let me suggest its someone you have met on two plus occasions and have shared some time with, an experience, some emotional connection and perhaps you have other people to connect you and cement that experience.

I guess you would have to ask the 13-17 real time generation for how one third of them in Chris Gabriels survey are creating friendships in the online world. My guess is that they are connecting - perhaps through other friends, spending time talking and sharing an experience albeit online through IM or a social network.

Why should that be so challenging, whats the essence of friendship that might seem missing to an Immigrant?

I would be interested to get other views on whether an online friend is any less valid or real than a friend in online world.

Truth

This is an interesting one and I would be interested to know whats behind the question. My perception of the question is that people read information online (generated by others in terms of Wikipedia etc) and it is believed as truth.

Just because its created by the "community", does that make it less valid than someone reading a newspaper and getting the views of a particular journalist or editor and believing that as the truth?

I sense there is more to this final part - it would be great to get more detail on it and also views on the other parts.

This question highlights some really key parts of the cultural shift required around web2.0/ the evolution of the web and I am pleased we can open it up here.

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Things are moving quickly at Trovus and we are looking for new people to join our team - if you know anyone who might be interested or you are interested, please get in touch with caspar [dot]craven[at]trovus.co.uk.  

We are looking for someone to join our team who will be responsible for managing the online presence and marketing activities for a number of our clients. This includes reviewing and making recommendations on improving their websites, their natural search listings, reviewing and making recommendations on any paid listings and generally working to improve the overall effectiveness of client sites.  

You will be encouraged to develop deep organic search knowledge and work with our team and clients to share this knowledge and coach others to understand how to get more value from the web.  

The ideal background would be: 

- University degree (Master’s or Bachelor’s), ideally in technology/business administration/economics or related fields  

- Work experience in online marketing, ideally in a B2C eCommerce environment in the UK

- Strong knowledge of e-Business and online marketing strategy, concepts, tools and techniques, including search engines

- Internet knowledge (e.g. basic knowledge in HTML, tracking technologies etc.)

- Excellent analytical skills  

We can pay a competitive salary plus bonus and share options are available. We are looking for someone to start as soon as possible.

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Just back from a weeks break in France (near St Malo in a place called St Jacut de la Mer if anyone is interested). Great trip back on Brittany Ferries who had the England/ France match on board in a very busy bar complete with French TV crew. Delighted to have won it surrounded by so many French people.

As ususal, back to the 1000 unread emails (inevitably scanned whilst on holiday via crackberry); one stood out which I thought worthy of a brief blog. It was a link forwarded by Tanner, one of the most energetic coaches at Shirlaws which was for a company that provides coaching on how to write a good blog. The company is based in Brighton and runs courses - they are called Authentic Blogging - the best part is a link to a slideshow they have on blogging.

This struck a chord with me as it’s a good summary of what makes a good blog, and it’s something we’ve talked about before here at Trovus/ Rewarding Dialogue.

The key elements from the Authentic Bloggging as I read them are (I will try and keep this short as I dont have the ability to read and absorb long blog posts):

 - differentiating yourself by having different unique content which reflects who you are as a person (rather than churning out the same stuff you read elsewhere);

- linking logic and emotion

- making sure you listen to your community and engage them and ask their opinion

- make sure you have a consistent voice

I think it’s a neat summary of the key elements. For me, one of the biggest things is what I refer to as viscerality - its engaging with an emotion rather than a thinking process. On the web I see loads of heavy duty type which forces me to think in detail. Personally I want to scan and get the information out very quickly which engages me and strikes a chord - it has to be driven by an emotion to get me engaged.

Whether my/ our blogs achieve any of that, is for others to decide, but that is what I strive to do - we dont profess to be the best bloggers out there, so would really appreciate your views on what you think makes a good blog, and what we could do to, to be better bloggers

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Two things have caught my attention in the last couple of days which I wanted to share:

The first is what we are calling Facebook Fatigue - whilst it might seem bizarre that we are flagging this up, it is a phenomenon we have started to observe and have a number of views on it. I first noted it from one of my younger sisters, Jess. Now 6 months ago, Jess was an avid facebook user - I am not sure how many times a day she was on the site, but I am guessing it was in double figures. Now she is on there about once a week. Why you might ask; well the reason I gather is that all her friends are on there now and she has connected her networks and the rate of growth of friends and connections has slowed up considerably. This reduction in "compelling content" ie her friends and friends of friends has matched her reduced interest.

I take the view that there are 3 compelling types of content that a social network needs in order to generate sustained interest and energy, they are:

1) Specific content focused on your topic of interest eg blogs, photos, articles on your interest area (lets say sailing which is my big thing);

2) Tools which help engage around your area - so for one site, I know, a Happiness Engine which measures your happiness quotient, or weather forecast tools/ tidal predictions (in my sailing world);

3) Profiles of people in your community.

The thing with what I view as the generic networks (the likes of Facebook) is that they have the profiles and they have tools (cleverly opened up to the Developer Community so we see the likes of Pirates and Ninja’s), but the content and the focused niches seems to be less compelling than highly targetted niche communities. I know there are groups on Facebook, but to my mind they just arent compelling as a place where you can go and the whole network is dedicated to just your thing.

I think that there is a place for generic communities such as Facebook (albeit only a very small number), but that the real interest still remains in highly focused niches where elements of the 3 types of content are stirred into the community at the right time and the community is evolved and grown in a specific manner.

Would love to hear any other views on this and whether you buy the concept of Facebook Fatigue and the reasons for it.

On a different note, a great article in the FT yesterday titled "You cant stop them talking" which outlines how businesses must learn to benefit rather than suffer from social networking tools. One of the points made is that the danger for businesses is that if they don’t participate, they lose control of being part of the conversation. We couldn’t agree more; the web being used for open conversations and dialogue is here to stay; its not something that can be ignored and as we see with the organisations that we talk to, it’s the smart ones who get it, want to innovate and engage with the voices on the web.

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A huge thank you to everyone who attended our seminar at County Hall yesterday which we ran in conjunction with Repton and Vadition.

For us, it was great to have so many impressive people in the room from such a range of companies who wanted to engage and be a part of the debate and contribute to the energy in the room. Thank you all for that.

As promised, we have provided the slides from yesterday in pdf form which you can download here.

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Its been a busy week for Trovus - Ed has been on holiday so for Jon and I at the shop, it’s been all hands on deck (hence not much blogging).

In wider web world the most interesting thing I have seen this week (aside from the lack of blogging at Northern Rock) is the changes being suggested at Wikipedia (reported in the Times Online today) which acknowledges that 7% of internet users every day visit Wikipedia).

The changes (in German only) will restrict instant editing to a group of "trusted editors", who must first earn their status by proving their commitment to the Wikipedia concept. Normal users will still be able to propose changes, but these will have to be vetted by a trusted editor before they appear.

It’s interesting that this change is being trialled (I suspect in response to spam and inaccuracies) as some may perceive this as being counter to the wisdom of crowds theory and therefore make the concept less valid. My view is I think its pretty sensible - as with all web2.0 things - have a theory, trial it and see how it works. Once you have tested, you can see if the concept flies. It will be interesting to track what happens and if this is rolled out more widely, and more importantly what happens to the quality of content on the site".

From a business perspective this week, we have met some great people such as Brendan Tutt from IBM (who I am sure Jon will pick up in his blog) and Simon Rogers at Market Sentinel (who have developed some interesting reputation tracking products). I am sure there are lots of other things, but they will have to wait for now as its getting towards 1am and sleep sounds better

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Credit to the free WSJ again at Waterloo for highlighting a great piece of research on one of the reasons why Amazon is so successful.

According to the article, it’s down to User Generated Content (at the heart of our beliefs of Rewarding Dialogue and how the web is about relationships and interaction, not just an information library).

In this situation, it comes down to product reviews; the actual case study is a US company called Bass Pro Shops which sells outdoor gear (anything from a $2 fishing lure to a $500 propane gas grill).

What they did is create a system of product reviews in the same way that Amazon does where consumers debate, comment on and review the products for sale. The results were amazing:

- a 59% increase in the rate that shoppers made purchases;

- the conversion ratio rose from 3% to 5%

Additional benefits felt, but not quantified were increased customer satisfaction and reduced returns.

Whilst this is an example from the consumer world selling products (b2c), we see strong parallels with the b2b world, and a much wider application of the principle of user generated content helping to inform, educate, build loyalty and support a buying/ sales process.

On a different note, it has been a great week for Trovus - Jon and Ed have been doing some amazing things with new customers (in Agency world) and also with partners. Jon and I met some potential partners yesterday afternoon with whom we very much look forward to working with - in particular Stuart McIntyre at Morpheus and Neil Burston from Avnet.

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So today I did something I havent done for a long time………… Actually sit down and read a newspaper.

Several years ago, I would get through several papers per day cover to cover. These days all the content I consume is online (with the exception of the occasional Metro which I put into the comic rather than newspaper category - est time to read c2 mins).

What prompted me to do this? Well it was the free Wall St Journal (WSJ) that they have been giving away at Waterloo (2 days running now). There is a message there in itself that one of the premier business papers is being given away free (accepted that these promo’s happen at strategic points in time each year).

The key thing though was highlighting the fact that my behaviours have shifted and seldom include reading the paper - 2 years ago when on the train I would have read the paper, I now check in bound mails on my blackberry and write out bound mails on my laptop.

Ok, so I might personally have less time to consume content, but the key thing is that I take the content that I want free of charge and from very specific niches on the web. Is this just me, or have others noted a similar shift in behaviour?

PS on a different note, there was a good article in the WSJ on how the success of firms is linked to the lives of CEO’s - allow me to quote

"on average the stocks of companies run by leaders who buy or build mega mansions sharply underperform the market"

There is a lot of data there, but essentially the article makes the case for considering the personal life of senior executives as a way to select stocks.

Note to selves - no mega mansions for us! 

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Have you heard of Kate Modern? You probably will soon.

Some headline stats:

- 3m views in 3 weeks

- Shown 5 days a week (each episode is only 2 mins long)

- Zero production spend.

What TV producer/ owner would’nt love to have that level of stats and potential to sell advertising around the programme.

Well it actually is from Bebo (one of the social networking sites) rather than a traditional TV program. These are the sort of Stats that we think should have all Content producers and owners looking up and embracing the web as a means of producing and distributing content…. as we keep saying the rules of the game have fundamentally changed.

The original article in the Telegraph online

What are your views - is this the beginning of a wave of user generated TV (see my previous blog) and what do the networks such as ITV, BBC and C4 need to do to respond to this?

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Great article in Business Week on how social networking is no longer for the kids pointing with an influx of older users-professionals their 30s and 40s, many in high-tech-is changing the face of Facebook.

Some of the examples are Ernst & Young having a Facebook network with 16,000 members, Citigroup’s having nearly 8,500 members.

The article estimates that the "35-and-up" crowd now accounts for more than 41% of all Facebook visitors.  Well thats all great, but where is the value…isnt this all just for play?

Not so, according to Business Week who point to a number of areas where VALUE exists around these social networks:

1) Advertising - the obvious one with Facebook attracting the ad spend of the likes of HP, Coke, Microsoft and Proctor & Gamble;

2) "building social capital"…what the heck is that? ….according to Business Week, this how informal banter can grease the wheels for interaction when work needs to get done. Is anyone using Facebook to add new contacts to their Rolodex? "They’re certainly doing it with us," says one commentator who says his Facebook inbox is starting to function a lot like traditional e-mail.

Whats our take?

Well there are 2 sets of value that the article outlines - the advertising is the value for the site owner and the "building social capital" is the value for the users.

This with the other research we have done all points up to the relationship building and information sharing - its what has always happened in the real world and online networks are just helping to facilitate this in a different way.

What is fascinating is the changing demographic profile…whilst I am sure this spells the death of Facebook being the cool site for the teenagers (Twitter is the new mover from what I hear), it does start to challenge our thinking on whats a Digital Native and Digital Immigrant and show that new ways of interacting are becoming more pervasive and engaging.

One question? Do you have many friends who are’nt on Facebook?

On a completely different note, I am delighted we now have our Basket Ball Guru on board The Good Ship Trovus  (TGST) and am very much look forward to working with him and Jon being a part of our adventure.

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