By now, you may be getting tired of hearing about how the social networking revolution and Web 2.0 practices will revolutionize the planet. What is more interesting to debate -- at least for Website strategists and marketers -- is how to morph your own Internet site from a final destination to a virtual syndication.
For years, the focus for Web thinkers has been purely on driving traffic, increasing page views, and keeping things on the site “sticky.” Coupled with an almost cult-like obsession with search-engine optimization, link exchanges, and analyzing statistics, one begins to see a blinkered focus on individual Website properties instead of on distributing information most effectively.
Well, imagine an Internet of no sites per se, of no partitions from one source to another. Imagine a Web comprising what we can call “big data.”
The Internet was not designed for segmentation and commercial control, but rather to be an endless data collective that delivers data simply and intelligently. It’s time for enterprises to realize the vision of the Internet forefathers -- namely, that delivering data flexibly is more important than page views.
So the movement out of Web 2.0 to whatever may come next will require all of us to shift from our natural practice of storing data online to empowering data -- everywhere you can. One important element in this shift, social networking, has hopefully taught us that it is completely acceptable to syndicate your content on someone else’s platform, a practice virtually unheard of in the previous World Wide Web administration.
It’s time to stop underestimating the power of gaining audience through third-party channels.
What we need to be looking at instead of bringing eyeballs to a specific location is how flexible our content and data are and how easily we can syndicate that data through smart delivery practices and even smarter devices. Are you ready for new level of thinking where delivery of data supersedes impressions to your master domain?
By some estimates, the current “invisible” Internet -- the volume of content existing behind various online barriers -- could be 500 times larger than the current reachable or “visible” Internet. Considering that Google has an estimated 8 billion pages ranked, that’s a big animal if someday all that data gets released.
The point is: Start to shift your current interest in traffic patterns and page views and take a step back. Look at your opportunities in content distribution outlets and audience points of contact. Through some basic listening programs, you can even track down where conversations and communities are engaged about areas of your service, product, or specialty. Rather than having to pay for any audience influx to your property, realize that it may make sense to start paying less by distributing your content outward to the audience that wants what you have -- even though someone else may have carried the content for you in the last mile.
So maybe Web 3.0 is a bit out of reach for us to ponder, with its promises of cognitive learning, semantic searching, and intelligent offerings. What is real today is that you need to dust off that database, start filling it with compelling content, and start finding every possible outlet for it in every format. By doing so, you will turn your old online truck stop into a trucking line that begins to deliver the goods wherever they are needed.
— Peter W. Bowman, Executive Vice President, Avericom
Good points, and very thought provoking article, Peter.
I think this points out that technology at large, as well as the Web, will increasingly be driven by increased use and value created through content and use of data. I agree that we have not begun to tap into the implications of this. It is certainly true that smart businesses will begin to look at connectivity and linkages in a whole different way.
Geni is another popular web 2.0 family site that uses a slightly different model...give away that data the community generated for free, but charge them to do cool things with it. Definitely a better approach than a blog or generic Facebook "space." In fact, Geni distributes its entire site and database through its Facebook application, realizing that it's not all about redirecting users to their fully featured main website.
I think the web 1.0 has fed the ego of many companies, especially the small ones, which could finally have their own personal window on available to the world, and could feel themselves as important and reachable as the big ones.....
corporate web sites are something to get proud of: "have you seen my new web site?"
but at the end of the day the thing you want is reaching your customers, your stakeholders, maybe interact and relate with them, not just have a fancy web site to show to a bunch of persons....
Content seeding, content syndication, and in general being present and available in the environment where people gathers, is the important key for a brand
a brand might eventually do without a corporate web site
it cannot do without developing a social media marketing strategy, instead
Rarely do I call things out like this but do you realize you posted content and/or information freely on a site that IBM sponsors? By the very nature of your comment, am I to assume that sponsor check is made out to you?
Internet is always evolving and evolution by definition defies prediction. Observation is the key.
I agree, a new way of content evolving is underway. Towards an overlall conscience I think. That woul be the greatest achievement of internet. To become the collective conscience of mankind.
You got me thinking... one site I use regularly, Ancestry.com, a fairly expensive subscription service, might be on to something I had not thought much about before reading your article.
Ancestry provides probably the world's best data base of family records for folks looking for long dead ancestors. Ancestry has access to actual U.S. census reports from a hundred and fifty years ago up to 1930.
But more importantly Ancestry is really a social site disguised as a data source. Amateur geneaologists around the country have volunteered family data that Ancestry resells. From the data, subscribers can find hundreds of reliable clues to their familiy history and ancestors, often more clues than they have time to look at as the data base must be huge.
What is interesting is the way subscribers freely provide tons of family data to Ancestry, which Ancestry sells back to them and their relatives.
Subscribers to Ancestry are really hooked on the idea of completing their family trees and don't mind that everything they add is being sold to others. Gee, my cousins may be buying the info I provide about Aunt Tillie, and do I care? Not really, as where else can I find tons of data about my dead relatives so easily.
First - Peter, this idea is intriguing to think about and try to vision. I think you did an excellent job of turning it on its side. Great post for some (sustained) thought here and offline.
In response to Chris, I wonder if several of the smaller players, microsites, specialty sites, etc will pool their collective together and be as the "biggies" are. Could be possible. There could also be different webs for different purposes. You know, like dot com being for commerce, dot gov being for government, dot biz being for business.
Maybe a dot soc or some such can be used for social networks... ... ...hmmmmm.
The scenario for the next cycle in the use of the Internet is quite intriguing. Interestingly it seems to be cost saving as well (something that endeared end-users to the Internet).
It is worthwhile that time be spent in looking at how best to use various tools to find out where content must be pushed?
A question though? What would this mean to Internet traffic? Will the existing Infrastructure support such massive movement of data to various specific nodes?
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