TheCustomer

Business Technology : Why Most Online Communities Fail

Collaborative Thinking: I know it’s Friday, but can I have an online community by Monday?
Very good upsum of the mismatch between expectations & reality

Ze Frank on Breaking the Metaphor of the Web
There’s momentum building here, towards a watershed. In recent weeks we’ve seen VRMWorkshop, big forward steps from Dataportability, Facebook’s adoption of those principles… I’m sure there’s more – there’s certainly thinking about the problems created by social media

So is 2009 going to be the year in which we get a technical breakthrough, that changes Web 2.0 from being a technical achievement into being social & commercial?

Oh for goodness sake!
Banks ask their customers to jump through hoops… and then, it seems, can’t put their own house in oder. My guess (experience) is that legacy systems and organisation culture combine to stymie development at the pace needed to stay ahead of developments in security risks.

Guardian.co.uk becomes first UK newspaper site to break 20 million
Good to see the Guardian online getting the readers it deserves – more importantly, these traffic rises should be set against continuing decline in sales of print editions.

Second Age of Aquarius: Facebook Connect + Facebook Payments (= Social Sign-on + Viral E-Commerce)
Dave McLure’s post has a ring of truth about it; by this time next year Facebook may well have shown us the money in Social Networking services, by making ecommerce viral. The trick will be to design a shopping process that mimics our natural herd instincts.

Color + Design Blog / As Seen By The Color Blind

7% of men don’t see your design the same way the designer did… it’s always worth testing sites for colour blindness, and is so often forgotten.

My thanks to Tracy Sheridan for posting a succinct description of VRM:

What is Vendor Relationship Management?

We live in a time when the information disparity that used
to exist between what companies know about products and services, and customers
know about those same products and services is decreasing rapidly.So that now, we’re in a position as customers to establish
any kind of relationship we want with companies, enabling them to essentially bid
on our business

This train’s a’comin!

full description, here:
The Long Blonde Tail: What is VRM?

EU finally cuts through licensing red tape for digital music

Hooray!

Though this is just one step, equalising content in different countries’ stores removes an inequality,so it’s a step in the right direction. And the legislation faces up to a simple reality – that if content can’t be bought locally & legally, there’s plenty of ways to acquire the same content, illegally, just a click away.

In time this’ll doubtless lead to universal pricing, in Europe, which is what it is. In the UK, it probably means paying less for music. Of course, there may be winners as well as losers – there’s no guarantee that the universal price will be the lowest price.

Boo!
The legislation appears not to have the support of artists – which can’t be right. And somehow *more* regulation always feels like it’ll result in *less* innovation, in spite of everybody’s best efforts.

“The UK needs seven new gas and coal-fired stations, 12 new nuclear
stations and 40 wind farms, as well as 12 major gas storage plants,
according to the CBI.”
The Independent

Yikes! But even if the CBI’s apocalyptic vision were even half true, isn’t this the kind of issue that ‘traditionally’ gets kicked around for years in the UK, and later (much later) some fudge is issued. The Stonehenge bypass is a typical example – £37 million spent on “planning”, over a decade, and there’s still no plan.

I doubt that we’re capable of making these big decisions; there’s always too much history, too many vested interests, one newt species that can’t be moved (but later is) and the environment enriched for all

The likely outcome – around 2014 – Government pushes ‘micro generation’ schemes, hard, to compensate for generating capacity lost to the planning process. There’ll be a rush to photovoltaic panels & wind turbines, led by the Daily Mail (with a jingoistic wartime theme, and competitions to win a lifetime’s power capacity) and the BBC, with power makeover programmes, showing how to cut use and make your own power. Like this and this… but in the style of Changing Rooms.

And the consequence of *not* refining the planning process for the 21st century – our economic development will be hamstrung, by a lack of consistent power supply.

“A report from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) states that
power outages and problems with power quality are costing the U.S.
economy over $119 billion per year. Called “The Cost of Power
Disturbances to Industrial and Digital Economy Companies,” the study
discusses the growing need for what it calls digital-quality
electricity, which means power that is “always perfect and always on.”” & that’s from 2001 !