Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Web services, Social Software
Seven rules for Web 2.0 startups
These days it seems like anyone with an idea and some time can crank out a Web 2.0 startup, be it a service, community, one-trick-pony or ambiguously named whichamadinger. It also seems like many of these startups could use some guidance to help them find their way. With goofy names, varying user experiences and questionable goals running amok, we figured it was time to lay down some ground rules. Check out our seven tips to help Web 2.0 startups be all they can be:- Help me make the move: New blogs and communities need easy tools to let their users integrate some sort of blurb about their new hangout on their other sites and communities. For example: I've been playing with Vox for a few weeks now, and just recently they introduced a badge tool that puts together all the HTML users would need to insert in another blog sidebar. This makes it easy for users to tell existing readers they have have (or are moving to) a Vox blog. While it's a smart move and I'm using a badge on my personal WordPress blog, this generator should have existed the day Six Apart, and all who follow in their footsteps, flipped the switch on their service.
- Don't make me jump through hoops: ...or give you my e-mail address just to check out your service. Good: Tell me in plain language how your product works and how it can make my life better. Better: Show me with lots of screenshots or even a few screencasts. Best: Just let me start playing with it and worry about registration after I've decided whether it's any good or not.
- Tell me what it is, not what's inside: I don't care whether your service is powered by Ruby on Rails, .NET, AJAX, REST, or Vegemite, so don't waste another breath on it. Tell me what it does and why I want to use it, and keep the nerdy chest-thumping on your Developers page.
- Keep it simple: ...if you want me to do it a hundred times. If adding a bookmark or a hotspot on a map is a multi-stepped process, the likelihood of me doing it a lot goes way down. This is often the difference between making or breaking the site. Quicker processes mean I'll be back many more times to do it again, and more traffic equals more money for you.
- Play well with others: It's great that you have a (hopefully) unique vision for your community, but let's be real: you aren't the first startup on the block. This one comes again from my pleasurable experience at Vox: users can upload their pictures, audio and video to Vox, or they can find this media at other communities like Flickr, YouTube and even iStockphoto to easily plug into their posts. This "friendly neighbor" aspect of Vox earns the site huge points in the Web 2.0 community department, as they clearly recognize there is value in allowing their users to hang out at other sites.
- APIs!: Speaking of playing with others: the technical details shouldn't be on the front page, but they should be there. The gold standard of Web 2.0 is a well-documented interface that lets geeky users and other Web 2.0 developers get at all of your site's data and roll it into their own desktops, web sites, and services in a variety of ways. Bonus points for nailing the trifecta: XML, JSON, and YAML.
- Don't let your four-year-old name it: Flickr got away with ditching the vowel--you won't. We were through with double-Os long before Squidoo, Calgoo, or Zooomr (triple-O!) came along, and the same goes for your EEs. Domain name scarcity is not an excuse for stupid product names any more than improved traction is a justification for clown shoes.
Thanks to Jordan and Ryan for contributing to this post
After spending the better part of an hour on 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Yatrik said 12:33PM on 12-01-2006
Yes! Rule number 2 should be brazen in 30-foot flaming letters and plastered on the side of a cliff somewhere. Registering for something that you realize is stupid later on is the most infuriating thing on the web.
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Dances With Books said 1:04PM on 12-01-2006
These rules should indeed become gospel for anyone starting a Web 2.0 tool. I agree with the previous commenter: nothing more annoying than registering for something you realize turns out to be crap because you were curious, but the builders actually failed to tell you what the product exactly did. I want to know what it does and why I would want to use. And yes, plenty of screenshots and visuals would be nice. I can understand if someone is not quite ready to make the product fully available, but at least give a good sense of what it is the product does so I can decide if I may want to give your that e-mail address for you to notify me later.
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sarah said 2:43PM on 12-01-2006
but with social software, with so many things linked to A user, how do you let a person "play" WITHOUT registering? just do the screenshots?
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Nik said 7:56PM on 12-01-2006
So what you are saying is that these rules don't apply to web 1.0 applications?
Stop with the "web 2.0" stuff already, it doesn't exist.
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Nathan said 8:43PM on 12-01-2006
I think these rules should be so obvious, that they should go unsaid. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. The two things I want from any good web company are:
1. It must be able to integrate other services. Digg should have a del.icio.us bookmark link for every story, and so on. You get the idea. The idea that every site has to DO EVERYTHING is getting old.
2. It must have the ability to integrate WITH other services, especially the big ones (digg, del.icio.us, flickr, youtube, etc.). There should be badges, widgets, feeds, and anything else it takes to help my service integrate with other sites.
Wordpress is good at this (works with digg, flickr, etc.) as I've tried to do with my blog (http://www.nathanrice.org/), but the single service sites could do a whole lot better at working with others.
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jimbo said 8:45PM on 12-01-2006
YOU don't exist!
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Sam Frankss said 8:48PM on 12-01-2006
I agree with the above.
Social bookmarking services are becoming increasingly more of a factor.
Not only is function and unique content desirable and necessary.
Integration with the social bookmarking services now and the upcoming future services is essential .
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David Chartier said 9:03PM on 12-01-2006
#3: Sarah, yes and no. Most of these sites could open up a demo space to let users play around and get a feel for the service without having to enter a boatload of information and confirm their account. Those clunky steps totally deflate the "ooh it's shiny!" new experience of so many of these sites, and this problem could be so easily solved.
A lot of CMS and blogging platforms already exhibit this practice; they set up a demo of the live site and the dashboard so you can dig in and get a good idea of what it's all capable of. Almost every web 2.0 startup I can think of could do *some*thing like this to drastically improve the user introduction and experience.
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Nick B said 9:10PM on 12-01-2006
I'm curious, what do you guys think about a site requiring registration for rating, a la digg. Does that frustrate you? It would be difficult to maintain a similar system without user registration.
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Steve said 10:23PM on 12-01-2006
Does mine follow these guidelines?
http://www.mycampusguide.com
Steve
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Nick - adgridwork said 10:24PM on 12-01-2006
Well, we are launching our new Social-Advertisement service this weekend so hopefully by incorporating some of these tips, well be successful :)
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Channel Surfing said 10:27PM on 12-01-2006
@Nick B
well it lets you browse, and that's for without signup. So you don't ever need to signup with digg.
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Scott Carpenter said 10:50PM on 12-01-2006
Great post! I'm a firm believer in Rule 2 ('Don't make me jump through hoops:') and have applied this principle to Invoiceplace (http://www.invoiceplace.com).
There are screen shots, a 30 second screen cast and no registration required to try out the service.
I want to make it as easy for possible for people to see what Invoiceplace is and does and then try it out for themselves.
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Robert Yeager said 10:57PM on 12-01-2006
Sorry, but your rule #7 is virtually impossible these days due to the unavailability of usable dot-com names, especially ones say less than 5 letters. Long names make for crappy company logos.
Watch names continue to get weirder and weirder...
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David Chartier said 11:13PM on 12-01-2006
#9: That's very true - social systems like that which are founded heavily in some sort of community function need user registration to truly allow participation. Plus, digg really isn't that complicated - you click a button and leave comments.
For a site that fits better into many of our rules, look at something like Flickr. They could offer something like flickr.com/demo and let users goof around with a lot of the advanced and unique functionality they have, like clicking on image names in-line to change titles, add tags, geo-tag stuff, etc. A testing or 'stomping' grounds, if you will, that would let people get their feet wet without having to dive in head-first.
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Alex said 11:26PM on 12-01-2006
Nick,
I've thought a lot about that. Why do you think it would be difficult? If you log ip's to prevent double dipping, why not let unregistered users rate a digg story? (Not a flame, a real question)
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Aubrey said 1:26AM on 12-02-2006
What do you think of this one: Safarri.com
Safarri is one of the most powerful classifieds sites in terms of features, but is also vies with CraigsList in being the easiest to use!
Safarri can browse items for sale on Base (and soon Vast too), and syndicates ads for sale with many of the sites listed here.
On top of all that Safarri is completely free, supports anonymous submissions, seller control panels, a flexible category drilldown browse system, a for sale sign generator, custom brandable user stores, maps, newspaper integration, and more!
And not only that, but Safarri was written by a 16 year old (not a joke, look at the copyright in the footer)!
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Michael said 8:07AM on 12-02-2006
I agree with Roberts comment on rule #7 - domain name scarcity IS in fact an excuse for weird site names, at least for those who don't have 10k to buy an unused "normal" name from a domaingrabber.
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gordon said 9:48AM on 12-02-2006
How about the hidden 8? that most of these web 2.0 apps still don't seem to have any defined revenue stream and at the end of the day are only useful to a small subset of people. :-p Believe it not everybody wants to 'share' everything online to their friends and/or express themselves to the whole world 100% of the time, nor have the time to be able to do so.
Just how many photo sharing, blog that does only that X a little bit different are we going to see before the fad dies down ? It's all web 0.99 all over again! People have short memories.
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drew olanoff said 10:49AM on 12-02-2006
seriously, the best thing i ever did was a screencast for pluggd. it answered tons of questions for people and showed exactly what we do.
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