Wanna be 2.0?

I have to admit, I cringe whenever I hear 2.0 appended to anything nowadays. I guess it’s just overused, but this label I came across today is pretty appropriate in my opinion.

Jakob Nielsen writes in his weekly email, “Much talk about whether Facebook is worth a fortune. The numbers being bandied about are a good sign that Bubble 2.0 is getting close to its peak.” So should we be concerned? He refers back to a post from April which makes two great points straight of the bat:

* Big web projects don’t represent the “common website” and so theories derived from their examples should be taken with a grain of salt
* Don’t listen to hype - focus on baseline best practices in communication and focus on your audience’s unique needs

This reminded me of a live chat session with Adrian Sargeant, from the Center of Philantrophy. He talked about his concern “in standardizing fund-raising practice”. Instead of looking at templates we can follow, like Dr. Vogele’s P.S. line technique that you see in direct mail everywhere, he says that “we still need to think for ourselves and be creative in ways that Dr Vogele hadn’t envisaged. To my mind, the greatest contribution that research can make lies in getting people to reflect on WHY they do what they do and thinking about WHETHER they can do things better.”

So here’s my conclusion: I don’t think we need to worry too much about Bubble 2.0. I guess this is one situation that you should be happy that your site is NOT Facebook, because then you should be worried. Secondly, when we look at these big wigs and try to be like them, copying them pixel for pixel will probably not work for you. We have to get to the root of why it worked in the first place and focus on what will serve your audience best. Yes, that includes coming to terms with the fact that your site may not need all that AJAX. I think when we look at finding web solutions this way, we’ll have a higher probability of succeeding to accomplish what we set out to do on the web.