Archive for February, 2008
February 25, 2008
Early Adopters Have Been Social Networking The Whole Time
A Pew Internet & American Life Project survey of early Internet adopters showed that the most common reason they got online was to connect with colleagues. Granted, they were social networking through BBS’s and mainframe shared time, but it was social nonetheless. (You other early adopters can probably cite the appropriate quote from The Breakfast Club. A fabulous prize will be awarded to the first to cite it in the comments of this post.)
The pre-2000 buzzword for people connecting online with each other was virtual community. This term was put out with the dot com bubble trash and is now covered under Web 2.0/social media/etc. What is different now is the greater scope of people connecting online and the greater diversity of easy-to-use tools for doing so (and lots of money being made by putting advertising on all of it). These are not insignificant changes but it is all rooted in a common desire of many internet users, then and now.
To paraphrase one of my favorite quotes, social networking is simply more evenly distributed these days.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | 2 Comments
February 20, 2008
Wiki Markup: What You See is Hard to Do
James Robertson has point out the obvious weakness of wiki tools: Wiki markup has no future:
The lack of WYSIWYG editing is a big barrier to adoption within organisations, and on the wider web. There are only a limited number of users that have the time, skills and inclination to learn wiki markup. It’s a fundamental usability problem, and the spread of wikis will always be niche as long as wiki markup remains.
This is a rather heretical point of view among wiki aficionados, however it is right on the money. If the outcome of using a wiki is to make content creation easy for a distributed group, wiki markup gets in the way of achieving that outcome. Most people can use a WYSIWYG editor if they have used a word processor in the past. This covers most Web users, especially in a corporate environment. Using obscure text code is an unnecessary and anachronistic hurdle to put wiki users through.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | 2 Comments
February 12, 2008
The First Web Server
Robert Scoble recently posted this photo of the first web server. This was Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s computer that he used to invent and deploy the first web site.
I love that there is a sticker on it to prevent the entire world wide web being turned off inadvertently!
Personal trivia: I once missed a tour of the CERN facility by about 30 minutes when I was an exchange student in Switzerland. I sat for an hour outside the birthplace of the web, waiting for my bus ride home. This was about two years before Berners-Lee had set up this server.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
February 12, 2008
Quoted in Article on Effective Web Site Measurement
I was quoted in an article published by Microsoft Office Oline titled Deciphering your Web site traffic reports: 5 tips. I was interviewed by Christopher Elliott for the article, who does quite a bit of writing on travel and business issues.
Here is the section with my input, discussing how too much data can often be a bad thing:
Focus on the numbers that really matter. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with data, much of which doesn’t apply to your company. “Identify the top two or three statistics that actually allow you to make decisions about your site,” says C. David Gammel, an online media consultant and president of High Context Consulting in Salisbury, Md. “Ignore all the other data.”
Why disregard this wealth of information? Because poring over all the data will create what Gammel calls “analysis paralysis.” And that can detract you from your goal. His advice is to focus only on the metrics that are relevant to your business. For example, rather than obsessing over page views, look at the clicks to your online store and compare them with sales.
You are far more likely to make progress if you measure completion of specific, value producing goals, than simply trying to increase your overall page views and unique visitors.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
February 5, 2008
Internet Disruptions and Global Web Audiences
Several undersea telecommunications cables were cut in the Middle East/South Asia region last week. Networks from Egypt to India were impacted, creating very slow to broken connections. Outsource operations in India were a big concern but the large players had alternate connections available as part of their disaster response.
There has been a lot of speculation as to how the cables were cut and no ships have been identified yet in the areas where the cables were severed. John Robb posted today about how cutting undersea cables is a viable strategy for small groups to execute in a system disruption campaign.
All of which made me think about organizations who address a global audience via their web sites. If Robb is right, this kind of disruption could be become more frequent. If you have a large audience for your site outside your own region, you should consider how to ameliorate this risk in advance.
What could you do? The main thing I can think of is to distribute the hosting of your web sites around the globe, either by maintaining mirrored sites or deploying localized sites in their target regions. Locally deployed sites in key regions would provide you with continued service to those audiences even if they are disconnected from the Internet as a whole for a period of time. This is a non-trivial effort but if serving global audiences is a key part of achieving your goals, it could be a good investment against future disruption and associated losses.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
Copyright © 2008 High Context Consulting
Privacy Policy: HCC will never share your information with anyone without your permission.