Monthly Archives: April 2010

CityMove – Bringing together a set of Web 2.0 technologies

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2.5 years in China, summarised
Creative Commons License photo credit: Zoom Zoom

I came across an interesting website called CityMove, a website designed to bring together people looking to make a move to or from New York with New York Movers that can help them move their possessions around the country. I found it particularly interesting because it brings together a number of different concepts that just wouldn’t work in an offline world. There’s more on how the process works on my other blog, but here’s what struck me.

  1. First of all, the site is a reverse auction site. You formulate your requirements and then let different suppliers bid to provide you with their services. In the old world, you would need to contact them all one by one. The Web brings these efficiencies to your fingertips.
  2. Before you come to selecting your supplier, you can read reviews by other people who used the website. The “knowledge of the crowds” can be quite useful because it’s usually more accurate than a company’s advertising.
  3. At the end of the transaction, you will be asked to leave a review and give details of the service you received. Crowdsourcing this information makes the site better for everyone and is one of the prime tenants the site is built on.

I found it quite interesting to look at the site, and even I know that if I was a New York mover, I would definitely want to be affiliated with them.

So, any other Web 2.0 attributes you can spot on the site?

Because we don’t all “do” IT

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An interesting experience happened to me the other day. I was sitting in a talk organised by a local organisation, using my laptop to live tweet what the speaker was talking about. Some of my followers on Twitter could be interested in the subject matter, and I’m very much into sharing what I learn. Anyway, at the end of the talk, the person sitting to my immediate right too my aside and proceeded to complain in no uncertain terms about how annoying my “tapping on that infernal machine” was and how it ruined the whole thing for him. My initial reaction was to retort in a similar manner, but instead I chose to listen to this gentlemen, as I did find the whole experience quite fascinating really.

You see, for us immersed in technology, it’s quite easy to assume that everyone sees the world in the same way we do. In fact, most times I have been pulled aside to talk about my “tapping on that infernal machine”, it had always been by people curious as to what I was doing and looking to learn something new. This was different, the person in question was really distressed . I suppose etiquette would dictate that I should ask my neighbours if I was going to do something out of the usual, but it hadn’t even crossed my mind that someone would get so upset sitting close to a laptop. I can’t see him looking for life insurance quotes online or booking his next airline ticket in this way.

I feel sad for the person in question, but it was also quite enlightening to be reminded that there are people out there who have no interest, in fact, quite an aversion to technology; yet they are our consumers, our customers and even our clients.

Is it time to quit Twitter?

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I was reading an interesting post entitled “When to Quit Twitter“, which zooms into the fact that traffic on Twitter is generated from 10% of the user base, implying that 90% had abandoned it. It talks about Twitter’s main problem, that people sign up without a clear idea of what to expect and how to measure what value it’s adding to their life. The article outlines a couple of points that can help you decide Twitter, or any other social network for that matter, is worth your while. These are:

  1. Determine specifically what you want to get out of the site.
  2. Set a period of time during which you’re willing to experiment with the site and develop a clear method to measure your progress.
  3. Evaluate your success and determine whether the time you put into it is worth the return.

Some of us live in Twitter constantly, while for others it’s a brief foray. For example, if one is running a marketing campaign for mother’s day 2010, then they have a short, sharp focus that is easily measurable. However, for lots of people, the Twitter engagement is about trying to add value to their work, their day or their life. You can intrinsically gather if it’s really providing value. Otherwise, use the points above to see if they can provide a clear path.