A Moscone Mash-Up

Last week I was in San Francisco to attend the Web 2.0 Expo at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. For two days I surrounded myself with people who regularly use lingo like “mash-up” and “open source” and perceive “Ajax” as something other than an abrasive kitchen cleanser. Some interesting did-you-knows I came away with … Did you know that Facebook generates over 10 billion impressions a month and has over 100,000 applications on it? Did you know that there are over 100 million blogs like this one with over 175,000 new ones each day.

Beyond the 5 free t-shirts I added to my wardrobe (I’ve pictured the Ts here so that the companies can feel more justified in their $5 marketing expense), my big takeaway as a marketer and budding entrepreneur is that Web 2.0 is both scary and exciting for its immense potential. The scary part: Web 2.0 puts a ton of power in the hands of each and every customer you have. A patron has a bad dining experience at your restaurant and his/her negative review on Yelp can be immediately read by thousands of people. A customer has a bad experience at Wal-Mart, and they can create a blog dedicated to blasting the retail empire that is linked to hundreds of other anti Wal-Mart sites and blogs. A business must both monitor and proactively engage their consumers to ensure that a Web 2.0 PR nightmare is not looming. The exciting part: By properly integrating the Web 2.0 tactics in their overall marketing strategy, an entrepreneur or business has the ability to engage, accelerate, and monetize in ways that did not exist even 5 years ago. An author can research and write his manuscript through the clever use of Wikis, publish his book on a personal blog, market the text through Google ad words, and sell thousands of copies with credit card transactions through PayPal. Take that Simon and Schuster.

Props to ‘Groundswell’

So like a good student embarking on a new project, I checked out some books from the “library” aka Amazon. So far I’m very impressed with Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. It’s tagline describes it well: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies. The book does a great job of breaking down the brave new world of the social web — blogs, forums, social networks, RSS, wikis and much more — into understandable categories. It presents a global perspective on the people that make up the social Web evolution. Case studies and examples are interesting, relevant, and most important with such a fast moving subject, current. Probably the coolest feature of the book is that it practices what it preaches — The book was co-authored and fact-checked using a Wiki(a site used for sharing and organizing content from multiple contributors) — After publishing, the authors maintain an ongoing blog(http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/) that cross references content from the book with relevant current events. And the writing style is straightforward and quick to digest. I recommend it for anyone who has even a slight interest in harnessing the power of the Internet in their profession or hobbies.