Tokyo and tech through the eyes of a split pea

Highlights from the Future of Web Apps, Day 2

(Day 1, if you haven’t read it yet.)

What’s Next For Web Apps: Building the Next Flickr

The second day started off with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch zipping through a host of up-and-coming as well as going-down-in-flames startups, and discussing their strengths and weaknesses. He started off his presentation with a catchy anecdote – that PlentyOfFish generates $300,000 a month just through Google AdSense – to keep the audience on the edge of their seats and noting every word that escaped his mouth.

He was a pretty quick so it was a bit tough to write everything down – besides, I was there to listen more than take notes :) – but here’s what I could grab from his slides:

Attributes of Winners:

• passion
• doing something extraordinary (Purple Cow)
• Removing Serious Fiction (1-800-FREE411)
• Great Founder Dynamics
• Never Raised Big Money, or raised it after they won
• Prefect revenue model not required

Attributes of Losers:

• Poor Founder / Team Choices
• Lifestyle / Ego of entrepreneurs
• Raised too much money
• Over business-planned
• Forgot about scaling (Friendster)

What Server Platform?

• PHP
• RubyOnRails
• Java (serious apps)
• .Net/ActiveX (no firefox)
• Adobe Apollo, brings flash/ajax apps to desktop w/o browser
• Desktop hybrid
• Flash (growing)
• XUL/XAML (interesting)

Market Saturation, Avoid:

• social networking
• social bookmarks
• video
• photos
• blogging/podcasting platforms
• portals/homepages
• feed readers

Big Potential:

• platforms
• desktop apps
• office efficiency
• cloud storage (Microsoft, Google)
• identity
• developer tools
• market destruction (FREE411 has 3% of $8bil market)
• enterprise (consumers had VoIP, blogs, IM, online storage, etc. before corporations did)

During the short Q&A, I managed to grab these snippets:

• email space still interesting (Yahoo! allows POP-in)
• oDesk better than eLance
• ads are annoying; what’ll happen in the future?

Here are 4 choice slides from his Mike’s deck:
     

 
The State, Future & Business of Passion-Centric Online Communities

Ted Rheingold of Dogster and Catster

I had no idea what to expect from this presentation, but it proved to be one of the most interesting. Dogster recently secured $1 million in funding – which the NYT thinks indicates we’re in a bubble but on the contrary, I think we’re witnessing an understanding from investors of the potentials in targeting the niche.

Ted was an animated presenter full of amusing quotes and a clear passion for his company – a passion without which none of his websites would have grown. He shared a collage of websites that exude a similar aura, including ClubMom, Babysites, Teachade, Vampirefreaks, StuffOnMyCat, and the one which got a ton of laughs – CatsThatLookLikeHitler. Some of these are just “digital doritos” (his words, but I love that phrase!) and many may gawk at such communities, figuring the appeal to be miniscule – and perhaps proportional to the number of people on the internet, they are. But as any seasoned entrepreneur will be quick to point out to a skeptic who says a 1% or 2% ownership in a deal is worthless, if the whole is huge, then even a tiny share can mean a lot. Figure there are 1 billion people on the internet. If even just 0.01% of them are interested in your niche hobby, you’ve got a potential 100,000 viewers. Another choice quote from Ted:

Dogster and Catster pages are like personalizing a high school locker

To gauge the appeal of a site, forum activity is a pretty good indicator. Also note what terminology sites use to appeal to their visitors. In the case of Vampirefreaks, there are no “groups”, but “cults”. And it’s not a “shopping cart,” it’s a “coffin.”

 
14 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Building a Web App

Ryan Carson, one of the producers of this conference, got up and spoke about “14 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Building a Web App.” At least Ryan’s presentation should be online soon, so let me just list the points:

1. Work with people in the same time zone.
2. One user database – if you have multiple apps consider this.
3. One e-commerce system – if you have multiple apps consider this as well.
4. Don’t have your back end guy do front end stuff and vice versa.
5. Obsess about the copy on your site – communicate clear messages through the text on your website.
6. Work with a top notch hardware partner.
7. Don’t cut corners.
8. Measure, measure, measure more – how well you app is doing, how are people using it and all other statistics including; web visitors, sign ups, logins, active users, paying users and staying users.
9. You’re not done when you launch.
10. Tea-spoons – stay on top of the little things and make sure they are getting done.
11. Quick tips – provide contact details and logos for the press, use monthly CSV files for invoices, add an about us page and make contact easy.
12. Add tons of stuff to your FAQs.
13. Be nice to nasty customers.
14. Tips from the pros – here he gives tips from other pros in the industry.

 
Designing The Next Generation of Web Apps

The final presentation worth sharing a little about was by Google UI guru Jeff Veen. Referencing key economic tipping points in history such as Henry Ford’s assembly line, the industrial revolution with huge investments followed by the depression but lasting change, and the Netherlands tulip frenzy of the 1700s where at one point people were paying as much as 1 years’ salary for a single bulb, Veen believes we’ve seen the huge investment and bust phases which has created the fundamental change in this business, and we’re now entering the correction and lasting change phases.

The impact of “Web 2.0″ has predominantly been on design, and hence a benefit for the users. “Design” of course refers not just to the visual (typography, color, etc.), but interactivity and information architecture. There is a strong element of giving up control – historically designers had full control but now we’re seeing this control being passed on to the users. Veen encourages:

Use visual design competency to build trust with users, empowering them to control their data … and ultimately to control their experience.

Trust your users and make them your peer. Ah. There’s also a shift in thought from “page-based design” on the web to “application design” on the web, and from an “I am the designer” mindset to a “let’s collaborate” mentality. These can be realized through Interaction Design, where new techniques such as AJAX allow greater fluidity in experience. There are four key components to this fluidity: discoverability, recoverability, context, and feedback. Discoverability is making finding stuff easy – such as Panic Goods’ elegant shopping cart interface. Recoverability says that actions should be without cost – catch errors before they happen, such as not making users click through in order to discover a username has been taken or a password is incorrect. Context means to visualize the process flow for the user, providing real-time feedback. And Feedback refers to showing how the system will respond immediately – in the past a button was presented, clicked, and the next page tells them what happened. Check out MeasureMap for an example of good feedback.
The third and final component of this design evolution has to do with Information Architecture. Blending editorial content with participation creates an experience in and of itself, while at a high level tagging creates an experience just through the data.

Veen notes that there’s a bit of “amateurization” going on in design, but this is helping facilitate an architecture of participation. As Clay Shirky notes:

Weblogs fix the inefficiencies traditional publishers are paid to overcome, and in a world where publishing is that efficient, it is no longer an activity worth paying for.

The next step is turning the users into experts themselves. Keep an eye on FlySpy, FareCast, and TripHub as examples of this.

Jeff’s slides

Check out my Flickr set on the event and surrounding activities.

Other blogs covering the event:

• CenterNetworks
• GroupThink
• Mark Seremet
• Dennis Eusebio p1, p2