I just finished writing an article about Facebook applications that gave me the opportunity to test a large number of the less-used apps on the platform. This broad view left me with some new insights into what makes a good Facebook application (as opposed to a mediocre or crappy one, and believe me, there are a lot of those).

If you’re thinking about building a Facebook app, here are 10 things you can do to make sure that yours stands out from the crowd:

1) Make it fun. Whether you’re building a game or a tool, always keep in mind that the people who are using Facebook are usually doing so on their free time. Most of them are under 35. Most of them are using Facebook for entertainment. So keep things fun. FedEx did a great job of this when they built Launch a Package, which lets users send each other packages - using a springy slingshot. Sending a package via a slingshot that bounces around is a whole lot more fun than sending something with the click of a button.

2) Give it some substance. The programming behind an application may be rock-solid, but without substantive content surrounding the application, it will fall flat. Every application should have at least:

• A landing page that provides clear branding
• Easy-to-understand instructions about how to use the application or play the game
• Multiple options for use, such as various “rounds” or “levels”
• Enough content to engage a user for at least 10 minutes at a given time
• A summary/analysis area that lets the user see their history with the application

3) Make it look nice. There are currently more than 27,000 applications on Facebook. Yours will have some competition. If a user is going to choose between two applications that do similar things, they will likely pick the one that is more visually appealing. Take a look at Where I’ve Been vs. Travel Buddies. Which are you more likely to use? 

4) Include music or sound effects. Facebook is a multimedia platform - take advantage of it. All of the best applications have somehow incorporated sound effects or music. This doesn’t have to be fancy - Traveler IQ Challenge uses the sound of a ticking clock very effectively.

5) Provide a takeaway. When the user has finished using the application, they want something to show for it - either a ranking, a rating or an embeddable object. If you build a game, provide a ranking system that lets users compare themselves to each other. If you build a test, give them a score. Or if you have a graphical application, give them a downloadable picture that they can use on Facebook, but elsewhere, too. This is what Sketch Me does - it turns a profile picture into a pencil drawing that can be saved and used anywhere the user chooses.

6) Make the user want to share the app (as opposed to have to share it). Because of the social nature of Facebook, applications that are developed for the platform should all be sharable. But don’t force your users to share the app to continue using it. The best applications provide an easy way to share, but don’t force users to “send this to 8 friends NOW!” If you build a good app, people will want to share it.

7) Do something different. With thousands of applications already in existence, there is a lot of duplication. But with a little creative thinking, something that already exists can be made new again. Although there are many IQ test apps on Facebook, Who Has The Biggest Brain? stands out because of its use of “size of brain” as a ranking system, and the way that it measures the four areas of intelligence in a game show format. The idea for the application doesn’t have to be completely original, as long as there is something unique that sets it apart.

8) Use solid programming. Your application has to work, and has to work seamlessly. Take the time to understand the Facebook developer platform. If you’re not a developer, work with one who is a Facebook specialist. Make sure that the programming behind the application is solid. The time that you take to really get to know the platform will pay off - this link has some fantastic resources. 

9) Put ulterior motives out of your mind. Many Facebook apps are obviously trying to get the user to do something other than use the application - click an ad, download a companion application, buy something, etc. When building an application, first make something that people will want to use. Developing a great classified application will be easier than developing a great classified application that will ALSO get someone to download your shopping app. By focusing on the first objective, you’ll create something of value that will generate a large audience - to which you can later market your shopping application.

10) Do the “addiction test.” Can someone use your application once and then never again? Not good. Do they use it once and then feel compelled to immediately use it again? That’s good. Do they want to go back and use it the next day? And the next? That’s even better. Creating an application that can be used time and again is the ultimate goal for killer Facebook app development. One way you can test for this is to ask people you know to use the app. See if they mention the word “addiction.”

Photo by Suzie T

My latest article is up now on The Industry Standard - 10 cool Facebook apps that you’ve probably never heard of - but should. The article is a profile of some Facebook applications that aren’t in the list of the top 50 most popular applications - some aren’t even in the top 20,000! But they are cool apps, and ones that are worth a look. (Thanks to @fuzzy76 for the tip about Web Presence.)

This article was really fun to write. I can see why someone would want to write for a gaming magazine! Testing games all day was a delight - especially when I can call it “work” instead of “procrastination.” While all of the applications that I reviewed in the article were really good, there were two that stood out as my favorites: Traveler IQ Challenge and Who Has The Biggest Brain? 

Let me be clear - neither of these were favorites because I was any good at them. They were just both really fun to play.

As part of the testing experience, I also came away with two show-and-tell items.

The first is a pencil-sketch drawing of my Facebook profile picture, courtesy of an application called Sketch Me. Here is the before and after:

Second is a cartoon I created with a really cool application called Pixton Comics. I don’t think that this app can really be called a Facebook application, but it is pretty fun nonetheless. (The comic is based on a real-life conversation documented here.) Be kind, this was my first-ever comic!

Tomorrow I’ll be posting an article on the top 10 tips for developing a killer Facebook app. Subscribe here or here to make sure you don’t miss it!

My latest article is up on The Industry Standard, Facebook vs. MySpace: The battle for global social network dominance. It takes a look at MySpace and Facebook, and makes a prediction about which will win in the competition for international audience.

When researching the article, I came across a lot of data about social networks in various countries, and it as interesting to see the various social networks that are winning in countries around the world. According to Comscore, “the number of worldwide visitors to social networking sites has grown 34% in the past year to 530 million, representing approximately 2 out of every 3 Internet users.”

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the social networks that are less familiar to those of us in the U.S., and the countries in which they are popular. The data comes from sources here and here.

Orkut - Brazil

9158.com - China

hi5.com - Peru, Columbia, Central America, Mongolia, Romania, Tunisia

bebo.com - Ireland, New Zealand

cyworld - South Korea

Live Journal - Russia

This is also interesting - a visual look at MySpace (blue) vs. Facebook (red) according to Compete.com.

Really, I’m sure that Twitter has more than a single problem - most companies/concepts/new technologies do. But I think that the main issue with Twitter is that it will never gain mainstream adoption until there is an easier way to get new people understanding and using the technology - a quick and easy way.

Here are the issues that I think make Twitter so difficult to start using:

1) It’s hard to explain. I have been in a number of business meetings in the past month where the topic of Twitter came up. In one meeting (about social media) the person doing the presentation hadn’t heard of Twitter and everyone in the room looked at me like I had two heads when I brought it up. In another meeting, the president of a content creation company told me that his company “Looked into Twitter, didn’t get it, and figured that it would never have mainstream adoption.” I tried to tell these people why they should care about Twitter, why people telling each other “what they’re doing” in 140 characters or less was important, but they just didn’t get it. And I’m sure that was my fault because I did a terrible job explaining. There MUST be a better way to explain. I think this video was awesome and helpful, but what about when I don’t have a video handy?

2) There is no “key selling proposition.” Lovers of Twitter will tell me that I am crazy, that Twitter is so great because it does so many things for so many people. But I would tell you that to get mainstream adoption, it needs a key selling proposition. How do I get people to use Facebook? I tell them that it’s a low-key way to connect with friends I’ve lost touch with (and I give examples). How do I get people to use Tumblr? I explain how I can link to things and pictures and stories and all the stuff that I find interesting on the Web and that I can set it up in about 1 minute.

I don’t have ONE good way to get people to start using Twitter. Some people say that they get immediate and great input on restaurants when they are traveling. Others say that they use it when they’re lost or to get answers to questions. But I haven’t effectively used Twitter in any of those ways (although I’ve tried). I am not sure if that is because you have to have a certain number of people following you, a certain level of celebrity within the group that is following you, or if you actually need to know the people in your Twitter network, but those uses clearly don’t work for everyone. I am left without a great way to convince everyone that I know that they should use Twitter (and people I know using Twitter would be the one way that the service would actually begin to be extremely useful to me).

3) People sign up and then leave. This almost happened to me. I started using Twitter, had a bad experience, left, came back and managed to stick with it (although I’m hardly a Twitter power-user.) Here’s my embarrassing story:

I started using Twitter on October 18, 2007, with this Tweet: “Joining twitter, trying to figure out how it works” 

My fourth Tweet was this: “There’s never been a better time to do a startup http://www.scribemedia.org/…” Followed quickly by my fifth Tweet: “I should get a tatoo”

Of course, I meant for my fifth post to be connected to the fourth post, but I got tripped up by the 140 character limit. So I quickly went in to try to delete the fifth post and couldn’t - there’s no delete. So then I was horrified because I was trying to establish my professional Internet presence and not only did my Tweet say “I should get a tatoo” but I didn’t even spell tattoo correctly. I quickly made a couple of other posts in hopes of covering up the embarrassing post, and then bailed.

I came back again on January 4, 2008, with this message: “Trying Twitter again. I wish I could get into it.”

My next Tweet: “about to throw twitter out the window. just tried to send a direct message, dont think it worked. grrrr ”

Thank God for @tylerwillis who quickly replied “it worked if it was the one to me.” He might have saved my Twitter life. I kept going.

Everyone was writing about Twitter. I knew that I had to figure out how to use it, but I was struggling. I personally knew only one person who used Twitter. My friends (mostly non-techies) and business colleagues (behind in Web 2.0) weren’t using it. So I started “following” people, just in an attempt to see how Twitter worked. I currently follow 585 people, most of whom I started following on January 4th or 5th.

Then I started getting input from people about how I shouldn’t follow so many people and how I was incorrectly using Twitter. This is a gem that I received that day (via email):

“Saw you follow me on twitter, and you seem really interesting but.. can I respectfully refer you to this document http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/twitter-guide/ . ( i.e #3). Sorry just telling it like it is :-(

I had no idea what this guy (who I didn’t know) was talking about. I went to the link and this is what the link said:

Twitter Guide Part #3: Using Twitter Properly

So I figured that I made a mistake, that I broke some “Twitetiquette” but I had no idea what. So I wrote my new email buddy back to ask what my issue was. This is what he told me in reply:

“I know from your blogs that you are a top person. intelligent and info source. When I looked at your twitter follow I checked it out and simply you were not someone I would want to follow. … Bottom line, would you want to read and follow your own twitter posts? Maybe you would? …

With twitter you get flooded with feeds and if feeds are pointless crap, then people don’t have the time to follow them, unless they already know and are interested in the pointless crap of that person….

I can only tell you that when I looked at your twitters, you offered me “nothing” of interest.”

OUCH. I was a brand-new Twitter user being shown the door for writing “pointless crap” on Twitter.

I clearly am someone of outstanding stubbornness (or stupidity) because I stuck with Twitter. And I still use it, although not as much as some people. But I have a feeling that this experience that I had, this barrier to entry that was almost impossible to overcome, is probably holding people back from adoption.

When I went through the phase (lasting 2 days) of trying to add a lot of people at once, I had some strategies. One of those was to add all the people named “Melissa.” I typed the name into the search box and found that most people named Melissa have quit on Twitter after joining. Here’s the “Recently” timeframes of the first 19 Melissa’s that show up:

2 days ago
about 1 year ago
7 months ago
11 months ago
about 1 year ago
about 1 year ago
protected
3 months ago
15 hours ago
11 months ago
protected
9 months ago
10 months ago
protected
21 days ago
9 months ago
9 months ago
4 months ago
13 hours ago

If I consider “current” Twitter users as anyone who has sent a message in the past month, and I eliminate the Melissa’s who have protected updates, only 3 out of 16 (19%) are still current users of Twitter. I thought this might be an issue between female/male users of Twitter, so I did the same thing with my husband’s name (Christopher). I found this:

about 1 year ago
5 months ago
3 days ago
8 months ago
10 months ago
19 days ago
protected
2 days ago
20 days ago
about 1 year ago
7 months ago
2 hours ago
about 1 year ago
protected
about 1 year ago
11 months ago
10 months ago
10 months ago
protected

The results were a little better - 5 out of 16 (31%) were recent Twitter users. But in my unscientific study, there is clearly a huge drop off from the number of people who sign up to Twitter compared to the number of people who continue to use the service.

4) The people who don’t use Twitter don’t understand the language of it. Anyone who reads this post who doesn’t use Twitter will not know the following terms and what they mean to Twitter or how to use them:

@mchang16 (the @ symbol is the biggest because it’s all over Twitter, and not intuitive)
Follow
Tweet
Twitetiquette
Recently

Something needs to be done to make it easier to get people to use Twitter, and to get them to stick around to learn how to use (and keep using) it after signing up. If that doesn’t happen, there will be no widespread future for the service.

Follow me on Twitter (if you dare!) @mchang16.

(As a footnote to this story, my email buddy and I became Facebook friends, although he still doesn’t follow me on Twitter.)

My most recent article for The Industry Standard just went up – How MySpace Music could beat iTunes. If you’re interested, please give it a read!

The music industry is something that I’m really thinking about lately with the launch of Fat J Records and signing Cara Austin – so the recent news about iTunes overtaking Wal-Mart and MySpace Music’s launch are both of great interest to me. And there are a lot of things about the MySpace vs. iTunes topic that I didn’t have space to include in my article for The Standard. So I thought I would just list them here, kind-of stream-of-thought.

MySpace Music can beat iTunes by supporting musicians. This is the premise of the article that I wrote for The Standard. Basically, I think that if MySpace Music provides data about the fans that purchase music, ticket and merchandise to the musicians, it can beat iTunes. Go read the article for the whole argument.

CDBaby is a model of how MySpace Music could work. CDBaby is an unbelievable music retailer that caters only to independent artists. And this is what its privacy policy says (these points are directed at buyers who visit the site):

“Only the musician whose music you buy will know who you are. If you don’t even want the musician to know about you, just say so at the bottom of your order form.”

I use CDBaby to sell CDs for Cara Austin, and so far, NOT ONE person has requested that CDBaby withhold their contact information. This is because people who go so far as to buy a CD are usually fans - and they don’t mind the band or artist being able to contact them again in the future.  According to the company’s Website, CDBaby has sold 4,202,465 CDs to customers resulting in $71,482,212 paid directly to the artists.

iTunes is a store, MySpace is a community. I read this quote from someone involved in the deal, and this is a really important point. While there are millions of people who buy music from iTunes, the MySpace community that uses MySpace to discover new artists and read about what they are up to, will be a powerful environment for making a purchase. With the possibility of revenue coming from MySpace, artists will do even more to make sure that their pages are attractive, interesting and compelling. And the community of music on that site is going to get stronger and stronger. Imagine 5 million musicians adding content, video, new songs and new song versions - this is going to be incredibly powerful and impossible for iTunes to rival.

Facebook’s chance to win in this space is shrinking by the minute. Facebook is gaining on MySpace in the social networking space, but Facebook’s support of music is, well, pathetic. They are going to have one shot to try to release a music platform that users will like (and use) but it’s not looking good. With MySpace’s announcement of the support of three of the four major labels, one possibility is that Facebook already has the support of the fourth (but that is highly unlikely and just speculative on my part).

International will be huge. I read that MySpace Music isn’t going to be able to distribute music internationally yet. What? What is the licensing issue with that? My suggestion – sign up all the indies asap and start selling to Japan, England, Australia, and everywhere else that has an appetite for U.S. music immediately – or else that could be a place that MySpace Music will be vulnerable.

DRM free matters, but won’t be the thing that wins it for MySpace. As part of the announcement, MySpace announced that they music that is sold from its music store will be DRM-free. (DRM=Digital Rights Management, it is the protection that Apple places on its files that prevents people from being able to share them.) This is a big deal, but not the biggest, as this will just (finally) compel Apple to follow suit with iTunes.

There is still a perception issue that could cause MySpace some serious problems. MySpace has kind of a seedy image. The site’s design is fairly unattractive, and it’s hard to navigate the social network without running into something that borders on pornography or spam. The company is going to have to do battle against that perception to win back people who have become disillusioned by previous negative experiences with MySpace.

Can Apple prevent iPods from using this service? Technically, I’m not sure if there is a way for Apple to limit the sites from which the iPod can download music, but if users are unable to load music from MySpace Music to their iPods, that would be a serious setback to MySpace. It also would likely cause a revolt among iPod users against Apple, but it would still be a hiccup in the acceptance of the service.

I don’t yet have an opinion about whether FriendFeed is good, bad or indifferent (although I know there are a lot of other people who do). I joined yesterday and very few people who I “know” are using it, so I didn’t take a long time looking it over just yet. But what I did see is this potential issue of many feeds feeding the same thing (via my Facebook mini-feed):

It appears that the way I set things up, my blog is updating my Tumblr is updating my Twitter. And all are updating FriendFeed, which is updating Facebook…this could get ugly. Couldn’t it? And I am not even using all of the social networks. But I imagine that the same thing would happen if I update Flickr - or any other service that I use that feeds to multiple sites.

How do I manage all the feeds that are feeding and cross-feeding everywhere? I don’t think that this is really a FriendFeed problem, per se, it just brought the issue to light for me.

Last night I attended the Web Innovators Group (Webinno) meeting in Boston. It was the 16th meeting put on by the group (the first that I attended) and it was packed out!
Honestly, I thought it would be a smaller meeting with fewer people, but there were probably somewhere around 500+ people in attendance. It was definitely standing room only when the presentations were happening. (This picture is just one corner of the room, it looked like this everywhere.)

The way that the meeting worked was that there were three featured companies (called “Main Dish Presentations”) who presented for about 5-10 minutes each and answered two questions after they finished. This was then followed by six highlighted companies (called “Side Dish Presentations”) who each pitched their products for 30 seconds.

The Main Dish presenters were:

Urban Interactive
“Provides a platform that creates mixed-reality mobile adventures, transforming a cell phone into a modern-day Dick Tracy watch. Users download missions to complete throughout a city, bringing them closer to their surroundings, heritage, local events and neighbors.”

My take: I think that Urban Interactive is a really cool idea, and after a quick look at the program, I was most excited to see this presentation. It is obvious that a lot of time has been spent on the interface to make it look very “spy ready” and the technology seemed to function well, at least the part that was demonstrated.

The primary issue that I see with this product is that it seems like it would be hard to set up new adventures. For example, a mission at the Boston Museum of Science was used as the demo adventure. The very first step in the mission was to find the museum, and then go to the front desk and ask for a code. This, in itself, means that every employee at the Museum of Science would need to be trained about this program and how it works, because they’ll get a ton of questions. Or, (and I think that this is how they do it), the adventures would only be able to be “taken” on a schedule, in which case, Urban Interactive employees (or Boston Improv actors) could participate and help the adventurers along. This will severely limit the usage of the product.

To the company’s credit, its next plan is to work on the ability for users to create their own missions, but until they get over this hurdle, I don’t expect that the product will be able to get any kind of critical mass.

Like I said, I really like this idea, so I’m pulling for this one to work. I think for it to succed, they need to scale back a bit on trying to do everything, and focus on one core business (tour operators, museums, schools or corporations, pick one), just until they get things off the ground.

SpotScout
“We believe that, if given the right tools, individuals and communities can solve their own parking problems by creating virtual markets for parking information. Whether a parking garage, a private space, or a space on the street, our software enables space seekers to acquire timely information on space availability before arriving at their destinations.”

My take: The presenter described this company as “kind of an eBay for parking spaces,” and I think that SpotScout is a great concept and will be useful in cities where it can be tough to find parking (New York, San Francisco, Boston). It appears that the service hasn’t yet launched, so it’s tough to see how many people will use it and how it will work when it goes live. But I’m betting that this product will be a success. I have had to look for parking in Boston and driven around and around and around…looking at many empty parking lots that businesses don’t use at night but have “No Parking, Tow Zone” signs posted on them. Just think of the utility for drivers -and the extra cash for businesses - that could result from this product. Also, I would definitely use SpotScout if I could make a reservation in a parking garage for a Red Sox game, for example. I would be able to lock in my price and my spot, and I wouldn’t have to get to the game three hours early to park.

As long as SpotScout is able to figure out how to get the local garages involved so that they know what SpotScout is and how to use it, and as long as they are able to sign up enough users so that there are people both providing spots and telling each other when they’re coming and going, I think that this will be a huge hit. If it is a success, I can imagine someone driving around the city all day, parking at meters when they find an open one, and then posting to SpotScout their departure information, to make some extra cash. This was the best of the Main Dish presentations.

MakeMeSustainable
“The Facebook application provides creative ways to fight global warming. It engages users with tools to reduce their carbon footprint and ties in competition and community components that enable them to visualize their larger impact.”

My take: I should start up by saying that I’m not a huge Facebook user. I have an account, I check it occassionally, and I use it to talk to my friends, but I am by no means a super-user. Perhaps because of that, MakeMeSustainable just doesn’t thrill me. I appreciate the concept behind it - getting users to reduce their carbon footprint -and the execution of the product is actually great (very well-designed, charts, graphs, etc.), but I just don’t see this being a tool that would get someone to take long-term action. It might be cool for awhile, but will it really make a difference?

I think that the company’s smartest move is the partnership that they’re making with various musicians - and if they can tap into that type of super-star fan base, as well as associate their brand with people like Dave Matthews, they might have a shot.

Next came the Side Dish Presenters, and I was much more impressed with many of these products and concepts. Remember, they only presented for 30 seconds, so I only got limited information.

Survol
“Mobile platform for fast effortless use of Web sites, feeds, search results and widgets”

My take: The presenter said that this was “a better way to access the Web on any mobile phone,” but I have to be honest, after listening for 30 seconds I have no idea what Survol is and what it does. Their Web site was not much help.

Glassbooth
“Do you know where the candidates stand on the issues? Glassbooth is an innovative website that pairs a massive database of information on the presidential candidates with an inviting design for exploration. Users tell the site which issues they think are important, respond to a series of statements based on that input, and find out which presidential candidate most closely aligns with their views and why.”

My take: I love this concept, and from the user’s perspective, I really like that Glassbooth is a non-profit and therefore not aligned with any commercial biases or candidates. I just went through the site and I found the user experience to be excellent. It was helpful to have the issues lined up (with links to articles about the topics so I could read up on things that I am not totally sure about), and at the end of the survey, along with a suggestion of what candidate mostly aligns with my beliefs, I could find out details about what each of the candidates’ positions are on each of the issues, based on what they have said in the past and their voting history. This was a cool site and I highly recommend it for anyone who is still trying to figure out what candidate is going to get their vote.

Buildium
“Whether you’re a professional property manager, condo owner or a member of an HOA, Buildium has a property management solution to meet your needs.”

My take: I really liked this product, as well. The presenter told a compelling story about a guy who was in charge of his condo association and how he needed tools to help him manage the budgets, bills, planning and other stuff for that role. Since I have heard many stories about condo associations and the difficulty of being involved in them, it seems like Buildium would help. Note, however, that I haven’t seen these tools in action. I just like the concept.

MyHappyPlanet
“The leader in social networking for language learning and cultural exchange. We provide a platform for language learners to improve their foreign language skills through peer-to-peer learning and user-generated learning materials.”

My take: MyHappyPlanet is one of those ideas that makes you say “why didn’t I think of that?” The basic premise is that there are people all over the world who are trying to learn languages, so the site lets them partner up and practice with each other. So, for example, I’m in the U.S. and I am a native English speaker, and I want to learn Spanish. The site lets me partner with someone in Spain who is trying to learn English to practice. This is such a great idea, and I could see it spinning out lots of other products, educational and commercial (globalization. localization and translation services, especially). It also helps that this site already has 80K-100K users.

Socrato
“A Web-based test preparation and assessment platform. Helps users quickly identify their strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to focus on the right areas faster, saving study time.”

My take: Basically, Socrato is a test preparation and learning tool that is trying to help students study better for standardized tests. This product didn’t pique my interest particularly, but I like the concept. 

Mofuse
“A hosted mobile site creation application geared toward content publishers such as bloggers. Using the MoFuse application, anyone can create a mobile-friendly version of their website or blog in just a few minutes.”

My take: I didn’t get a good sense of Mofuse from the presentation, and it left me feeling a bit like it was irrelevant. My site looks great on the iPhone, afterall, and my bet is that all mobile Web browsing is all heading in that direction.

The next Web Innovators Group meeting is in Boston on April 2nd.

Web 2.0 is a term that has existed since 2004. The phrase is now widely used by anyone who works on or with the Internet, but Web 2.0 is one of those expressions that many business people outside the Internet industry only “sort-of” understand.

To understand Web 2.0, you first have to be familiar with Web 1.0. Web 1.0 is the Web as it existed up to and immediately after the Internet bubble burst in 2000. Web 1.0 followed the “broadcast model,” meaning that any content that existed on the Web was one-way - the content was written and published by the author (a company or an individual) for the reader. The best way of understanding the broadcast model is: “We talk, you listen.” There are still many sites that are Web 1.0, including most corporate and informational Web sites. Examples include Weather.com and GM.

Web 2.0 was born when the broadcast model started to change to a conversational model.

The hallmarks of Web 2.0 are conversations and user-generated content. Sites that provide technology platforms that allow users to interact and to contribute content are Web 2.0 sites. Examples include Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube and blogs - these sites provide the technology that lets users submit content and interact with each other in various ways, such as by submitting photos and videos, chatting or by commenting on on each others content.

Today, many Web 1.0 sites are moving toward Web 2.0 by launching Web 2.0 features. These sites publish content, but solicit a response from users to further enhance the conversation. For example, retail sites such as Walmart and Target now allow visitors to post reviews of products. Traditional publishing companies like the NY Times have opened up their articles for comments and have discussion areas to facilitate reader interactions.

The following are some of the most useful articles you can read to find out more about Web 2.0:

• What is Web 2.0- This article by Tim O’Reilly is often sourced as the definitive treatise on Web 2.0.
• Web 2.0 - This 2005 article was written by Paul Graham, and is a very good explanation of Web 2.0.
• What is Web 2.0- This 2006 documentary from TechCrunch features Editor Michael Arrington’s interviews with start-up CEOs about Web 2.0. (24 Minutes). The CEO’s definitions of Web 2.0 really illustrate why this term is so difficult to pin down and how everyone defines it a little differently (around minute 5).
• Web 2.0- The Wikipedia entry about Web 2.0.
• Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0 - This post will help you understand the differences between 1.0 and 2.0.

How big is the World Wide Web in 2007? The answer to that question is hard to pin down, to say the least. I can find little reliable data since a report published by Berkeley in 2003 (at that time the Web had 170 terabytes of information, 17x the size of the Library of Congress), and an analysis done by Antonio Guilli in 2005 placing the number at 11.5 billion Web pages. The most recent data that I could find was an article from Pandia from February 2007 indicating that the size of the World Wide Web is somewhere between 15 and 30 billion pages, probably closer to 30 billion.

My point? The Web is big. Huge. And the best way that I know how to keep up with the new information that is being produced about my brands on a daily basis is to use Google Alerts.

This is a simple tool to use, and in my opinion, every professional up and down an organization should be using it. To set it up, take the following steps:

1. Go to the Google news home page.
2. Click the icon in the left-hand column that says “News alerts.”
3. Enter the search terms that you want to track. I recommend tracking your company name and your personal name at the very minimum.
4. In the “type” field, select “comprehensive” - this will track the Web, news, blogs, groups and all the information that Google has indexed.
5. How often depends on your needs. I recommend once-per-day, but if you are really a stickler for finding out information more quickly, you could select “as it happens.” The only warning about that setting is that you’ll be getting multiple notifications per day and it could quickly overwhelm your inbox depending on how many alerts you set up.
6. Click “create alert.”
7. In the past I needed to confirm my alerts - I no longer need to do that, but I’m not sure if that is because I am using a Gmail account, because I have set up so many news alerts in the past, or because Google has done away with the confirmation step. So just be aware that you may have to confirm your subscriptions (or you may not).

That’s it! You’ll now start getting notifications to your inbox. You can remove subscriptions by following the links that are in each email, and Google has created a page to manage alerts that will let you see all your notifications in one place and add and remove them easily.

That covers the how, but a quick word on the why you should do this. The primary reason to set up alerts is obvious - if you are the owner or an executive of a company or work in the PR department, it is your responsibility to monitor your brands. This is the easiest, least-intensive way to make sure that you are up-to-date on what people are saying about your company. But there are some other benefits that you might not realize:

- You will know what is going on with your company. If you’re an executive, you are likely privy to information before the rest of the employees, so this might not apply to you as much as to the non-executive who isn’t kept up-to-speed. It’s possible that by monitoring your company’s alerts, you’ll find out about acquisitions, financials, layoffs and even scandals before the rest of your colleagues. This happened famously at New York Times Digital where employees found out about layoffs before they were announced because of an article that was published in the New York Times.

- You will make sure that a bad image of you isn’t being leaked to the public. By keeping tabs on your personal brand (ie, your name) you will make sure that you know what people are saying about you and how you are being portrayed on the Web. Think that your MySpace page won’t show up in a Google search? Think again. By monitoring my alerts with my maiden name (Melissa Reyen), I found out that I am among the record holders for Harvard softball for most times grounded into a double play. Slightly embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as this.

- You will look smart. If you set up alerts to monitor not only your company, but also your competitors and the product or service that your company produces, you will be able to stay on the cutting-edge of the news for your industry. When you find out a particularly juicy tidbit, you can email your colleagues, who will think that you are super-smart and insightful for knowing this information, even though it was sent directly to you from Google.

- You can be proactive. If you find out that some unfortunate information is being spread about your company, you can work to to avert the problem and end up looking like a hero. When I worked at Ziff Davis, we were often accused of spamming people - anyone who works at a publishing company knows that this is a fairly regular occurrence, not because we were spamming, but because there are humans involved in the unsubscribe process and things occasionally go wrong. This happened, and my colleague Mary Hart was on the case quickly to respond to a blogger who was ranting. Her actions immediately turned the rant into praise for the exemplary customer service that she provided.

Bottom line: If you don’t have Google Alerts set up, do it today. The small amount of effort will be well worth it.

Last week, I posted my first video to YouTube. Like most videos that are uploaded to the site, mine was for friends, a silly inside joke wishing my friend Kim a happy birthday in a public and embarrassing manner.

But after posting the video - which was incredibly easy to do - I started wondering how many people have uploaded videos to YouTube since the site was founded in February 2005. It’s difficult to find stats about YouTube because the company (owned by Google) doesn’t often release information on its users, but this Reuters article from July 2006 claims that, when the article was written, 65,000 videos were being posted to the site per day. If that number is accurate, it’s also likely to be much higher by now. (Although another more recent article from TechCrunch estimates that the number of videos being uploaded to the site daily is between 10,000 and 65,000.)

Some more stats - Compete.com shows that the number of people visiting YouTube is 49,532,320, up 4.5% this month and 94% this year, placing the site’s audience more than double Facebook’s (24,264,850), and gaining on MySpace’s (65,210,800). And that Reuters article claims that in 2006, visitors were watching more than 100 million videos per day on YouTube - again, that figure has likely soared in the past year and a half.

From these stats, I think it’s safe to say that online video is huge - and remember these numbers are from YouTube alone. There are many other online video sites that are popular and gaining audience (Hulu comes to mind).

But all this online video watching isn’t going to happen without consequences, according to the experts. Recent and well-reported (see stories here, here, here and here) research from Nemertes Research shows that by the year 2010, there could be serious slow-downs in the Internet from all the bandwidth demands unless infrastructure is boosted to keep up. According to the report, Nemertes estimates “the financial investment required by access providers to bridge the gap between demand and capacity ranges from $42 billion to $55 billion, or roughly 60%-70% more than service providers currently plan to invest.”

The bandwidth demands on the Internet’s infrastructure are clearly rising. But the sky is not falling. Although you would think it just might be from the recent coverage that this research has sparked:

Internet Might Collapse in 2010
Internet to go down in 2010?

And my personal favorite:

Back to Soup Cans and String?

Does this remind anyone of anything, like, maybe a technology issue that was supposed to cripple business a decade ago? To me, this is really starting to sound a lot like Y2K.

Granted, the coverage will have to continue for months and the fear, uncertainty and doubt will have to rise significantly to reach Y2K levels. But in its early stages, the rumblings are the same. And I would like to suggest that we will see the same result.

The Nemertes report claims that to avert the crisis, an extra $42 billion to $55 billion needs to be invested into the infrastructure of the Internet. To put this in context, in preparation for Y2K, “the United States government spent $8.8 billion dollars on Y2K fixes. Private U.S. businesses shelled out an estimated $100 billion dollars to prepare for the bug,” according to an article by CNN.

There is money to be spent when it’s needed. And there is time to correct these issues before they cause us to revert back to soup cans and string. Even the folks sponsoring the research agree. As Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) co-Chairman Larry Irving told USA Today:

“We’re not trying to play Paul Revere and say that the Internet’s going to fall. If we make the investments we need, then people will have the Internet experience that they want and deserve.”