LIFT08 - Web and entreprises — 08 Feb 2008

Warning: the following notes were live blogged on Friday by session, so please forgive the typos and semantic errors, I'll brush it up later and break it up ion separate posts. Some day. Maybe. Watch the videos.

The purpose of this track is to show how the web is reshuffling work practices.

David Sadigh

David Sadigh (IC Agency) will show us how organizations can focus on user retention rather than acquisition to boost trafic

1995: Windows 3.11, Trumpet Winsock, 14.4Kbps. Today: 1.3 billion internet users. Same content for years. We are different. Is it possible to be welcomed the same way? Problem. High abandoment rates (homepage bounce rate are too high). 98% leave e-commerce website w/o buying. USD 32.5 billion invested to drive more people to website. Why do we accept those poor results on the net. Internet is not really born yet. We are building website, we don't focuse on customer exprience and visitor retention.

Personalisation? Decode, profile, address them themost relevant content. not new. Amazon does it for ever. We can use:

• intentional targeting. Info from Google search - use images relevant from keyword used in Google on homepage i.e. Test perfomance of action (clicks per hit) used on Nespresso in sidebar. Increase the clickthrough, but increase the goal rate (actually bought it);
• geotargeting;
• event association targeting;
• behavioural targeting techniques.

Push content based on previous visits. Use weather, stock market to personalise the page. Important on reduced screens (Wii, iPhone i.e.).

One generation's indulgence becomes the next generation's necessity ––James Twitchell

David Marcus

David Marcus (Zong) will talk about the new business models opened by mobile channels.

How big is an opportunity? There is mobile 3.2 billion users. Every second in China we have 4 babies born and 25 new mobile subscribers.

Mobile vs Web content. You don't sell content on the web. You give it. Get attention, drive. On mobile content you pay for eveything. Single track on iTunes is £0.79, and the ringtone cost £ 3.50 (Gaargl).

Two distinct worlds. Imagine the spam in the form of SMS - sucks. These worlds are different. ON the web build it once. On mobile, you need to deal with carriers, operators, plateform, etc. Different point of view.

Web peoples != carriers

The iPhone shifts the whole perspective. Disruptive. Carriers spent USD 150 billion to buy licenses 3G in Europe. The iPhone get content from iTunes, the carrier doesn't see the transaction. Paradigm shift.

You can stream live from a cellphone to the web (qik.com - check scobelizer). Multicasting. Location enable systems will change the way we communicate.

Mass market monetisation. iPhone and qik are trends, not mass market. This year 2.3 billion SMS will be sent. (20% more than last year). Superstar: pay with mobile not credit card - target teenage girls (CHF 3.00 /month).

FB is facing a serious problem. Generate revenues for the people developing apps. Pretty slim moneytising opportunities. ("My Hive" by Zong launches in 2 weeks). Sending a text message as payment is easy, not painful as getting a credit card out of your wallet.

Zong. To assemble, gather. Change the mobile world. The open mobile plateform. Loads of carriers, plateforms, devices, etc. Make it simple. 500m subscribers through a single interface.

Kevin Marks

Kevin Marks from Google will continue by telling us more Open Social, a common framework for building social applications across many websites.

The social cloud. Internet is a cloud that connects everyone. Don't bother about the cables, wire, etc. Free. Connections between computers, and web documents. Somebody else's problem field. The younger generation doesn't see the cloud. It's just air. Everywhere. Part of the world. The older generation see this as poisonous gas that leaks everywhere.

We assume email is there. For the younger generation is no. Only use email to talk to «the man». Email is not for them. They think as their blog, social net as being them.

URLs are people too. Links are relationships. XFN and FOAF. Social Graph API at Google.

Many social networks, repetitive actions. Find out friends on other social networks without having to repetitively enter who is your friends over and over. Saves time.

Finding me and my public friends on the web. But my friends are here, why should I go elsewhere? Where my cloud for this? Bunch of things developers have to think about: friend relationships, activity flow people are making,

OpenSocial. Take your app to where the people are over 200 million people. Abstracts it out. Don't have to rewrite it out over and over for each site.

Relationships. Danah Boyd. Deniability. Of course you can't trust what people tell you on the web anymore of what people tell you on megaphones […] -- Douglas Adams

OpenSocial puts the cloud (abstraction) around people, friends, actions, data. The stuff in then back of your head we will be able to use that trust, relationships.

François Grey

François Grey from the CERN will give us a presentation about volunteer computing and what this technology means more widely for society: for the Web, for science, and leisure.

Science. From volunteer computing to volunteer thinking. The web is enabeling individuals to contribute to science (remember SETI@home? 500'000 cpus). The web is a spinoff of a science project. The LHC launch may be the largest event of 2008. CERN biggest producer of scientific data on earth (1% of all data created in the world, digital or not, in one year - or a pile of DVDs as high as the Mont-Blanc).

Volunteers computing is a kind of poor man grid. SETI@home yielded other projects like Folding@home > 1 petaflop. Sony is preloading the application on PS3.

LHC@home > 3000 cpu-years. Summer students are the power behind all technological progress. Huge 'free' resource. Good communication. Need a cool screensaver. Good communication -> social network (message boards). Credit for processing. If the data went missing due to a tech problem, users screamed for more, but understood when explained.

The combination of the web, Moore's law, the price of computers and broadband is increasing the possibilities for each of us to participate. Citizen cyberscience.

Herberia@home: digitilise 19th century plant archives. Volunteer thinking is emerging fast because the web is emerging fast. Online games that gets people to solve problems for fun. Not citizen cyberscience. Solve problems for money. Cool, not citizen cyberscience. Citizen cyberscience is getting people interested in science, and contribute personally and passionately.

Other projects: Africa@home: empower African scientists globally. AfricaMap: cartography from satellite images.

What matters is that you are passionate about the things you do. That is the spirit of volunteer thinking.

Future plan: Asia@home - mobile volunteer computing. Citizen Cyberscience Centre in Geneva

Open Stage

Kristina Serafim: The importance of social networking and "conversations" are having for companies and bloggers