41. Understand your business model and use it to drive your product design. Too many Web 2.0 applications hope
that they will create large amounts of traffic and will then find someone interested in acquiring them. Alternatively, some
products charge too much up front and prevent themselves from reaching critical mass. While over-thinking your exit strategy
or trying to determine your ultimate business model before you do anything isn't good either, too many startups don't sit down
and do the rigorous thinking around how to make their business a successful one in the nearer term. Take a look at Andrew
Chen's How To Create a Profitable Freemium Startup for a good example of the framework on how to do some of the business
model planning. Taking into account the current economic downturn and making sure you're addressing how you offering can
help people and businesses in the current business climate will also help right now.
42. Embrace emergent development methods. While a great many of the Web's best products had a strong product
designer with a clear vision that truly understood his or her industry, the other half of the equation that often gets short shrift
is the quality of emergent design through open development. This captures the innatec r owds o urc ing aspects of ecosystembased
products, specifically those that have well-defined points of connectedness with external development inputs and 3rd
party additions. Any Web application has some emergent development if it takes development inputs or extensibility with via
3rd party plug-ins, widgets, open APIs, open source contributions, and so on. The development (and a good bit of the design)
of the product then "emerges" as a function of multiple inputs. Though there is still some top-down control, in essence, the
product becomes more than the sum total of its raw inputs. Products like Drupal and Facebook are good examples of this,
with thousands of plug-ins or 3rd party apps that have been added to them by other developers.
43. It's all about usability, usability, and usability. I've mentioned usability before in this list but I want to make it a
first class citizen. Nothing will be a more imposing barrier to adoption that people not understanding how your product
works. Almost nothing on this list will work until the usability of your application is a given. And hands down the most
common mistake I see are Web developers creating user experiences in isolation. If you're not funded to have a usability lab
(and you probably should be, at some level), then you need to grab every friend and family member you have to watch how
they use your application for the first time. Do this again for every release that makes user experience changes. You will
change a surprising number of assumptions and hear feedback that you desperately need to hear before you invest any more in
a new user experience approach. This now true even if you're developing enterprise applications for the Web.
44. Security isn't an afterthought It's a sad fact that far too much of a successful startup's time will be spent on security
issues. Once you are popular, you will be the target of every so-called script kiddie with a grudge or with the desire to get at
your customer data, etc. Software vulnerability are numerous and the surface area of modern Web apps large. You not only
have your own user experience but also your API, widgets, semantic Web connections, social networking applications, and
other points of attack. Put aside time and budget for regular vulnerability assessments. You can't afford a public data spill or
exploit due to a security hole that will compromise your user's data, or you may well find yourself with a lot of departing
customers.Web 2.0 applications also need unique types of security systems, from rate limiters to prevent valuable usergenerated
data from being systematically scraped from the site (this is vital to "maintaining control of unique and hard-to-recreate
datasets") to monitoring software that will screen for objectionable or copyrighted contributions.
45. Stress test regularly and before releases. It's a well known saying in the scalability business that your next
bottleneck is hiding just behind your last high water mark. Before your launch, data volumes and loads that work fine in the
lab should be tested to expected production volumes before launch. The Web 2.0 industry is rife with examples of companies
that went down the first time they got a good traffic spike. That's the very worst time to fail, since it's your best chance of
getting a strong initial network effect and may forever reduce your ultimate success. Know your volume limits and ceilings
with each release and prepare for the worst.
46. Backup and disaster recovery, know your plan. This is another unglamorous but essential aspect for any online
product. How often are backups being made of all your data? Are the backups tested? Are they kept offsite? If you don't know
the answers, the chances that you'll survive a major event is not high.
47. Good Web products understand that there is more than the Web. Do you have a desktop widget for Vista or the
Mac? Might you benefit from offering an Adobe AIR client version of your application? How about integration and
representation in vitual worlds and games? How about linkages to RFID or GPS sensors? Startups thinking outside the box
might even create their own hardware device if it makes sense (see Chumby and the iPhone/iPod for examples). If one thing
that is certain is that the next generation of successful Web startups will only partially resemble what we see today. Successful
new online products will take advantage of "software above the level of a single device" and deliver compelling combinations of
elements into entirely new products that are as useful and innovative as they are unexpected. A great Web 2.0 product often
has a traditional Web application as only part of its overall design, see the Doritos Crash the Superbowl campaign for just one
small example of this.
48. Look for emerging areas on the edge of the Web. These are the spaces that have plenty of room for new players
and new ideas, where network effects aren't overly established and marketshare is for the taking. What spaces are these? The
Semantic Web seems to be coming back with all new approaches (I continue to be amazed at how much appears about this
topic onhtt p: // d e l ic io us . c om / popu la r/ web3 . 0 these days.) Open platform virtual worlds such as Second Life were hot a few
years ago and may be again. Mobile Web applications are extremely hot today but slated to get over crowded this year as
everyone plans a mobile application for phone platforms. What is coming after this? That is less clear but those that are
watching closely will benefit the most.
49. Plan to evolve over time, for a long time. The Web never sits still. Users change, competitors improve, what's
possible continues to expand as new capabilities emerge in the software and hardware landscape. In the Perpetual Beta era,
products are never really done. Never forget that, continue to push yourself, or be relegated to a niche in history.
50. Continually improve yourself and your Web 2.0 strategies. While process improvement is one of those lip-service
topics that most people will at least admit to aspire to, few have the time and resources to carry it out on a regular basis. But
without that introspection on our previous experience we wouldn't have many of the "aha" moments that drove forward our
industry at various points in term. Without explicit attempts at improvement, we might not have developed the ideas that
became object-oriented languages, search engine marketing, Web 2.0, or even the Internet itself. This list itself is about that
very process and encapsulates a lot of what we've learned in the last 4 years. Consequently, if you're not sitting down and
making your own list from your own experiences, you're much more likely to repeat past history, never mind raising the bar.
Like I'm often fond of saving; civilization progresses when we make something that was formerly hard to do and make it easy
to do. Take the time, capture your lessons learned, and improve your strategies.
What else is missing here? Please contribute your own 2.0 strategies in comments below:
Prev
that they will create large amounts of traffic and will then find someone interested in acquiring them. Alternatively, some
products charge too much up front and prevent themselves from reaching critical mass. While over-thinking your exit strategy
or trying to determine your ultimate business model before you do anything isn't good either, too many startups don't sit down
and do the rigorous thinking around how to make their business a successful one in the nearer term. Take a look at Andrew
Chen's How To Create a Profitable Freemium Startup for a good example of the framework on how to do some of the business
model planning. Taking into account the current economic downturn and making sure you're addressing how you offering can
help people and businesses in the current business climate will also help right now.
42. Embrace emergent development methods. While a great many of the Web's best products had a strong product
designer with a clear vision that truly understood his or her industry, the other half of the equation that often gets short shrift
is the quality of emergent design through open development. This captures the innatec r owds o urc ing aspects of ecosystembased
products, specifically those that have well-defined points of connectedness with external development inputs and 3rd
party additions. Any Web application has some emergent development if it takes development inputs or extensibility with via
3rd party plug-ins, widgets, open APIs, open source contributions, and so on. The development (and a good bit of the design)
of the product then "emerges" as a function of multiple inputs. Though there is still some top-down control, in essence, the
product becomes more than the sum total of its raw inputs. Products like Drupal and Facebook are good examples of this,
with thousands of plug-ins or 3rd party apps that have been added to them by other developers.
43. It's all about usability, usability, and usability. I've mentioned usability before in this list but I want to make it a
first class citizen. Nothing will be a more imposing barrier to adoption that people not understanding how your product
works. Almost nothing on this list will work until the usability of your application is a given. And hands down the most
common mistake I see are Web developers creating user experiences in isolation. If you're not funded to have a usability lab
(and you probably should be, at some level), then you need to grab every friend and family member you have to watch how
they use your application for the first time. Do this again for every release that makes user experience changes. You will
change a surprising number of assumptions and hear feedback that you desperately need to hear before you invest any more in
a new user experience approach. This now true even if you're developing enterprise applications for the Web.
44. Security isn't an afterthought It's a sad fact that far too much of a successful startup's time will be spent on security
issues. Once you are popular, you will be the target of every so-called script kiddie with a grudge or with the desire to get at
your customer data, etc. Software vulnerability are numerous and the surface area of modern Web apps large. You not only
have your own user experience but also your API, widgets, semantic Web connections, social networking applications, and
other points of attack. Put aside time and budget for regular vulnerability assessments. You can't afford a public data spill or
exploit due to a security hole that will compromise your user's data, or you may well find yourself with a lot of departing
customers.Web 2.0 applications also need unique types of security systems, from rate limiters to prevent valuable usergenerated
data from being systematically scraped from the site (this is vital to "maintaining control of unique and hard-to-recreate
datasets") to monitoring software that will screen for objectionable or copyrighted contributions.
45. Stress test regularly and before releases. It's a well known saying in the scalability business that your next
bottleneck is hiding just behind your last high water mark. Before your launch, data volumes and loads that work fine in the
lab should be tested to expected production volumes before launch. The Web 2.0 industry is rife with examples of companies
that went down the first time they got a good traffic spike. That's the very worst time to fail, since it's your best chance of
getting a strong initial network effect and may forever reduce your ultimate success. Know your volume limits and ceilings
with each release and prepare for the worst.
46. Backup and disaster recovery, know your plan. This is another unglamorous but essential aspect for any online
product. How often are backups being made of all your data? Are the backups tested? Are they kept offsite? If you don't know
the answers, the chances that you'll survive a major event is not high.
47. Good Web products understand that there is more than the Web. Do you have a desktop widget for Vista or the
Mac? Might you benefit from offering an Adobe AIR client version of your application? How about integration and
representation in vitual worlds and games? How about linkages to RFID or GPS sensors? Startups thinking outside the box
might even create their own hardware device if it makes sense (see Chumby and the iPhone/iPod for examples). If one thing
that is certain is that the next generation of successful Web startups will only partially resemble what we see today. Successful
new online products will take advantage of "software above the level of a single device" and deliver compelling combinations of
elements into entirely new products that are as useful and innovative as they are unexpected. A great Web 2.0 product often
has a traditional Web application as only part of its overall design, see the Doritos Crash the Superbowl campaign for just one
small example of this.
48. Look for emerging areas on the edge of the Web. These are the spaces that have plenty of room for new players
and new ideas, where network effects aren't overly established and marketshare is for the taking. What spaces are these? The
Semantic Web seems to be coming back with all new approaches (I continue to be amazed at how much appears about this
topic onhtt p: // d e l ic io us . c om / popu la r/ web3 . 0 these days.) Open platform virtual worlds such as Second Life were hot a few
years ago and may be again. Mobile Web applications are extremely hot today but slated to get over crowded this year as
everyone plans a mobile application for phone platforms. What is coming after this? That is less clear but those that are
watching closely will benefit the most.
49. Plan to evolve over time, for a long time. The Web never sits still. Users change, competitors improve, what's
possible continues to expand as new capabilities emerge in the software and hardware landscape. In the Perpetual Beta era,
products are never really done. Never forget that, continue to push yourself, or be relegated to a niche in history.
50. Continually improve yourself and your Web 2.0 strategies. While process improvement is one of those lip-service
topics that most people will at least admit to aspire to, few have the time and resources to carry it out on a regular basis. But
without that introspection on our previous experience we wouldn't have many of the "aha" moments that drove forward our
industry at various points in term. Without explicit attempts at improvement, we might not have developed the ideas that
became object-oriented languages, search engine marketing, Web 2.0, or even the Internet itself. This list itself is about that
very process and encapsulates a lot of what we've learned in the last 4 years. Consequently, if you're not sitting down and
making your own list from your own experiences, you're much more likely to repeat past history, never mind raising the bar.
Like I'm often fond of saving; civilization progresses when we make something that was formerly hard to do and make it easy
to do. Take the time, capture your lessons learned, and improve your strategies.
What else is missing here? Please contribute your own 2.0 strategies in comments below:
Prev
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