The Beeb groks Web 2.0 - does Planet Mobile even get 2.0 ?

Contrast two converging media megaliths, mobile and broadcasting....shortly on the heels of the BBC getting into Web 3.D (see here or last week in broadstuff for articles), I find this post on the 15 values of Web 2.0 from said favourite Auntie's BBC2.0 project.

Because we apparently all have shortening attention spans, I thought I'd copy them here:

1. Build web products that meet audience needs: anticipate needs not yet fully articulated by audiences, then meet them with products that set new standards. (nicked from Google)

2. The very best websites do one thing really, really well: do less, but execute perfectly. (again, nicked from Google, with a tip of the hat to Jason Fried)

3. Do not attempt to do everything yourselves: link to other high-quality sites instead. Your users will thank you. Use other people's content and tools to enhance your site, and vice versa.

4. Fall forward, fast: make many small bets, iterate wildly, back successes, kill failures, fast.

5. Treat the entire web as a creative canvas: don't restrict your creativity to your own site.

6. The web is a conversation. Join in: Adopt a relaxed, conversational tone. Admit your mistakes.

7. Any website is only as good as its worst page: Ensure best practice editorial processes are adopted and adhered to.

8. Make sure all your content can be linked to, forever.

9. Remember your granny won't ever use “Second Life”: She may come online soon, with very different needs from early-adopters.

10. Maximise routes to content: Develop as many aggregations of content about people, places, topics, channels, networks & time as possible. Optimise your site to rank high in Google.

11. Consistent design and navigation needn't mean one-size-fits-all: Users should always know they're on one of your websites, even if they all look very different. Most importantly of all, they know they won't ever get lost.

12. Accessibility is not an optional extra: Sites designed that way from the ground up work better for all users

13. Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual homes: Encourage users to take nuggets of content away with them, with links back to your site

14. Link to discussions on the web, don't host them: Only host web-based discussions where there is a clear rationale

15. Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent: After all, it's your users' data. Best respect it.

All good stuff, and as you can see I am plastering this wall of our e-abode with it (though I'm dubious about No 14...I like my discussion in one virtual room rather than flipping from link to link - brings me back to a discussion with Hugh MacLeod about whether not allowing comments on blogsites makes them un-blogs - I think it does....)

So, broadcasting is "getting" Web 2.0 concepts at a strategic rather than individual level....in fact, even the US miltary seems to be getting it, albeit in its own way

In parallel with this a bunch of us who worked on the Mobile Web 2.0 book had dinner the other night - thanks Tony - and we were discussing what Planet Mobile has to do to get to this sort of take-off point. And here I am far less hopeful. The above stuff all works because a number of axiomatic conditions apply:

(i) The "PC Net" is largely Open

(ii) The economics of trying stuff out are good - you don't pay a lot to access YouTube, Google Earth etc

(iii) The User Interface is (largely) standard, and Easy to Use

(iv) Ditto the development path - write once, use many times

(v) Broadband - broad bandwidth, broad penetration, broad usage.

Contrast this with Planet Mobile:

- Closed - limited range on portal, often hard to get off portal

- Costly - high cost of data traffic, especially if going off-portal. he cost of say 10 minutes of YouTube watching is extortionate

- Constrained - 384 kb/sec was awesome in 2001. Its not 2001 anymore.

- Clunky UI and form factor (Y d u thnk txt ws invntd?). The breakthrough mobile devices are being built by Nintendo, Apple and (I am told) Chinese manufacturers building for 3rd world users of mobile internet

- Cr*p development economics - write many, use once (OK, I'm exaggerating, but each phone works differently on each network - ok for txt but lousy for big bandwidth interactive apps)

(OK, OK, there are steps forward such as 3 UK...but to all except the most fervent mobilehead its not as good)

So, how long has Planet Mobile got to terreform itself? Two trends one should never bet against:

(i) The 80/20 principle - the 'Net will grab the "80" - The 'Net hates an obstruction, and with WiFi, 3G card (different data deal) and VoIP my laptop is getting pretty mobile (I reckon about 80% of my being "mobile" is just sitting somewhere "else" - and if I have connectivity at that "else", I don't need really more than a cheap phone for calls in the other 20% of the time). Plus, dealing with voicemail is a real faff compared to email - much better to divert it to my PC and see it there when I want to, in the sequence I want.

(ii) Mo' Moore's Law - Yeah, yeah, I know - 1 billion more people have mobiles than PC's, and more people will access the Internet via mobiles than PCs by 2008 or whatever (what "access" means in this context is less clear) - but the reason for this is not that they prefer mobiles - its because they can afford them. The only thing keeping the current mobile internet going is that Moore's Law hasn't got laptop devices to that price point yet. I have noticed that kids drop their mobiles like hot potatoes when a PC is available. Look at the Blackberry - its just an email client, yet its stolen a whole market away. Ditto the iPod and music.

Timing - next few years - iPhone and the $100 Clockwork Computer are the first swallows of a new dawn (mixing metaphors magnificently)

(by the way, the Grok meme is interesting - it stems from Robert Heinlein's 1970's book "Stranger in a Strange Land" and means to know something truly deeply, but it seems to be resurgent in Web 2.0, I guess it dates all the main proponents - like a linguistic tree ring. Ain't that a Groovy* thought ?)

*"Cool", however, is always cool