The User Generation
Posted by precopio on April 2, 2007
In the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to meet with a few Web 2.0 start-ups that are not on anyone’s radar currently. In fact, the further we move along, the more and more, I speak with companies of all sizes about Web 2.0. I want to take a moment to restate some of the ideas that are extremely important about Web 2.0 and Enterprise Web 2.0.
First and foremost, we are in the Generation of the User, or the “User Generation”. This means that as companies build products and solutions, they need to think about what is important to their users from a technology as well as usability standpoint. These users include consumers and employees. I know this doesn’t sound new. However, the second part of the equation is where many companies fail.
Second, companies must use every technology to understand their customer’s needs wants and actions. Web 2.0 is about getting in the minds of your users to deliver the best products before they realize they need them. Sound complicated? It’s not. If companies choose the right applications, platforms and technologies, staying ahead of the user is simple. It just takes thinking ahead and building customer feedback and monitoring systems.
As I mentioned before, I spoke with a ton of small companies in the last few weeks. Of these companies, there were browser, excel, and application vendors. All of which, seemed like they needed/ wanted to capitalize on the Web 2.0 boom. Of these companies, only a handful had any “real” sense of building solutions for users.
At the top is a company called HomeGrader.com. They provide customer feedback solutions for the real estate industry. They have the right idea. Get all the feedback in an easy to use manner so agents can create a better environment for their users. So far, this company has thousands of users and claims to have most of the top sellers in the US.
The top sellers are early innovators, and companies like HomeGrader can learn a lot form this market. Especially in the “User Generation”
Addition – I had a great conversation with 18 - 20 year olds who had just entered the work force. Their combined comment about their companies’ IT systems was unanimously negative.
“I can do more with my home computer than my work’s laptop” “I am extremely disappointed in my companies ability provide the best working environment” and finally, “I’m not staying here too long”
Employees are users too
ckeene said
Web 2.0 may well represent the great democratization of development. Under Web 1.0, the apps that were built were those that could support a $1M+ development budget – let’s call these big ticket, play it safe apps. With Web 2.0, the barrier to building apps drops dramatically – in the case of apps like blogs, perhaps even farther than is strictly healthy
Notes on Enterprise Software Architecture - Part I « Serus Corporation said
[...] One interesting driver of this trend is that the employees coming into the industry today are expecting their applications to work like the Web 2.0 applications that they use in daily life. This shift has been discussed at length by a number of [...]
Stephen Turner said
Many companies that use Web 2.0 don’t understand what it can do for them — other than demonstrating that they know what the flavor of the day is. Sun and IBM have embraced community forums, but don’t seem to use what their customers are saying to improve their businesses all that much. Case in point: Neither have tapped into the wisdom of crowds to figure out how to quantify their value proposition.
SugarCRM gets it right on their own site, but how many of their users have taken advantage of the open-source tools that can be used more effectively? None that we have examined. Salesforce.com has similar tools, but they don’t articulate their own value proposition either.
Customers and prospects talk amongst themselves already and hosting a conversation right on their own site is really smart for companies with the willingness to learn from their markets.