Business model in the web2.0

From the publisher angle, we don't really know how to monetize the social web. I'll try to list the Business model applied today (November 2006...) and check if it's applicable for a profesional publisher. I already hear in the background that there is not way to monetize what the community is producing... Let's see !

1. Advertising, the most common one. Mainly driven by AdSense (but the figure must remains confidential as explained in google's terms and conditions). Surprisingly enough the better the content is the less you get paid by user (arghhhh...), did you know that 15% of the revenue generated by AdSense is originating from Domain Parking pages !
   
2. Begging aka "please donate if you like my site". Wikimedia, the fundation behind wikipedia is a good example. It's also described as the "camgirl" phenomenon, which is not applicable for professional publisher (send me picture of your colleague to evaluate that business case:-). I also doubt about building a whishlist for my company...
3. Membership. This is more intersting for me, you create executive club and ask for membership. it's not a subscription in the publisher sense because you just join a club to participate in discussion. Example salon.com
4. Target to be acquired... Well I'm not planning to build new product with the idea of being overtaken by the competition. Nevertheless, If you have set up an original project in the legal and regulatory content world and if you targeted such business model give me a sign I might be interested (no kidding...). The latest example is YouTube being acquired by google just because of the traffic it generates.
5. We can't target a single business model, it will often be a combination of the above mentionned model.
   
6. And Finally, I Don't need a business Model ! Actulally, a lot of social web stuff are there because of some passionated and individual volunteer. They are trying stuff, mashing up ideas and jumping from one to the other. The sense of being profitable is non existing, except when they get a site which is adopted and when they are facing more cost than expected...
   

The social web for dummies

Another term for whom is tired with web2.0 vocabulary is "Social Web"...Yeahhhh.
I personnaly think it's more explicit and show the evolution form static content to dynamic content and now to user generated content. Social Web is growing because we have finally reach a certain volume of users that volunteer to enrich the web content. It's a matter of fact that social web is working on light content or non litteral content like photo (flick.com) or video (youtube.com). To make "volunteer" work you need to attract them on something that interest them, that's why we will see an increasing number of vertical site or niche site where the "volunteer" has the feeling to serve a community (and be recognized within that community).

Now, the reverse side of the medal is that amongst the volume of volunteers we face a lot of spammer that use this opportunity to market their business. Social tagging is lacking controlled vocabulary and can lead to real misfunction in the long term, human are lazy by definition and it's the kindom of Idiots. I personnaly trust the community but it's true that allowing everybody to "enrich" content is dangerous.

Web 2.0 the buzz of the conference

A lot of presentation are covering the trends in the web2.0 world. I'll come to that later but I wanted to give you the tips of the day if you can't define what Web2.0 is about : list the following example and tell the audience that it defines what web2.0 is about, don't start thinking about a definition....
liveplasma
last.fm
Zillow : Zillow provides a free Home Valuation Tool for Real Estate enthusiasts
Dataplace
Wizag : Aggregate news and blogs
Farecast
Kayak
seatguru
corckd.com

Search Engines Trends

Panelists discussed the evolution of the major players in the search engine world.
Google :
Move from the search field to the advertising industry, with a nice quote "Google is not a Search Engine Company anymore". To improve revenue they are building a portal engine, a lot of new services from the google account (calendar, gmail, video, ...) but without strong intergration either amongs those services or through a portal website. The R&D budget was not mentionned but 70% of the R&D are devoted to search projects, 20% cover so called user pain point project wher ao; they are working on improving relationship between the end user and any e-commerce environment, the remaining 10% are pure blue sky.
Yahoo:
Yahoo is working on differential with google. They are moving in the media industry and they invest in the social web. Look at Yahoo Answer as an example.
Microsoft:
We all know that Live.com (the brand) will be rolled out globally within the next 6 months and will replace the good old MSN. Now as usual with Microsoft, Live will offer a lot of nice new features but developped as individual pieces and once you integrate them togheter, you'll have to wait version 2.0 to work correctly. Fyi, we are only at version 1.3 there... the road is long

Let's go !

I'm attending the online information 2006, I'll share with you some of my thoughts and conclusions