Web 2.0 Sites Must Answer Three Questions

To achieve popularity, Web 2.0 websites like Facebook, MySpace, Amazon, Twitter, etc. must answer these three questions simply and quickly:

1. How does it work?
2. Do you use it?
3. Do you like it and why?

If a Web 2.0 website can't answer these questions succinctly, users won't get it and won't join. In other words, a Web 2.0 website must "read quickly". The site must be intuitive and any sticky points explained within a few seconds of a user landing on the site's home page. This is why so many Web 2.0 sites have video "tours" that show what they do.

Twitter's tour is a perfect example. Though explaining the benefit of 140-character micro-blogging might be a tough sell for some, the Twitter crew uses clever animation to keep a user's attention through its demo, which is somewhat lengthy for a Web 2.0 tour.

Many Web 2.0 websites answer the above three questions, but my wife's newfound addiction to Facebook is puzzling; the site is complicated, overbuilt, riddled with confusing rules, and difficult to use.

The Facebook learning curve is quite steep. My wife asked me easily two dozen questions about Facebook last night that I couldn't begin to answer, mostly because Facebook doesn't seem to follow the lingua franca and the zen of Web 2.0. In fact, Facebook's complexity and visual overstimulation remind me of early versions of Amazon.com, which was chock-full of useless functionality.

So the benefit of using Facebook must be so great that it's worth negotiating its quirks.

Here are some other Web 2.0 site tours. Blogger | Jott

Stay tuned for an upcoming post: "How to Create an Effective Website Tour".

I just lost my wife to Facebook

Surely my wife can say the same about my half dozen websites, this blog, and all the online news sources I read daily, but now it appears that turn-about is fair play: I've lost her to Facebook.

She signed up one hour ago, and has since run down the laptop battery completely. She's barely glanced up to watch the Olympics; her first break from NBC since opening ceremonies. She keeps exclaiming to long-lost classmates, "XYZ, you can be my friend!".

I'm not on Facebook, so watching her reactions has been somewhat fascinating. Obviously, "Facebook" draws its inspiration from the class yearbook and the class reunion: you get to see what your acquaintances and enemies look like now.

Slightly disturbing to me, though it doesn't bother my wife, is seeing how many of our friends are on Facebook already. It feels a little like a class reunion I wasn't invited to or a club that I'm not a part of. Are all our friends happily chatting away online while I'm busy polishing my resume on LinkedIn? I'm not sure which is more lame.

Just now, my wife: "Now I have two friends! This is just like junior high - I just want so much for everyone to be my friend!"

Congress passes law to make toys safer

In early August, The New York Times editorial page took a rare opportunity to praise Congress for passing legislation that would:

• ban lead in toys intended for children under the age of 12
• require safety testing of children's toys before they could be put on sale
• permanently ban three types of phthalates and temporarily ban three more types
• raise the budget for the Consumer Product Safety Commission
• mandate a database of products that consumers could complain about

The Times notes that Bush is expected to sign the bill, which passed the Senate 89-3 and the House 424-1.

This is great news. Too bad it only took 30 million recalled toys, lead poisonings, powdered asbestos, and necklaces laced with the date rape drug to inspire some Congressional action.