Do you have an e-mail account in gmail? I am pretty sure you have! And if you have been using it for few years now, then everyone knows that you did not open that account by going to gmail.com and clicking on sign up link as you can do today. Instead, on of your friends invited you to. Before your friend invited you to, how many times did you see an "ad" of gmail? Not even once. Correct? And you were still tempted to ask your friend to send an invitation (Yes, many many people did that - they kind of "reserved" an invitation in advance with their friends. So it became like - 'hey if you get more "invitations to invite" then send me one immediately').
Gmail opened up itself for signing up directly last year. But by that time, almost every net surfer on this Earth (and on Mars - if there is a life there!) had a gmail account.
Have you seen advertisements for AOL Mail? Have you seen advertisements for Yahoo Mail? Yes, you have (at least in India!). But you haven't seen any ad for GMail yet, right?
Okay, another question, how much the AOL Mail ads - which has been advertising recently a lot with their fancy caption "There's a little bit of AOL in me" - has tempted you to go and open an email account in AOL.in? I am very sure many of you haven't even tried it, nor even though about it as soon as the 15 seconds ad ended. But why were you tempted to open an account in Gmail even when you did never hear it from any "media" other than your friend's mouth?
Now, if you understand what I am saying then you must realize what I mean. C'mon, I am not a marketing guru, neither am I trying to be one. In fact I am talking of quite a techie stuff.
What I just discussed is "Viral marketing". Spread your product like a "virus". Virus needs no advertisements. No "enforced media". It find a medium of its own. It spreads on its own. And it takes along everyone with itself. When you make a product, make it spread like a virus, yes, virus. Sounds wonderful, isn't it? But not as easy. You think you can simply do that by "not letting the user's singing up" - No, A BIG NO.(Expand\Collapse...)
This is an approach which has fascinated me so much that i could not resist putting this down in my blog. And trust me - the approach I am talking of is not just the "viral marketing". In fact viral marketing is just one of the many ideas that the approach is trying to develop. There are many many more like that. "Data is next intel inside". "User's are co-developers of the system". "The more user's you have for your system, the more efficient, scalable and performing your system becomes" (and you though, more users meant heavy duty servers and bandwidth problems? Ah, move on man, world is changing), "Start from the edge and not the center", "Look at the tail and not the head" - are one of the many ideas that this approach talks of. And all of them have the same underlying idea - STOP PUBLISHING AND START DEVELOPING. Users are Developers!
And the approach is not from just another guy, its an approach whole world is moving towards. It's an approach which many software services these days are using. Its an approach which many people are utilizing the benefits of through those software services.
Its an approach which you're seeing implemented - right here right now - when you are browsing through my blog and reading my posts (and for that matter any one Else's).
Have you used Encarta Encyclopedia or Britannica? Have you used Bookmarks or Favorites toolbar to keep track of your favorite websites? Have you seen those banner ads at Yahoo mail, rediff or moneycontrol.com? Have you used Rapidshare, megaupload or eazyupload for file sharing?
If answer to any of these is Yes, then it is NOT what I am talking about. Yes, it is NOT. Mind that please!
Have you used wikipedia? Have you used wikimapia? Do you know what are RSS feeds? Have you heard the term "permalink"? You would probably know what is "Google AdSense"? Have you heard, seen or used Kazaa? or BitTorrent?
If answer to any of these is yes, then this is EXACTLY what the approach I am talking of talks about. But hey, wait, its not just the new technologies or the stuff, there's more to it. There is a lot more to it. There is a whole new world evolving. Yes, a whole new world.
The approach is called "Web 2.0"
If you have not heard this term before and if you are a techie, then you must and must read this article by Tim O'Rielly.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=1
And if you're not going to read this, you are missing something.
Let me clarify that its not a technical article. All it is - is an approach. First few paragraphs (or if you're dumb enough then first few pages) would lead you to nowhere - probably you won't understand as much you would normally expect to. But carry on buddy, you'll find it far more interesting when you start understanding it.
Come out of the world of "dumb coding" and start thinking. Start reading. Start realizing. And don't stop yourself at the first para or the page. Do not stop before you have finished the third page.
And if you don't follow what is being said after you've finished the third page, then the world of software is not for you. Go and look at some other way.. Go and mercilessly commit a suicide...
4 comments:
hey by end of the blog i thought you will summarize what you want to say or wht you want us to know but was it all about reading an article ?????
i should have guessed it ..... dot net again
Waise yeh maine pahle bhi socha tha ki agar gmail aur orkut only by invitation hai to phr woh itna popular kyun hai... Ek hi reason samajh main aaya ki inhone apna brand name use kiya aur us brand ke peeche solidly founded product diya hai ... To approach kaisa bhi ho . us approach ke peeche ek achha product hona chahiye nahin to koi labh nahin
@ashish
You're right to a good extent, but there's still more to it.
What I understand from the article, is that Web 2.0 software make its users a participators in the development of the software itself. And to participate in this development user's do not need to be techies - that's the best part.
I can best explain this by the comparison I do between encarta and weekipedia.
If Microsoft has to release a new version of encarta encyclopedia, it has do gather new information from various sources. It's researchers will spend really huge time in gathering and classifying this information. It'll have to go through a intense identify-build-release cycle. And finally what comes out to you is a highly priced rigid software which works the way "Microsoft wants (with some study on how users want it)" and not the way "you want"
On the contrary, what wikipedia has done is build a software that lets its users add the content. All wikipedia has done is make a robust software that can handle "data" and more or less- only data.
Now its the users who are adding information every single day. And at the end of day its free. And it has loads of information - so much that Microsoft will take an era to incorporate in encarta. Moreover, you don't have to wait for another release of Encarta to see new topics in your encyclopedia. Its added every single day by thousands of users worldwide on a variety of topics.
In this sense, users are essentially the developers of the system. Users participate in building a software. And with thousands of users looking at it, bugs and errors do get trapped. This is one of the comparisons the O'Rielly article has done. You'll find many more like that - many which you've not realized yet is happening.
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