Tim is leading a panel composed of Andrew Anker, Brian Behlendorf, Bob Morgan, and Allan Vermeulen.
Tim noticed that the best open source projects are architected for participation. Brian gives an overview of what makes Apache work: transparency is very important, so are general APIs (well known connection points) so that folks can build modules as separate projects.
Tim asks Andrew about how this affect's Andrew's business. What made blogs work was RSS: content and style sepration. Aggregators are big. They let you read many, many blogs. "Blogs are Geocities 2.0" (Are you listening Yahoo folks?!)
Tim asks about Amazon.com. Amazon is a technology company, unlike other retail operations. They've been thinking along those lines. What makes it easy for customers to get all the info they want?
Tim asks for figures but Amazon doesn't have numbers handy. Over 500,000 associates. Over 65,000 using Web Services.
Ofoto has nearly a billion images.
Photo sharing obstacles? Lack of interop. Too much friction. Users need it to be easier.
Tim asks about where the business advantage is in participation. APIs and plugins matter in software--they're a form of participation. A Wiki is a great example, since anyone can edit. Trust then starts to matter a lot.
Walled gardens are doomed to fail. People want to contribute. But what makes them willing to contribute?
Brian tells story about Jazz fans, Nora Jones, and Blue Note Records web site forums. The execs took the site contents down because they weren't happy. So the bad mouthed the label instead of her music.
Peoople optimize for the tools you give them. Today that means linking. And linking is authority today. But there's some gaming going on too. Politics often gets in the way.
Amazon doesn't worry much about negative reviews. But giving users ALL the informaiton, they're more apt to shop there over the long haul. Blue Note needed a community manager.
Software has names (people) attached to it nowadays. There's status.
Tim just called me a cross-over from Open Source to the Blog world.
Blogging is working the enterprise where KM failed.
Photo sharing is used by professionals too: real estate agents, for example.
Amazon uses MT internally.
Question about community longevity. Can communities outlive games, for example?There are different types of community, some specific and some general. What about explicit vs. implicit.
A former RedHat guy who did community management. RedHat management got blogs on the site but almost didn't turn on comments and they nuked posts at one point. Sun doesn't have comments. Where do companies draw the line? Should companies control the message on their own turf? Shutting that stuff off just means it'll happen elsewhere. Tim: This is the future. Get used to being more open.
See Also: My Web 2.0 post archive for coverage of all the other sessions I attended.
Posted by jzawodn at October 07, 2004 02:47 PM
