The A to Z of the Live Web

Article by Paul Caplan on behalf of Media Trust

A is for active audience. As Dan Gillmor points out, your audience is smarter than you. But they are also active. They do not passively consume, they actively converse.

B is for blogosphere. Blogging and other read/write conversations are not a new medium, they are a new space where new sorts of relationships and cultural practices are being forged.

C is for conversation. This new space is about conversation - an alive, real, open chat.

D is for delivery. The key thing about playing in this space is making sure you deliver. You can’t blag, bluff or spin, they’ll find you out. If you promise something, deliver it. If you can’t, explain.

E is for engage. Meet with. Talk with. Work with. Engaging is about making your conversations, fun, relevant and real.

F is for FUD culture. The guys behind the book Naked Conversations use the business terms ‘fud’ to refer to the fear, uncertainty and doubt, that stops development. You want to engage with this new space, conquer it and tell your boss to conquer it or be left behind.

G is for good enough. Don’t worry about creating perfection. Blogs are not finished they are in process. Go for the ‘good enough’, it’s more human.

H is for hypermedia. The Live Web is multimedia. It’s built on and through Live Media and linking. Start thinking in terms of pictures, sounds and words, linked and mashed-up.

I is for is with a small i. It’s not YOU it’s you. The small you. The you that’s one among many. The you that is an individual but not arrogant.

J is for just in time. The Live Web is about responding to the now, relating to the moment, adding to the ongoing conversation rather than waiting for the ‘right moment’.

K is for keywords. The key words or tags in your post allow your story to link to others, be searched, catalogued and related to other stories. Keywords are the bits that join the blogosphere.

L is for linking. Your blog needs others if it is to be written by an ‘i’. Your links show you are in the conversation.

M is for mobile. Reading the Live Web is a mobile experience. Writing it is rapidly becoming so.

N is for network effect. The Internet is a network and as you increase the number of points in the network, you increase the number of connections exponentially. Content is the points and content relationships are the powerful connections.

O is for open source. Open source software is developed by collections of disparate individuals who make their work available for others to improve and develop. Open source software is often seen as better written, better supported and more stable than traditional proprietary software. The Live Web makes possible open source content.

P is for personal. The Live Web is big but it is also very small. It is my thoughts, my pictures, my bookmarks… but my personal content to share and use as the basis for content relationships.

Q is for q&a. The conversations that drive content relationships are often begun with a question which begs answers, which lead to more questions which lead… The important point is that this chain is never finished.

R is for read/write. It is no longer an option to simply read. The Live Web does not just allow or even encourage response, it demands it. Just as the state saves all our data within its web of surveillance so ‘our’ Web is being built by our reading practices, our uploading and tagging and our sharing.

S is for social. The blogosphere is a social space. It is where meetings happen - not in the old idea of a ‘chat room’ but in the far more potent sense of a content relationship. This social space is not a replica of the real space; it is a technologically-enhanced content space where smart tagging, hypermedia linking and read/write mash-ups create producer/consumers with different social and cultural expectations and demands.

T is for transparent technology. Yes, the Live Web has been made possible by html, asp, php, ajax, http and countless other geeky acronyms but technology is becoming increasingly transparent; like the mobile phone it is now a part of people’s communications and relationships. It is now easy to play an active part in the Live Web without having to understand the engine that drives it.

U is for understand. The conversations across the Live Web demand understanding and empathy. It is no longer possible to send out messages and expect audiences or demographic samples to absorb them. It is not even just about targeting, it’s about engaging with people, talking to them and understanding them as producer/consumers, as people and as fellow players in the new space.

V is for voice. The Live Web is human. Databases can’t play here. Neither can spinmeisters or salesmen or marketers. All these shadows without voices are discovered and laughed out of the conversation. If you want to talk to me, use your own voice.

W is for wiki effect. Wikis are open source content spaces where anyone can add and edit, cranking up the quality using the wisdom of crowds. Wikis or the next generation of collaborative content spaces will be the next generation of Live Web tools where content value is created through the interplay of many.

X is for xml. Extensible Mark-up Language is the standard which enables Live Web content to be tagged and flow around the new systems and spaces. You don’t need to know how. You just need to exploit it to the max.

Y is for you. The Live Web space is waiting to be exploited and played in. It’s not the CEO’s decision. It’s not up to the IT team to do it. It’s up to you. The Live Web is waiting for you, not your organisation.

Z is for zen. Zen is about the present moment. It is about the simple and basic. It’s about the small. It’s about not trusting people who tell you they have a monopoly on the truth. So is the Live Web.

Paul Caplan is delivering free new media training to charities on behalf of Media Trust see www.mediatrust.org or www.icthub.org.uk