Anthony Bradley

Dion Hinchcliffe has an excellent post “50 Essential Strategies For Creating A Successful Web 2.0 Product” directed at the vendor side of Web 2.0. However many of the points are very salient for enterprises looking to deliver (build, buy, or join) a business relevant social application. Let’s do some quick tailoring of his list (you will need his list in front of you because I will not be posting it all here).

The most relevant points are 1-4 (but change prototype to initial implementation – i.e., don’t “test” on the community), 6, 8, 15, 16 and 17 on steroids (see below), 18 modified (see below), 19-21, 25, 27, 30, 33-38, 41 (business goals rather than business model), 43 (should be number 1), 44-50.

Some of these (like back-up) are obvious “ilities” that must be considered for any application implementation but do merit special attention in the context of social applications.

Number 16 is only part of the picture. Enterprises should be pursuing an Enterprise Information Discovery strategy rather than just an Enterprise Search Strategy. I talk about the 5 Ss of information discovery (Search, Sort, Subscribe, Social, and Surf). This is a more comprehensive approach to finding the good stuff.

Number 17 is is absolutely mandatory. If it isn’t 2 way then it isn’t 2.0. In fact the more unbalanced the contribution the more Web 2.0 the application is (meaning that the vast majority of the value should come from the community not the steward organization).

I would spin number 18 differently for enterprise social applications to focus on building an ecosystem rather than delivering a single product.

Most of these essentials fit nicely in my PLANT SEEDS framework for designing social applications (report available to subscribers or for a fee).

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Category: social applications     Tags: design, social applications

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