This was related to social media through the examples I used, especially with my suggestions on which visitor interactions STA Travel and Bebo might be focusing on in evaluating the performance of a particular social media element within their websites.  While the methodology of how to actually calculate and use engagement is still being argued about in the web analytics world, I suggested a process that can be followed for anyone who wishes to start using engagement in evaluating their own websites.

My presentation at SocialMediaCamp London 2008

After finding BarCamp very interesting last weekend , I managed to score a ticket at the last minute to SocialMediaCamp London which was held yesterday.  The crowd was very different to BarCamp with a wide mix of professions and interests and it was great to know people from such a wide variety of areas are really interested in discussing social media on the internet.

After the debacle of my attempted presentation at BarCamp when 2 people turned up (one was a friend), I decided to learn from my mistakes and lure more people to this presentation.  Accordingly, the title for my presentation ‘Measuring Engagement of Social Media websites in the Web 2.0 world’ was stacked full of buzzwords.  It appeared to work as the room (advertised as holding 20 people) ended up containing around 30, leaving me a little nervous.  Thankfully everything went well and everyone seemed to appreciate the points that I was making.

To download a copy of the presentation, please click here.  Let me know if there are any questions regarding what I was speaking about.  I was very excited to discover that a couple of people were actually writing a post for the SocialMediaCamp blog during my presentation on what I was talking about.  To read more about my presentation (and some of the other talks given yesterday), please check out the SocialMediaCamp London website.

Other presentations

While all of the other presentations that I listened to yesterday were interesting, I got some very useful ideas from two of them.

Julius Solaris gave a presentation on how to use LinkedIn to get a better job and to promote yourself.  I had thought I was using LinkedIn properly already with around 60 contacts but I was wrong.  I will now be accepting any invites to connect as well as joining appropriate groups and trying to promote myself as an authority on web analytics.

Tom Whitwell (assistant editor of online at The Times) talked to us about headlines and how important it is to get them right in order to attract people to reading your content.  The trick is not to be clever or funny but to try and summarise the content (article or blog post) within the heading.  Again, I will be trying to make use of these tips and will stop trying to be clever with my presentations.

But there was one question that I thought was quite interesting and where I think my response would have been equal to any that they came up with. The question was “What topic/theme do you think we will look back in 3 to 5 years and wonder why it was even a discussion point?”. While I can’t remember the exact responses given, clearly nothing was said to really impress me.

I believe that one thing the industry needs to move beyond is this concept of web 1.0, web 2.0 and now (thanks Eric) web 3.0. And related to these – web analytics 1.0, 2.0 and I am guessing 3.0. I think people are trying to differentiate when they just don’t need to. And in the process, using another set of buzzwords that are not clearly defined.

To me, what people call web 1.0 is a website where people have just transplanted offline media onto the internet and expected it to work. Smart people (with potentially more time/resources) recognise that the internet is a different medium and create content that uses the potential of this medium. So called web 2.0 features are still a waste of time if they are not appropriate to the website or audience.

I just plain disagree with the idea of mobile being web 3.0. It is still the internet via a smaller screen with people likely not at home or at work. Therefore yet another medium and again the smart people are the ones who create content appropriate to this medium, content that works within the limitations but uses the advantages.

I had written a couple of lines about how I find there to be minimal difference between web analytics 1.0 and web analytics 2.0. But these are now deleted as I have reread a post by Avinash (http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/09/rethink-web-analytics-introducing-web-analytics-20.html) which does differentiate them quite nicely. I still don’t think they need to be called 1.0 and 2.0 though – it still seems to me as though 1.0 is just looking at numbers/data while web analytics 2.0 is focusing on customers and actually using your brain. It sounds a little similar to art vs science.

In 3 to 5 years time, I hope we will have got beyond this need for differentiation and be focussed on improving websites to meet customer needs, whatever they are and however this is best achieved.