The URL revolution: A wider World Wide Web.

This longish post was featured in the November issue of Technology Sunday, a monthly supplement of The Sunday Times in Malta

The World Wide Web was conceived some 20 years ago. It is the true embodiment of boundless information which may be retrieved across the globe. Today, the web consists of at least 62.4 million websites which is roughly 8.5 thousand new sites for each day the web has been up and running.

The web resides on the Internet. The Internet was born in the US in 1969. It was born amid fear of conflict and war between the east and the west. Today, it connects 1.6 billion people from the east, west and elsewhere.

Locally, the Internet has also brought about big change. Approximately 108 thousand households and business are connected to the Internet and this does not take into account those of us who access the Internet through their mobile or Internet keys. Hundreds of businesses own a website and hundreds of thousands of us own a Facebook profile.

All the above gives the world reason to celebrate the Internet’s 40th birthday, but surely it does not stop here. There are billions of people who are not yet online.

Primarily some of the biggest third world countries lack the necessary infrastructure to access this amazing tool or enough funds to purchase an Internet connected device. Mobile operators in these countries have teamed up to make up for the lack of fixed infrastructure and users are accessing the Internet for the first time through their mobile phone. The ‘One Laptop per Child’ campaign attempts to provide a simple yet connected laptop to children who have till today never gone online.

So as social as we make the Internet to be, as unbounded and limitless as it is described by the definition of the WWW, the Internet still has some limitations and room for improvement.

In the Internet’s 40th year, ICANN, the Internet’s corporation for the assignment of domain names and numbers, announced the introduction of non-Latin characters in web addresses. So far, more than half of current Internet users had to switch their non-Latin based keyboards to key in a simple URL or email. Even though these users where able to include non-Latin characters in the first part of their email or website, the last few characters, also referred to as the top level domain (TLD), had to include Latin script.

As from next year, the Internet will see domain names and emails in full non-Latin script. Countries like China, the Arab-speaking countries and Russia will be the first to benefit from the new non-Latin scripts in their country codes. Web masters in China may do away with the ‘.cn’ at the end of their addresses and replace it with its equivalent in the new Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs).

The move is surely positive for those users who are not as conversant in English or at least, familiar with Latin script. On the other hand, some of the current users, many of them probably residing on this side of the planet, fear this move may hinder the openness of the WWW and create linguistic boundaries.

The truth however is that the popularization of the Internet has made it a social reality and a reflection of what takes place offline. In the real world, some people simply do not understand each other, whilst others make it a point to be conversant in a number of languages. Offline, multi-national companies and global brands have multi-lingual identities which are translated online as country (or at least market) specific websites.

Big countries such as China and Korea did not wait for ICANN to come up with this idea. They have found turn around solutions which allow their many users to key in domains in their own language and be redirected to the original domain.

Apart from the societal aspect of ICANN’s move, the introduction of non-Latin script URLs will mean different things for different players. First of all, as early as today, the move will give rise to a wider range of domain names and therefore create more business for Domain Name registrars. Governments may use IDNs to re-brand their online identities and make the Internet more accessible to the native speaking users.

Marketers and brands should be on the alert to secure any new domain which comes close to their current online addresses. Whilst the new IDNs may offer an opportunity to localize and personalize online brand presence, any user may be faster in purchasing the brand’s IDN version of its online address and trick users through a fake website. The latter is often referred to as a ‘Spoof’ website and may become a security concern, at least initially.

On the technical side, the new IDNs are not as straight forward as the Latin-script domains we have been using for the past four decades. Some online players will need to tweak their popular applications to accept non-Latin scripts.

40 years down the line it is once again conflict (of languages this time) that is possibly about to trigger another big Internet revolution. ICANN’s move has caused mixed reactions in the blogosphere, however, as complicated and difficult as this new online development may be, it’s bridging the gap between the online and offline, making the Internet a better reflection of the real world.

Tomorrow, you will not access facebook.com

This is a longish post about how Augmented Reality could revolutionize the virtual space as we know it. The post was featured in the September edition of Technology Sunday.

Today, you probably start and end the day with Facebook. If not you, 70,000 locals do. Facebook, and all the other social media tools, changed the way we consume the web. Prior to that you would read the news on timesofmalta.com but now you get to read a news headline because someone else posts it. Today, you can just get the snippets of your favourite websites on your profile in the form of widgets or boxes. iGoogle is the perfect example of how at least 65 million webpages need to rethink their strategy for staying in touch with you. Similar tools allow you to even do away with Google’s humble homepage.

The social web has re-defined the World Wide Web and added a social context to it. Everything is social. Every site or item which goes online has a social value. Users tag it, post it, blog about it and share it in all kinds of ways.

Tomorrow, the web will experience another wave of innovation which will revolutionize the way we interact with content and communicate with each other. Augmented Reality (AR) will fragment the social web into layers of data, sitting on nothing more than real-time video streams of the real world. We will access the web as layers of information overlaid on the real 3D objects (or people) they relate to.

Before, online games were played individually, through the browser. Then came the social web - our friends could join the game too and play with us in real-time. Eventually, we stopped playing games on the specific web-pages and simply played any game through our favourite social tool.. Tomorrow, we will be playing the same game but the protagonists will not be 3D images which represent objects or users, we will have real objects and real people moving around our screen. They will be fed through the camera of our mobile device (whatever the device may be) and an application will overlay computer graphics on the real-life video feeds.

Actually, we are already seeing hints of this today. To launch the HTC Magic in one of the markets in which it operates, Vodafone has used an AR application which allowed two teams to compete head to head by tagging their rivals through image recognition of coloured shirts using the device itself.

In 2001 the first AR Browser was launched. The browser acted as an AR based interface to the web. Though innovative, the RWWW system was not very practical due to its cumbersome AR hardware which included a head mounted display. 7 years later Wikitude implemented a similar, but more compact idea on a mobile phone. The more recent browser combines location data with Wikipedia entries. This year a similar concept was implemented through Layar. The browser builds on Wikitude’s concept by reducing traditional webpages into content layers sitting on top of each other and overlaid on the real world video feeds.

However, what is most important is not how all this is done but what it really means for us. AR complements the convergence of online and offline worlds. Online social networks are really a reflection of what happens in the offline world. AR blends the real (offline) world with the online information and services. Rather than a reflection, the web will gradually become part of what we see when we move around the real world.

In practice, AR will allow us to consume the web in a completely new way. When in a big crowd, I could poke you without logging onto the Facebook homepage by simply nudging your real-life image, fed into my device through its camera. Paypal’s changehowwepay.com envisages a future in which I could scan images of any product at the supermarket and ‘drag’ them onto my virtual shopping cart.

Industry leaders are aware of all this and they are doing something about it. At the 2009 International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), AR will not only be discussed in context of scientific and technological advancements but also as part of a wider initiative to make the most of AR technology in arts, media and humanities.

Needless to say, if AR had to become the standard way of web consumption, once again, brand managers would have to re-think the way they put their brand in context of the real world. The fancy online spaces which they have invested in have already been humbled by social networks which feed content from them to our social profile, doing away with the nice design on the brand’s site.

However it is not all doom and gloom. If the social web made brands social and helped them to relate to us through our network of friends, then it should only get better. AR will put brands in context. Tomorrow, brands will not only be able to relate to our circle of friends but also customize their message in context of what we wear, where we go and what we see. In parallel, we will probably see the death of the traditional webpage.

Should brands be afraid of 2.0?!

The below BLAB is features today in Technology Sunday, a supplement of the Sunday Times

If the online space were an offline physical environment, say a massive open market, it would consist of at least 62.4 million stands and 93.6 million other booked spaces awaiting their owners to fill up the stand with stuff ready to be sold, shared or exchanged. Some 1.2 billion prospective customers would be able to visit the market 24 hours a day whilst four billion other customers would be allowed to take the millions of stands with them wherever they are.

With all these numbers you would expect huge queues and confusion but in truth the market allows each visitor to go directly to the stand he or she is looking for, skipping any possible queues and speaking directly to the stand owner. Some stands have even invested in multi-lingual staff who can communicate in any language, even Maltese at times. Others have even bought additional space just next to their stand. Here customers speak about their purchases and recommend champion products and services they themselves have tried out.

For frequent customers stand owners offer a more personal service by only showing what they think are the most relevant products. They base their assumptions on the customers’ past purchases and interests.

Some companies have come up with easy to use directories which search for specific stands or products and guide new customers around.

Clearly the web space is a very big virtual world with web pages being added everyday and online users being able to access it from any imaginable device. There are on average at least 52,000 customers on each stand and this is good news for brands because now they have a much bigger audience with which they can relate in a flexible and personal manner.

However this is not the full story and some brands may need to revisit their positioning online. Back to the open market analogy, customers are visiting the stands much less often than before because now they are allowed to set up their own stand, equally attractive and probably more entertaining and personal than the other stands. Instead of visiting the other stands they invest more time in customizing their little space and hang out with their friends in their own social network.

This is very bad news for brands. I pity brands because offline they compete with other brands for a mindshare, but online, brands compete with us, their current and prospective customers. Susan Boyle’s Facebook page has over 1.7 million fans exceeding by far fan pages of established giant brands such as H&M.

All these shifts in the online space led some brands to consider socializing with us. Some brands have joined Facebook or Twitter and have their own profile or fan page. Other brands have tried to get some space on our personal profiles by launching branded wallpapers and viral applications. In some cases, established brands have been successful in acting as a channel, enabling us to meet and discuss their products on their own branded space. Some brands have actually managed to do this successfully thanks to their well planned strategies and brand appeal. The buzz generated over the iPhone has garnered Apple the top place on a list of the Top 100 Social Brands. Suddenly it seems the story ends and we (brands and customers alike) lived happily ever after.

However some giant brands have spent huge amounts of money in bombarding our humble online spaces and failed. At the end of the day, why should we be-friend a marketing guy hopelessly trying to make the numbers at the end of the month?!

Chris Anderson, an online marketing expert, highlighted two reasons why we tend to be willing to be-friend a brand, blog about it and become brand ambassadors. None of these are financial.

The first reason is time-related. Useful or entertaining applications allow us to make better use of our time. When a brand comes up with an addictive application we are willing to spend some (or a lot of) time with that brand.

Customers are keen on being the centre of attention as much as brands would like to be. Brands who manage to put the spot light on the customers are guaranteed to make friends with these same customers and never be alone again! Similarly to hanging out with the in-crowd or wearing branded clothes, some brands add value to our reputation and it’s worth carrying them around, even when browsing online.

There you have it; money is not the be all and end all, especially during the recession. The good news for brands is that in 2.0 mode they have a choice. They could add value to our time and reputation in return for some attention or alternatively be stubborn and hold on to their confined online space. In the latter there is a high probability they will be left alone with ample time to think of how small they were when they started off, simply because online they are.

Revisiting Charlie’s Chocolate Factory in 2.0

The below BLAB is today being featured in Technology Sunday, a supplement in the Sunday Times of Malta.

When Willy Wonka decided to reveal his secret chocolate recipes he hid a limited number of tickets in chocolate bars. Charlie was lucky enough to find one of the five golden tickets and could then experience what it’s like to get inside a real chocolate factory. At that time, Charlie Bucket had no Facebook profile and the genius behind the Wonka Chocolate Empire could at best have dreamt of the world-wide (Wonka) web.

It only took an ex-NASA Space Shuttle entrepreneur and the brain behind the full range of Wired content brands to revisit Wonka’s business ideas and open the door to an amazing chocolate venture they called Tcho. Technology and chocolate drive Louis Rosetto and Timothy Childs to pursue Tcho. Both of them have vast experience in a multitude of projects. In 1993 Rosetto co-founded Wired Magazine and became its first editor. Wired Books, Wired TV and a list of digital ventures including HotBot.com followed. Childs on the other hand worked at NASA Space Shuttle, launched Cabaret Chocolates and has been involved in a number of community building projects such as Web3D RoundUp.

Tcho involves chocolate enthusiasts and customers in the making of its chocolate products. Tcho Beta precedes any Tcho chocolate products. Limited batches of chocolate are packaged in simple brown paper bags and made available to customers who want to be part of Tcho’s continuous flavour developments. Varieties of the chocolate beta are constantly produced with new versions emerging as often as every 36 hours. The beta products are made available online or at the Tcho factory store. Following a lengthy beta process, the end product is launched, this time with proper branded packaging and bigger mass runs.

The Tcho community aspect does not stop here. Tcho makes its ‘secret’ recipe available on its website for the community to try out. Recently Tcho founders even commissioned an iPhone application which will enable users of the device to monitor the Tcho labs wherever they are.

With the founders’ technological background and love for chocolate it comes as no surprise that the Tcho project follows a similar product development process found in an IT company. However what really stands out in the Tcho business plan is not the technical expertise of the founding team but the strong community engagement enabled by but not limited to web 2.0 tools such as blogs and online social networks.

2.0 is a vague concept for many of us. There are many brands, even locally, which have their own Facebook page or blog but one basic rule must lie at the heart of any strategy: 2.0 may sound geeky, technical and complex but in truth it is as simple as putting communities at the centre. The latter is not really optional.

When brands forget to put the community at the centre of their digital strategy, the community, enabled by the web and the social networks which reside on it, jumps into the brand’s driving seat. Cadbury conceived Wispa back in 1981. The first trial was a massive success selling 10,000 bars. Consequently, in 1983 Wispa was launched on a larger scale and grew more popular then ever. Wispa’s success story seemed to have come to an end in 2003 when Cadbury decided to stop producing the popular chocolate bar following a slowdown in sales.

However, the community thought otherwise. More than 5000 fans joined an online group on Bebo and campaigned for a Wispa comeback. Not only did the group manage to trigger buzz online but some of the fans even went as far as going up on stage during Iggy Pop’s performance at Glastonbury Festival. On stage they held a big banner which read ‘Bring back Wispa’. Cadbury, which had probably invested in serious market research before pulling the plug on the product, reconsidered its decision and committed to a 23 million run, saying it was the first time it had resumed production of a product because of online pressure.

So let’s revisit Willy Wonka’s business case in 2.0 mode: For a start Willy Wonka would not keep his chocolate making recipe a secret; on the contrary he would instead put that at the test of Wonka’s loyal customer base. Wonka would be wise enough to know that Facebook is much more than a tool which connects people, that there’s more to blogging than a modern version of a personal diary echoing in the absence of readers, and that Twitter does not only tell you what your neighbour has been up to lately. Charlie Bucket, an ordinary customer who is loyal to the Wonka brand would probably run the ilovewonka.com blog which would also be present on Facebook. Wonka fans would join the group and invite their friends. Instead of limiting the factory tour to 5 lucky chocolate enthusiasts, the Wonka empire would have a virtual tour of the factory or a live webcam of its daily operations. Willy Wonka would not have to run the golden ticket promotion because he would head hunt Charlie as the next CEO. And, lastly, you could be the next Charlie Bucket running the Wonka Chocolate Empire.

One may not know everything about Web 2.0 and how it can help drive a successful strategy but, before opening up to innovative applications and web services, one should understand that 2.0 is first and foremost an extremely social concept.