Today marks the next step in transforming a business from a Print / Web 1.0 world into an integrated Web 2.0 world.
Today the
Moneywise Online website launched in a "public alpha", moving print content from Moneywise magazine online. Its been built in Drupal and other open source components. The initial "Broadband Web" elements we have incorporated are the blogs, Web TV advice, and a community forum (aka a Social Network in this day and age). The idea is to get the basics up early, and iterate as the new features come onstream and customer feedback helps define the direction
This follows the launch a few weeks ago of
iBall, a (now daily) WebTV service covering investment news.
When we started this transformation work several months ago, it was clear that the Investing and Personal Finance sectors had great potential in Web 2.0, and its been interesting watching the developments of startups in the space, such as Wesabe and Mint winning TechCrunch 40 awards, and Kublax in the SeedCamp arena. I now note people like Fred Wilson are noting the sector is
getting interesting.
There are many interesting lessons in taking a major existing web player from a "Web 1.0" to a "Web 2.0" environment for anyone looking at Enterprise 2.0 transformation, but the ones that stand out for me in this early period are:
(i) You have to be your own startup - the scary competition are going to be focussed, nimble startups using other people's money to get big or go bust. That dynamic has to be matched, as that is their core advantage. An established players' advantage is existing infrastructure and customer base - ie cost of launch of a new service is lower, and (potentially) initial traction is far higher - so long as extraneous costs are minimised.
(ii) Realise that behind the sexy "presentation layer" is some serious work - "Web 1.0" back end infrastructure is quite different in many ways to "Web 2.0" infrastructure - much of the real work is in being able to drive bigger bandwidth, cope with more customer interaction, process the increased metric demands for advertisers. I think many startups don't really grasp the scalability and reliability issues, as they don't see the impact until they get bitten.
(iii) Bang for the Buck 2.0 - There are a lot of things one can potentially do in a "Web 2.0" world, but not all of the social network services are appropriate in a more serious area like Finance. And you can lose money quite quickly (an important thought if your money comes from earnings) just doing Web 2.0 stuff for the sake of it. As Jakob Nielsen notes, Web 2.0 used unthinkingly can be dangerous to your wealth, so it has been critical to ensure that each piece is coherent strategically and financially. Far better to start carefully, get stuff out early, and iterate like mad.....
The other interesting thing in such a Transformation is it has to be done while ensuring the business as usual keeps on bringing in the readies, so there are far more diversions on a management teams' time.
