Ravi’s Blog

I have been reading a lot about web 2.0 and talking about it with a lot of colleagues. The wikipedia definition of web 2.0 is pretty good. For a large part though, whenever the word “web 2.0″ is tossed out, it is used to mean some personal opinion of how things should be.

Seems like there are a set of practices companies on the internet should adopt as the users on the internet get more sophisticated. These are no different than the practices that a non-internet company - for example, a restaurant - should adopt. Here’s web 2.0 defined for restaurants — restaurant 2.0

1. Build a good product that’s useful. Make good quality food that people would like to eat. Simple. Don’t make it too spicy or too bland for that matter. Make sure you use fresh ingredients. None of that stale/rotten stuff.
   
2. Don’t lock in the user. I mean, literally. Don’t try to lock the door as soon as they enter. Let users come in, look at the menu and should they not choose to order, let it be. Don’t get mad at them or yell at them. They may never come back. If you want to be really nice, provide samples of items on the menu.
3. Allow Mash-Ups. Let them bring their own wine, or ketch up if they so choose to.If they want to eat your burger with someone else’s bread, let them!
4. Architecture of Participation. If people make suggestions about your recipes, listen to them. Ask them how much salt they want or pepper. Too much pepper can hurt. Heck, don’t just stop at recipes, if they want to suggest about interior decor, or tables or music, listen to them.
5. Provide Data in variety of formats. User is the king. If they want take out, give it. Drive through is fine too. If they want to get it delivered, deliver it.

My bad humor aside, All these things are stuff that every business should be doing anyway. Creating value for consumer, not engaging in practices that piss the customer off, listening to your customers, allowing them to engage your business in a manner that is convenient to them - all these are fundamentally good business practices. Several companies in the past have applied them and succeeded.
Southwest airlines, made customer convenience and service the focus. You can bring your own food into the flight (mash ups), buy tickets online. If you missed a flight - it’s OK - they’ll let you on the next one at no extra cost. I am sure there are plenty of business publications that researched into the southwest success story.
The web 2.0 phenomenon, is just a new industry coming to terms with old realities.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 12th, 2005 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Business, Technology & Product. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.