A few notes from Day One of the Future of Web Apps conference (#FOWA) in London. My first FOWA after not being able to attend last year, but having been to a couple of FOWD events in previous years I was interested to see how this alternative event might be more relevant to the work I’m doing these days.
The notes were mainly written during the talks, and may include some thoughts of my own around the potential applications of the technologies and approaches mentioned.
First up after the introduction was Kevin Rose – founder of DIGG.com…
How to go from 1 to 1 million users
1. Ego…
It’s about enhancing user’s self worth…. experience – improve how they feel about themselves during or following their interaction.
Achieve this by providing emotional rewards, and visible rewards… badges.
For example, one can see twitter followers as social currency, a user’s high follower count is considered an indication of status. And one with a relatively low following count even more so, etc…
Leader boards can work, as long as they are inclusive, and don’t put users off.
2. Simplicity…
take stuff out – don’t overbuild a feature
3. Build & Release…
don’t second-guess the users – get it out there and see how they use it
4. Connect with community
podcast… launch party…
engage and be an active participant in the community you’ve created
Look at ways to bring people back into your system… real-time notifications of events, leaves users not wanting to feel left out…
wefollow – is an example of people wanting to be included. “My peers have added themselves to this, so i should too” – particularly relevant in a professional context.
take new user through a series of positive tasks to introduce them to the app or network, and show the etiquette that will enable them to get the best out of it – reward them as they achieve the tasks.
Advanced Web App Marketing strategy
Chris Abad, Irrata Labs
again – empower your users to do the marketing for you… give exposure to those raving fans, construct the framework that allows them to evangelise on your behalf and gives them the buy-in and ownership that keeps their interest and encourages their contribution.
Future of Facebook Connect
Cat Lee
- building blocks:
Identity
connections - reasons to connect; sharing, having experiences with friends – more interesting and fun
- widget central – facebook widget… check out the recommendations
- facebook connect wizard and playground
- translations – allowing facebook to take over the world..
- May be applications in language learning?
- WTF is XFBML ?!?!
HTML 5
Bruce Lawson
Generally awesome – check out the slides at www.brucelawson.co.uk
How people will use the web in future
Aza Raskin – Mozilla
making the web ‘You-centric’
1- identity
- Mozilla looking to make Roboform obsolete!
2 - ?
- Mozilla is bridging the gap between the desktop and the web – THIS IS THE OBJECT OF A BROWSSER! enter email – get suggestions of people from your address book,
- Issue with SQL-based local storage, is that front-end devs DONT DO SQL!
3-integrated
- problem is the separation of the data… used to be important stuff on desktop
- ‘whatever’ button
- bold hope – turn tech prob into personal prob
- trust site? who else uses|?
4-making revolve around ___
ubiquity – natural language “check weather in London in C”.. and it does
interesting solutions form both Mozilla and Facebook around translations…
another glimpse of the future… on a foreign trip with your courier pad, make photo of sign in station, pad identifies text, scans, renders, translates.
IE 8 accelerators offer the beginnings of similar function
Web links to check out:
- Cappuccino
http://cappuccino.org/ - …by 280 North
http://280north.com/ - Revision 3
http://revision3.com/ - Spymaster
http://playspymaster.com/ - …by Irata Labs:
http://iratalabs.com/ - Facebook developer site
http://www.facebook.com/developers/ - modernizr.com
http://www.modernizr.com/ - html5demos.com
http://html5demos.com/ - Jet pack – Mozilla extensions
https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/
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