Full Transcript:

Benjamin Higginbotham: Benjamin Higginbotham and Ed Kohler with technologyevangelist.com. It is Web 2.0 – Wednesday and before we get into that I just wanted to mention that the iTunes music store or whatever you are calling it now, just iTunes store I think isn’t it?

Ed Kohler: I believe so.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Has approved our enhanced podcast feed, that means that if you like to listen to this on your iPod or if you want to just list to it in iTunes and have chapter marks, please unsubscribe from the existing podcast feed and resubscribe to the brand new enhanced feed. Now, we are going to keep the existing feed up there for those mp3 lovers out there, but the enhanced feed is a little bit nicer, because you can jump between topics automatically. We are also welcoming those in Talkshoe, they are asking if we are going to record, we actually do this all outside of Talkshoe, we only use Talkshoe as a mechanism to do this podcast live and bring Talkshoe members into the conversation, so feel free anyone on Talkshoe to ask your question at anytime. If you like to join us live, we do this everyday at 1 o’clock-Eastern, 12-Central or 10-Pacific, although we are considering moving that time back an hour.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, we will figure something out there on the feeds scene, if you go to our feeds page on technologyevangelist.com you can find that AAC feed option there.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yup, absolutely, so let’s get into Web 2.0, today’s topic is Community Contributed Data and what the heck is the point? Ed, you are a resident SEO/SCM, Web 2.0 all things new guru, what’s the point?

Ed Kohler: Well, I thought over a time we could take a look at some different Web 2.0 topics and one aspect of Web 2.0 is community contributed information. Sites where they rely on people who visit the site to contribute what they know on a topic and there are a lot of those type of sites exist today on restaurant reviews would be an example of that. Menuism is one that we have covered before, where consumers review menu items that they have had at restaurants, so an older example would be just reviews on amazon.com, which is better known for quite a while now, but what is the point? Why do people bother contribute that information?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Exactly, I am a very busy person, why am I going go to website and then give them my knowledge for free, essentially.

Ed Kohler: So, why do you do it? You do it?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, I don’t know why I do it, it is addictive, its weird, I do it all the time now.

Ed Kohler: I think first in some cases I think there is implied reciprocity where people contribute information just based on assumption on others well as well and so they figure its kind of good karma that’s causing people to do that, because you are not getting any direct return from it and if you have already purchased the item and so just figuring that, if I contribute what I know about this DVD I bought on Amazon, someone will, through good karma review something that I want to later purchase.

Benjamin Higginbotham: OK, but that applies to tangible items, but what about things like Wikipedia, that’s a hugely successful gathering site, where I can contribute my own data, but I don’t get anything back out of there, why do people contribute there?

Ed Kohler: Yeah, Wikipedia is an interesting one, I think that people like to be experts on topics or everyone is an expert on at least something and it actually gives them a venue to prove their expertise and share their expertise with an audience that actually cares, for example there are things that I am passionate about were, I could just never talk about them with my wife, because she will fall asleep.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Oh, I know how that goes, absolutely.

Ed Kohler: Right, but that I can put that information on Wikipedia, I share with people who one day may care about it, so it’s a good venue in that sense I think.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Is that really it? I mean is it just really I want to share my information in and that’s it. Isn’t that just going to dry up at some point?

Ed Kohler: It could dry up, but I think it has a potential to start conversations where it can bring together people who with the common interest who didn’t know that two of them existed out in cyber space. So, example that would be subscribing to a page in Wikipedia that you have contributed to, so on every page of Wikipedia, if you click on the history button, it will show you every edit that’s ever been made to that page and you can also subscribe to that, because it creates an RSS feed of that history. So, if you use Google Reader or Bloglines or some program like that anyone who then comes to that page later and makes it edit, that edit will come to you, so you now are aware of someone else who exist who has enough interest in the same topic that you did, that you can now come together on that topic and eventually introduce to other and find someone new to get along with.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All right so let me ask you this Ed, I am a Web 2.0 community driven website and I am just starting, how do I start? Because, I feel like I got a chicken egg scenario here, where I got to have some content for people like to feel like they are actually doing something, but I can’t get try a content until people start doing something. So, what do I need to do to get started? How do I get that community going?

Ed Kohler: That is a one heck of a big challenge there. I think the key is you have to find the type of people who are really just, there is a certain personality that really jumps at these type of sites where they are first to sign up and they are the people who contribute a ton of information, like with Wikipedia I think its probably wasn’t one percent of the daily users of the site that make most edits to the site, so if you are going to identify those people who are already using other types of sites and bring them to your site, you have a chance to get things going off of that and then just aggregating information that already exists around the topics, so there is at least some content tied in there, so if nothing exists that’s community contributed yet, but there is still something there about that particular topic. Well I think one of the most interesting Web 2.0 sites that I have seen in a while is a gene.com, it is a genealogy Web 2.0 site where anyone can go signup with the site and just ask who you are? You just give your name and email address and pre-basic stuff and then you can add your parents, your brothers, your sisters, your children, if you have children…

Benjamin Higginbotham: It going to be somewhat viral, because if you are adding all those people as it pinging them as well as sending them an email and saying “hey you should add, what you know” also.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, that’s the thing, right. Every single time you add a person you can include their email address and so that in over time it just builds out and builds out and you can actually have it import your Gmail address book, so when you add a new cousin Mary for example, “oh, is this the Mary you are talking about, click send and she is then invited into your network. So, that has potential to really take off and I signed up with it a couple of weeks ago and added just a couple of close relatives and couple of them got pissed at me, because this things addictive, I am supposed to be working right now and I am working on this instead and so I think there are about 200 people in my genealogy network so far and its really building out, its pretty fun.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Let me ask you this, you mentioned that it is a very small percentage of people on Wikipedia going back step that actually do most of the posts, is it that same small percentage of people that move from Web 2.0 to 2.0 community site and just kind of help start them all up, are we talking about the same and call, 10,000 users, that just move from place to place and if so, what happens to the advertising model, because now we are talking about the same 10,000 people?

Ed Kohler: Well, I think there is a case, where as the first people to use the new Web 2.0 side of the day are the same people over and over and over again, so you are kind of tracking them around the web, but over a time the ones that are really successful sites where, the industry create micro communities within their Web 2.0 site where, its not, with Web 2.0 sites you really are not, its not millions of people interacting with each other, its very small groups they are interacting with each other, they have been using a massive platform. So, example that would be, a user of Twitter  for example might have 12 friends at their communicating back and forth with and there could be a 100,000 users on 200,000 users or Twitter, it doesn’t really matter, they are using it in the way they have found to be interesting their group. So, that if yes, if it can go beyond those first users to get to those small groups that’s where it gets more interesting.

Benjamin Higginbotham: The moment you mentioned Twitter, Talkshoe lit up, they like Twitter.

Ed Kohler: We like Twitter, so you can hop on, follow us if you want.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Absolutely, let me ask you this, I never really understood this and I love to understand why? I used to do forums, actual web forums for a very long time and I'd have thousands of members joining and exactly like you mentioned, you would have like certain boards you would have always the same people inside of certain boards who would never really wonder outside of that board and other areas of the site, because that’s really what interested them. Why did blogging just obliterate forums all of a sudden? What is so different about blogging or even the Web 2.0 community stuff, it doesn’t even have to be blogging, just the whole community contributed sites, just seems to wipe forums not completely of the face the planet, but they are dying species?

Ed Kohler: They really are, I used to participate in quite a few forums too as a moderator and I think there are couple of different things that I saw there, one is forum is varied and how good they were at maturing, where they had their core audience they started with as the site grew they started to need to breakout into additional sub-forums, where you are always going to have newbes are coming in who are not up on all the inside jokes and are just at a basic level, but over time you have more advanced users of the forum, whatever the topic might be, it could be anything, but they need separate areas and there are a lot of other breakouts that will happen over time, so forums that were good at growing in different directions are forums are probably going to last longer than forums where, they just start to run in more growing pains where, a newbe comes into the forum and they just get flamed by all the regulars, because that question was answered two years ago and that, those are bad experiences.

Benjamin Higginbotham: They are, but is it about the Web 2.0 community driven stuff that is more appealing than the old Web 1.0 forum?

Ed Kohler: Right, I think the biggest one is that, it allows more people to be experts. Where a forum, the very personality driven generally and there is the person who started it and may be they have few top moderators and its kind of their world, where with the blog everyone who has a blog is their own expert and their audience may not be as large, that's another way where, it is same type of people that we are talking about, but I think people like to have little bit more control and to be the expert in a lot more cases, you know what? They will hop on other people’s blogs and drop comments, but they also want to have a place where they can be their own personality.

Benjamin Higginbotham: That makes sense, absolutely. Alright we will close it up, any last comments before we go.

Ed Kohler: No, nothing else comes to mind.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Alright, hey Ed thank you so much for your time. We will be coming right back at you tomorrow same bat time, same bat channel, it is once again Ed, your topic, its going to be SEO/SCM basically, talk about Search the Goog and whatnot.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, so if you have anything interesting you want to talk about there, let me know.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Everyone in Talkshoe, thank you so much for joining us today. We will be signing off. If you like to join us tomorrow we would love to have you with us. Thank you so much.