Web Trends & Strategies

Twines,  the Semantic Web Application for exchanging knowledge, has a public twine is for sharing news articles or other information that are of special interest or value in understanding where the Web industry is heading.

see: Twine Web Industry Trends

Note: this Twine is also available via the following rss feed: http://www.twine.com/feed/atom/entries/twine/1hj7rh6g-q4/web-industry-trends/items

A timeline provided by Dipity, and in that case displaying the evolution of virtual worlds:

see the link at: dipity:Virtual_Worlds

In a blog posting, a company doing some website monitoring, has looked at 12 of the top social networks to answer a simple, but highly interesting question: Where are they the most popular?

The social networks they included in this survey were MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Friendster, LinkedIn, Orkut, Last.fm, LiveJournal, Xanga, Bebo, Imeem and Twitter.

The results include a number of maps showing the level of adoption of different services around de world.

The conclusion:

As we already mentioned, this survey clearly shows that social networks are truly global affairs. It also shows that the geographic focus varies greatly between different social networks.

Read the post at: Social network popularity around the world; Pingdom AB, August 12, 2008

An interesting blog posting in Virtual Worlds News reporting a conversation with Jackie Fenn, vice president and Gartner Fellow, who has been authoring the emerging trends hype cycle report for 13 years for her take on where public virtual worlds fit in.

So this year we’ve put [virtual worlds] moving down towards the Trough of Disillusionment. The question now is does it pull out of the trough and into adoption or is there another round of hype?”

Read the blog posting at: Q&A: Jackie Fenn, Gartner VP and Fellow, on Public Virtual Worlds and the Hype Cycle; Virtual Worlds News ; August 13, 2008

McKinsey Quartely has published the results of a survey of the adoption of Web 2.0 by the Entreprises

Companies have adopted more Web 2.0 tools this year than in 2007 and are using them for higher-value purposes, according to McKinsey’s second annual survey on the business use of Web 2.0 technologies.

Some 21 percent of the respondents are very satisfied with the way their companies use Web 2.0 tools, which are changing management practices and even organizational structures.

Other companies report that the barriers to adopting Web 2.0 tools include management’s inability to grasp their potential financial returns, unresponsive corporate cultures, and less-than-enthusiastic leadership.

Get the document at: Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results; McKinsey Quarterly, July 2008

Here are the results:

And the Sessions Notes:

http://www.calt.insead.edu/eis/WebTrends/WTSSession7.mht

Here are the slides:

http://www.calt.insead.edu/eis/WebTrends/WebtrendsSession6.pdf

A very interesting article by the editor in chief of the WIRED Magazine

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all

 Read the article : Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business; By Chris Anderson; Wired magazine,  02.25.08

Here are the Sessions Notes:

http://www.calt.insead.edu/eis/WebTrends/WTSSSessions3&4NotesLAST.mht

Here’s an interesting presentation providing an overview of Virtual Worlds technologies:

http://www.slideshare.net/holtt/landscape-of-virtual-world-systems

Here’s a brand new example of such a technology:

http://www.smallworlds.com/

The governement can also benefit from new web approaches, as suggested by Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics in this podcast.

Business strategist and author Don Tapscott explains how he is working to create government Web sites intended to get American citizens engaged in democracy. He says the Internet can make government more open, participatory and efficient — and maybe even smaller and cheaper, too.

Listen more at: Government 2.0: Building an Online Democracy, Talk of the Nation, May 20, 2008

OECD is far for being ignorant about the Internet Economy, as you can see in a Policy Brief posted  in June 2008.

This Policy Brief looks at likely future developments in the Internet economy, and how all stakeholders can help the Internet to meet the increasing demands made upon it, continue to drive innovation, provide new communications services and platforms, while being secure and respecting privacy.

• Has the economy become an Internet economy?
• How is the Internet evolving?
• How is the Internet driving Innovation?
• How can we increase confidence in the Internet?
• Where do we go from here?

Read more at: The Future of the Internet Economy; OECD Brief; June 2008

The term “social media”  an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio (Wikipedia) has become very “hot” in the last months.

Brian Solis has posted a free book on the subject on 06/13/2008.

 Here is what he indicates in his posting:

I have been involved with Social Media since the beginning and the more I work, write, and speak, the more I learn. Over the years I’ve observed a series of questions and reactions that I’ve documented along the way and have actively included them in my posts, ebooks, contributions, as well as at my speaking appearances. Over the last year, I’ve assembled the most commonly asked questions and the answers into a free, downloadable ebook as a way of contributing to this active social community that has so graciously shared knowledge, insight, and experience.

The Essential Guide to Social Media is a “quick start” overview of how to listen and participate in social media and new media marketing.

The content from the ebook is below and you also can download a Word or PDF file on Scribd or Docstoc.

The original posting is here.

In a recent study, completed with IDC, predicts that that in less than five years up to 40 percent of the workforce will be hyperconnected.

A recent survey Nortel Networks Ltd. (NYSE/Toronto: NT) completed with IDC reports that in less than five years up to 40 percent of the workforce will be hyperconnected, demanding everywhere, all-the-time communications.  Not only will these individuals be emailing colleagues or using IM while on the go, they will also be tapping into social networks and online communities such as blogs, wikis, and online forums to improve business communications.

This group, called the “hyperconnected,” will be addicted to a variety of technology offerings and, in the future, will demand more high-bandwidth mobile applications like video and Web 3.0 from employers to support their business and personal needs.

The original information: “The Changing Role of the CIO”,  Steven J. Bandrowczak, internet evolution,  6/12/2008

No, Facebook is not going in the third place, but is now coming first, as a Media Trend report seems to indicate.

It was sort of inevitable given Facebook’s monster growth over the last few years, but April 2008 was the milestone: Facebook officially caught up to MySpace in terms of unique monthly worldwide visitors, according to data released by Comscore and shown above. Both services are attracting around 115 million people to their respective sites each month.

see the original new here in TechCrunch.

Kishore Sengupta, Tarek K. Abdel-Hamid and Luk Van Wassenhove, Harvard Business Review, February 2008,

See also the Podcast and Video at INSEAD Knowledge.

When companies look for a manager, they should look for experience, right?

Well, maybe not.  INSEAD professors Kishore Sengupta and Luk Van Wassenhove say their research has revealed what they call the ‘experience trap.’

Or how too much experience can produce the oposite result than what would be expected.

read more, and access the podcast and video : here

The advent of devices with integrated GPS such as the last version of the Apple IPhone, could represent an important trend, and contribute to make the Web 4.0 (the ubiquitous web) a reality.

Look at the following Video showing Steve Jobs demonstrating an application making use of GPS.

At the Apple WWDC 2008 in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs demonstrates GPS on the new 3G iPhone. Jobs shows how an iPhone traveling in a car going down San Francisco’s famously crooked Lombard Street can be tracked as its user navigates the curves.

url: http://news.cnet.com/1606-2_3-50002574.html

A couple of links to add to the demonstration given by Thierry. As he said, the overflow of information is more manageble with so called RSS readers. There are software programs to do this, standalone programs or plugins for programs like outlook. But just like Thierry my favorite is the webpage based option; in my case iGoogle.com.

Here are some interesting links about RSS:

http://www.medialoper.com/columns/thats-what-i-like/my-life-as-an-rss-junkie/

RSS Software: http://www.download.com/RSS-Readers/3150-9227_4-0.html

Webbased; www.igoogle.com, www.netvibes.com, www.pageflakes.com

Next to that I’m a big fan of del.icio.us - a online bookmarking service. I can really encourage all of you to take a look at it; it has really helped me keep a eye on all the interesting articles/resources etc I have without overcrowding the bookmarks in my browser and without having to import/export bookmarks all the time. And the tags allow to quickly retrieve the link you were looking for.

You can take a look at my (open) bookmarks at http://del.icio.us/jansenmartijn (which I update ~every day)

The Notes and slides used in Session 3 are accessible at:

http://www.calt.insead.edu/eis/WebTrends/WTSSession3NotesFINAL.mht (1 Mb)

The slides provided by Laurent Baleydier from Kartoo are available at:

http://www.calt.insead.edu/eis/WebTrends/INSEAD_KartOO.pdf (10 Mb !)