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Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

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Saved by 43 people (-7 private), first by anonymouse user on 2007-12-17


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AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content often add more complexity than they're worth. They also divert design resources and prove (once again) that what's hyped is rarely what's most profitable.

Highlighted by whertha

it's more common to find Web 2.0 ideas that either hurt users or simply don't matter to users' core needs

Highlighted by wclark

While there's no single definition of the much-abused "Web 2.0" term, I'll look at four trends that are often considered its defining elements:

  • "Rich" Internet Applications (RIA)
  • Community features, social networks, and user-generated content
  • Mashups (using other sites' services as a development platform)
  • Advertising as the main or only business model

Highlighted by jjedtechguy

User-generated content can be a great supplement to your own content. The most famous example is Amazon's book reviews, which date from 1996 (not exactly "2.0."). Communities, which were the main recommendation in the 1997 book Net.Gain, are also an old idea

Highlighted by wclark

on the Web, most people are bozos and not worth listening to

Highlighted by wclark

Co-branding confuses users, who find it much easier to understand the simpler model of one site = one company.

Highlighted by wclark

Having part of your site effectively under another company's control means that you're at that company's mercy if they decide to change the terms of service

Highlighted by wclark

Advertising-Funded Business Models: Bubble 2.0

The number of companies that chase the same advertising dollars as their only business model is a sure sign that we're at the peak of Bubble 2.0. It would be much more sustainable if companies aimed to create services that users valued enough to pay for.

Right now, considerable advertising money is sloshing through the Web because most marketing managers remain clueless about how it works. They think that because search advertisements generate lots of business, other Web ads must work just as well. What a fallacy — brought on by ignorance of the basic Web user experience. People go to search engines when they're explicitly looking for a place to do business. This is why search engines profit from sucking up the work of content sites (where users exhibit strong banner blindness).

Marketing managers won't remain clueless forever. Sooner or later they'll discover that Web advertising offers almost no ROI. Only two forms of Web ads actually work: search ads and classified ads (such as eBay and real estate listings). A third type of Internet advertising that might work are video ads, because video is a linear media form (in contrast to nonlinear website navigation). At this point, we don't have enough user research about Internet video to say for sure.

Highlighted by educazione

Highlighted by educazione