Carson Workshops’ The Future of Web Apps was such a great experience! I could kick myself for having forgot my camera. Fortunately, some nice folks brought theirs!

Photos from Laughing Squid

Photos from Jeremiah Owyang

(Photo by Jeremiah Owyang Laughing Squid. Some Rights Reserved)

Ted Rheingold talks about Dogster.com, Catster.com and “Passion-centric Online Communities”

Amplify passion through enriched community experience.

Moderation is key. A community is a garden that needs sincere, consistent care. Clearly stated ground rules. Make it a safe place – easy opt in and opt out. You can’t fake a community

How to make advertising work

• Keep your ad sales inside. No one will be able to convey your member’s passion better than yourself.
• Advertisers need to have a direct connection to the community’s passion.
• CPM is almost dead. For an advertisers message to be heard deliver it in the site voice and in places where members are receptive to messaging.
• Require advertisers to offer something real to the community. Something that requires them to participate and become trusted.
• Build circle of trust – Advertisers => Dogster => Community => Advertisers => etc

The Future of Passion Centric Communities

• For every passion there will be a dedicated “-ster”, and there can be more than one ster per passion.
• Web is launching point.

Make your service reflect your community

boompa faniq feelingbullish.com socialpicks MyBlogLog Famster TheFamilyPost ClubMom TeachAde Craftster.org YourClimbing.com YourMTB.com EveryTrail.net Cuteoverload.com CatsInSinks StuffOnMyCat Cats that look like hitler MeetMoi Dodgeball Twitter

Mike Arington talks about TechCrunch

What’s next for web applications?

Ones to watch

• Jobster
• Riya
• Zillow.com
• Flock
• Sharpcast
• Rocketboom
• oDesk
• 1-800-Free-411
• Second Life
• WordPress

What were they thinking? (i.e. Not doing well)

• Inform
• Gather
• PubSub
• Browzar
• Jigsaw
• Squidoo

Shared attributes of winners

• Passion for what they are doing
• Doing something extraordinary (Purple Cow)
• Removes serious friction Ex: Free411 – removing payment friction
• Great founder dynamics (and initial team)
• Never raised big money, or raised it after they won
• Perfect revenue model is not required Ex: YouTube
• And… launched their company with a post on TechCrunch :)

Shared attributes of losers

• Poor founder/Team Choices
• Lifestyle/Ego Entrepreneurs
• Raised too much money
• Over-business-planned
• Forgot about scaling
• Launched on TechCrunch :(

Things to avoid (the market is saturated):

• Social Network
• Social Bookmarks
• Video
• Photos
• Blogging/podcasting
• Portals/homepages
• Feedreaders

Ideas with big potential:

• Platforms (help other companies do things)
• Desktop Apps
• Office Efficiency
• Cloud Storage
• Identity
• Developer Tools
• Market Destruction (free411)
• ENTERPRISE

The best entrepreneurs ignore this type of advice. Invent a new market.

Mike Davidson of Newsvine talks about User Generated Content

You must provide tangible benefit to users for their participation.

What’s not working:

• Services that require user participation to get started. Get people to square 3… etc before requiring to register. (Carl Sjorgreen Said almost exactly the same thing.)
• Buying users.
• Social networks for the sake of social networks.

What IS working:

• Letting users do as they please – The user is in control.
• Be open to people using your site in other ways than you intended.
• Let people contribute when they want to contribute.

The Dunbar Number (Robert Dunbar) suggests that the ideal size for healthy groups is 150 people or under. Too big can be too daunting. Provide ways to cultivate small groups.

Mike Davidson of Newsvine talks about User Generated Content

You must provide tangible benefit to users for their participation.

What’s not working:

• Services that require user participation to get started. Get people to square 3… etc before requiring to register. (Carl Sjorgreen Said almost exactly the same thing.)
• Buying users.
• Social networks for the sake of social networks.

What IS working:

• Letting users do as they please – The user is in control.
• Be open to people using your site in other ways than you intended.
• Let people contribute when they want to contribute.

The Dunbar Number (Robert Dunbar) suggests that the ideal size for healthy groups is 150 people or under. Too big can be too daunting. Provide ways to cultivate small groups.

Carl Sjogreen and “How we built Google Calendar”

6 insights for your next web app

1. Easy is the most important feature “Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible” Alex Kay, Disney Fellow and VP of R&D, Walt Disney Company

2. Know your real competition Know what your competition does well. The Google Calendar team sees their main competition as… the paper calendar. Yep, Google is actually taking aim at eliminating the need for paper calendars.

3. Visual Design Matters Visual Design = Usability + Visual Joy “Great design is that ineffable quality that certain incredibly successful products have that makes people fall in love with them despite their flaws.” Joel on Software

4. Build products for people who don’t want to use them Make it painless for people to start using your product without fully switching to a new way of doing things.

5. Time Your Launch Properly “Launch early and often, but not too early (the first time)”

6. Driving Usage Touchpoints that extend beyond your app * “Add stuff” from my site * “Publish stuff” to my site * “Tell a friend” invitations and sharing Social reinformcement is key for validation

7. Relentlessly remove account signups This is a good one – make it brainlessly easy to get started using your web app. Don’t ask for account signup until it’s ABSOLUTELY necessary.

Hmm… That seemed like more than 6.

Well, I’ve decided that I’m a hopelessly bad blogger. No doubt you’ve already read a dozen or so other blog posts about The Future of Web Apps 2006. But I thought I’d post my notes anyway, tardy as they are. So what follows are my notes and takeaways, just for you.

Here I am at the second day of Carson Workshops Future of Web Apps. Looking up and down the rows of other geeks, I see nothing but faces focused on PowerBooks and MacBooks, mine among them. The Carsons sure know how to put on a good show. I should know all these people, but I don’t see as many familiar faces as SXSW.

I’m also finding that, as much as I love blogging, I’m a pretty terrible blogger. About ten people around me are posting to their blogs like every five minutes.

I figure there’s no sense duplicating the play-by-play, so I’m just going to post my take-awayws. So stay tuned.