Alex Bard (yourminis and Goowy.com) talks about Web 2.0

After our first experiences in interviewing techniques over at DevCom (see below), we decided we were ready for the real thing and flew through cyberspace to stop in San Diego, California.
Why Calyfornia? Not because of the nice weather nor the hot surferbabes, but because it's the home of Yourminis and Goowy.com, and of Alex Bard, ceo and one of the proud founders of these upcoming Web 2.0 sites. We had a little chat with the man, and this is what he had to say:

In three words, what does Web 2.0 mean?

open, collaborative, evolving

Are your websites Yourminis and Goowy.com typical for Web 2.0 and why?

We leverage a lot of the core principles of web 2.0 for both Yourminis and Goowy.com. These include the underlying technologies (AJAX, Flash, XML, RSS), marketing strategies (viral, grass roots), standards (open APIs, mashups), deployment methodology (constantly iterate) and colors (green, orange - just kidding).

What are the biggest differences between Web 2.0 and Web 1.0?

The biggest difference is that web 1.0 was mostly a lean back experience where you were reading content, whereas in web 2.0 you are leaning in ad participating in the creation of the content. Web 2 is more open, more robust, more iterative - its about collaboration and sharing.

What are the upcoming new Web 2.0 websites?

Yourminis is a site we launched 2 weeks ago and have over 150k users. Its is growing quickly and I believe will be one of the standouts in our space. There are other companies that I have a lot of respect for including digg, pandora, google various products and others.

Which brands do you think are most suitable for Web 2.0, and which the least?

Brands that are most willing to embrace change, listen to their consumers, and innovate are most suitable for Web 2.0. Brands that are not are not suitable.

What do you prefer, buzz or traditional advertising?

Buzz.

How can a brand avoid the dangers of users generated media?

User generated content is a great thing depending on your business. If you want to leverage the power of user generated content you also have to empower your members to moderate that content...similar to what Wikipedia does. Put the power back in the hands of the community to monitor itself - perhaps with an added layer of internal monitoring. Again this very much depends on the type of business you are running.

Which features of Web 2.0 do you think will become mainstream, and which will stay underground?

You are already seeing a lot of the underlying principles of web 2.0 moving into the enterprise for adoption. These will become more and more mainstream over time and include various technologies and standards (AJAX, Flash, Open Source, RSS, XML. etc.)

Why is or isn't the name Bubble 2.0 justified?

Its not bubble 2.0 until it happens. People are looking back to the previous bubble and assume that we are in the middle of another. Maybe we are and maybe we aren't - only the future will tell.

Web 2.0 interview: Dominique Gany @ DevCom Belgium

Interview with Dominique Gany on Web 2.0 @ DevCom Belgium


And finally, we talked to Dominique Gany, excentric IT journalist and expert in Web 2.0!

Web 2.0 interview: Sébastien Doyen @ DevCom Belgium

Sébastien Doyen talks about Web 2.0


Next in Line is Sébastien Doyen, the charismatic Sales Manager of Extenseo Belgium, the Belgian leader in Search Engine Marketing. he has some interesting things to say about Web 2.0!

Web 2.0 interview: Cédric Brandelard @ DevCom Belgium

Interview Cédric Brandelard est quoi le web 2.0


This week, we visited DevCom Belgium, the "Forum du Developpement Commercial du Marketing Direct et de la Communication". We didn't learn much new things on Web 2.0 here, but we did sease the opportunity to interview a few Belgian speakers on what they think of Web 2.0!

We start with Cédric Brandelard, consultant at Technofutur TIC.

Web2tour part 2

It's time for another little movieclip! In this sequence, we talk about our first week here at Web2tour, and about our very first comment on this blog! It was posted by Alex, the co-founder of yourminis.com and Goowy, one of the best online desktops around. Check them out, and don't forget to post your comments!

My map on Frappr

It's true, we've been travelling alot lately. But when we're not travelling around the Worldwide Web 2.0, we stay in Brussels, the lively capital of Belgium and even Europe!

Don't know where that is? Then check out the map above. It's a Frappr (Friends Mapper) map by the way, a brandnew Web 2.0 tool. Frappr is still in Beta, which explains why, contrary to most Web 2.0 tools, it's still a bit difficult to navigate.

But the idea is nice: everyone can create his own map, tag himself on it like we did, and then invite all the vistors of his page to do the same. That way, everyone in the community can see where the other members live... So go right ahead, get yourself on the map!

Web2tour: Hard to keep up?

Pfew, what a trip! We've been to Yahoo 360°, we've made a nice stop at Flickr, we've had alot of fun on Myspace, we stayed at Blogger and starred on YouTube...

We can imagine that's it's getting hard to keep track of all those adventures. But no worries, because Web 2.0 has again the perfect solution!

You could just bookmark all these sites, but how are you going to keep up when you don't have acces to your PC? The answer is del.icio.us, a Web 2.0 website where you can store all your bookmarks online and tag them with keywords. That way, you allways have acces to them and other surfers can enjoy your findings. Wanna see what our bookmarks look like? Go right ahead!

Of course, with bookmarks you still have to click on all the sites to see if something new has popped up... With RSS-feeds, there's no need for that. All you have to do, is put the RSS-feeds of the blogs you read in an RSS-reader, which assembles all the latest blog posts of all the blogs you read in one page. We've chosen yourminis.com as RSS-reader, a brand new and nicely designed Web 2.0 website, and assembled all our blogs and pages on yourminis.com/web2tour

Web 2.0 Summit

Last week, the cream of the Web 2.0 bunch (Jeff Bezos from Amazon, Eric Schmidt from Google, Chad Hurley from YouTube, Marck Zuckerberg from FaceBook - the upcoming direct rival of Myspace, Niklas Zennström from Skype, Kevin Rose from Digg, and many, many others) came together in San Francisco to organise the third Web 2.0 Summit.

For those who've missed it: The State of the Internet, the interesting presentation by Mary Meeker, one of Wall Street's star technology-stock analysts, turned up on SlideShare, the biggest Web 2.0 slideshow community. Have a look at the dazzling numbers of the big players in Web 2.0, and see how they keep on growing, despite all the "Bubble 2.0" critics.

Web2tour : @ the movies

We're reaching the final chapter of our trip around the Worldwide Web 2.0! And we're very glad to see you're still with us...

We've exchanged our Myspace page and blog for a Blogger blog. Blogger blogs are easy to use, easy to design and easy to read. You can share your favorite links (which we've done on the right), edit your profile and, as you can see, post pictures or even movieclips!

So we took our camera and made a little clip in which we explain the plans and goals of our Web 2.0 journey. We could have saved it right here on Blogger, but we thought it would fit better on Youtube, the biggest videocommunity of the Web 2.0 movement, and of the worldwide web as a whole.

You can watch the movie here on Blogger if you want, or watch it on Youtube. Either way, wherever you watch us, please leave a comment here or on Youtube. Tell us if you liked our movie, what you think of our trip, which other places on the Worldwide wide 2.0 are worth a visit... We're eager to find out what you think!

Web 2 Tour : MySpace or Yours?

Seen our Web 2 Tour pictures on Flickr? They're great, aren't they? As a matter a fact, we find them so excellent we would like to share them on a bigger scale. Let's say... MySpace.
We're sure you've heard of this one. Here you can post your pictures, write a blog, share your favorite music... It's one of the biggest Web 2.0 communities around, and extremely popular with teenagers. But it's also a great way for music artists to connect with their fans. Several artists like Lily Allen or the Arctic Monkeys started out on MySpace.

Why is it so popular? Because MySpace gives peers around the world the possibility to show themselves off, write about their lives, position themselves with a list of tastes and dislikes... and have immediate response from other kids. And it also works the other way round: they can search for kindred spirits who share the same interests. It's the easiest way to make new friends. Or, as one American student once put it: "If you're not on MySpace, you don't exist".

So what are we still doing here? From now on, our journey will continue on our Web 2 Tour MySpace page, with it's own MySpace blog! Come join us, and have a look for yourself...

Web 2 Tour : Now what ?

Yes! Our journey around the Web 2.0 applications has started. We've made ourselves a nice blog here at Yahoo 360°. What's next?
Let's make our blog more attractive for our readers by adding pictures. And why not use the most famous online photo management and sharing application web 2.0 has to offer: Flickr?
Setting up an account on Flickr is easy as pie. Our Flickr account is named - what did you expect - Web 2 tour. Go check it out, and follow us to the second stop in our worldwide web 2.0 tour around the world...

Web 2 Tour Challenge: The Kick-off

The Web 2 Tour Challenge starts here! To subscribe to the many webapplications of the Web 2.0 movement, you often need an e-mail address. For the beginning of our tour around the worldwide web 2.0, we've chosen for Yahoo Mail. Why? Because you have to start somewhere.

Yahoo Mail was so friendly as to propose us a blog, the most famous web 2.0 application, on Yahoo 360°. An invitation we gladly accepted.

And why not? Because that is one of the things Web 2.0 is all about: being user friendly. If there is one thing that Web 2.0 applications have in common, it's that you can use them by intuition. There's no study of the manual required, no installation of software, all you have to do is type in the internet address and go with the flow.

And that is exactly what we plan on doing during this Web 2 Tour Challenge: go with the flow. On a worldwide webtravel around the different applications of Web 2.0. Our goal? Demonstrate that today, being visible online means more then just building a website. But also demonstrate that that visibility doesn't necessarily have to take much effort. Because all you have to do, is go with the flow...

Are you ready to take on the challenge? Then fasten your seatbelt, because it's going to be a wild and fast ride!