If you happen to be attending Emetrics in San Francisco this May, one of the presentations you’ll have the opportunity to attend is Judah Phillips and myself co-speaking on this very topic. (Though we are speaking opposite Dylan Lewis and Robbin Steif so i know it will be a tough choice as to which session to attend.)
Personally, I find the whole “Web 2.0″ phenomenon fascinating. Specifically, one of my interests is in how people define the term’s meaning. In the few short years since Tim O’Reilly introduced the term I don’t think I have ever heard it defined exactly the same way by two people. Often, the individual descriptions are more telling about the person it came from than the term itself. Though as a whole they work together to tell a story of a future internet that is truly spectacular. An internet we’ve only just begun to realize.
I know what I think about “Web 2.0″ in regards to Web Analysis and I talked about some of the major topics I feel are important to it in my fist post to this blog. So right now I’m asking for what you think in a Twitter sort of way.
In 150 words or less. What does “Web 2.0″ mean to Web Analytics?
Here is my short answer:
Web 2.0 in regards to Web Analytics is about improvement. Not small improvements like page tag revisions or a couple new metrics, but major release candidate innovations that revolutionize the industry. Innovations in every area of Web Analytics from Architecture and Data Collection to Metrics and Reporting, from Standards to Process and Communication, from Education to Practice, from Data Models to Analysis to Actionable Insight, from measuring Events to Rich Media to Social Networks, from feed syndication to mobile browsers. Most important of all, Web 2.0 is about the discussion on how to get there.
Too much? Too little? Not quite right? I’d love to hear what you think Web 2.0 means to Web Analytics. If you don’t feel comfortable commenting on the blog feel free to email me at ian[dot]houston[AT]visioactive[dot]com.
Ian,
I am looking forward to our discussion, but am bummed I am missing the brilliant Robbin and the savvy Dylan. Let’s video capture them all, and “youtubelate” them.
Here are some “things” that fall within the Web 2.0 gestalt in my mind:
*Blogs
*Wikis
*Social networking
*Consumer/user/prosumer generated content
*Podcasts (time-orientation, attention)
*RSS
*Rich Internet Applications (RIA) or Rich Media
*SEO/SEM
*Persona, ontology, and taxonomy integration
*Buzz measurement
*Social tagging and bookmarking
*Syndication measurement
*Engagement measurment
*Interaction measurment
*“Persona”-lization
*Social media measurement
*Virtual world measurement
*Video
*Mobile
*AJAX, FLEX, JSON
*Communities
*Widgets
*Mashups
*Tag clouds
*Hyper aggregation and syndication
*Platforms
*XMLHTTPREQUEST
Guy Kawasaki names a bunch of things “Web 2.0″:
*Publishing
*Creating and Publishing to a Group
*Posting
*Subscribing
*Favoriting
*Adding Friends
*Bookmarking
*Emailing
*Distributing
*Streaming
*Networking
*Creating Mash-up Content
I was at IDC’s Directions 2007 conference yesterday. IDC defines Web 2.0 as: “Web 2.0 is the new Internet, which is characterized by communities, long tail, and interactive media.”
Anyone for defining Web 3.14159? Eric!? 8^)
Nah… not this year…
Best,
Judah
At the very least, I saw it somewhere on Godin’s blog, whether or not he was the originator I can’t say, but the best description I’ve heard of web 2.0 is that it’s the atomic web. In other words it’s developing into a highly detailed and fragmented space.
For web analytics, that means the measurements are getting more granular.
The other thing is the socialization of the web. Where we used to be (more or less) concerned with the user-to-website interaction now we’re concerned with user-to-user interaction - this is why engagement has been such a hot topic of late. In a rather odd way, the socialization of the web is a way to combat the fragmentation above. It’s not about where the content comes from but how people interact with it and because of it with each other.
Ian,
Web 2.0 may mean improvement in the terms of web design and usefulness within the social community but I do not believe that web 2.0 is an improvement for web analytics.
My main reason for this is to do with visualisations of web 2.0 data. Most web analytics applications are not geared to handle customisations of their interface to handle this new interpretation of data, and those that are cannot make accurate representations of the data.
Lets take for instance tracking form level usage, so at what point to people drop off the form, what did they put into any fields etc.
What visualisation would you use to represent this? Traditionally a funnel report would be used but this does not do the data justice in my eyes.
This post explains my web 2.0 dilema a little better http://www.webanalyticmatt.com/2007/03/26/understanding-funnel-reports/
Thanks Judah, Clint and Matt,
Very interesting responses. I tend to look at the internet as a work in progress. I believe most of the things in Judah’s list existed prior to O’Reilly coining the phrase (regardless of whether they were called the same thing as they are now). But in recent years there has definitely been a surge in more innovative uses and wider reaching acceptance and support for the technologies.
In my view the whole “2.0″ trend is just an indication that yes the internet is changing and improving as it has steadily done and will continue to do. The idea to actually put meaningful release numbers to it like you would a piece a software is a tad absurd. The real task of dealing with “Web 2.0″ is developing good practices for approaching and dealing with technology advances.
Matt, I find your comment most interesting as I was not really thinking that direction for this post. I agree with you that perhaps web analytics solutions and thinking has been slow to keep up with technologies that have existed for years now in the realm of RIAs, syndicated content, visualization of data, etc. I do however see a lot of improvements in recent history in various vendor tools and approaches for quantifying and qualifying how user interact with content. I can remember a time in the not so distant past when things like funnel reports and site overlays weren’t the norm for major web analytics products. They may still not be perfect but they are definitely improving year over year and that should at least qualify them as being Web 1.5.
-Ian