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Here at MTB Mobile our core product is called “NonProfit 2.0”. Our soon-to-be-released product for political campaigns is called “Politics 2.0”. The “2.0” doesn’t mean these are the second release of the products – it means these products are built on the key concepts of “Web 2.0”. But what is Web 2.0?
Anyone who spends time on the Internet these days will have heard the term Web 2.0 many times, but it’s generally used without explanation. Broadly, it refers to a new generation of uses of the Internet that make it more interactive and democratic – more “conversation” than “presentation”. Where a (retroactively called) “Web 1.0” site might just contain information from a publisher to be consumed by a reader, a “Web 2.0” site enables and encourages interaction, user-generated content and sharing within a community.
Broad examples of Web 2.0 categories include:
Social Networks. Sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn provide users with the chance to share information about themselves, find others with matching interests and backgrounds, and participate in a community-generated conversation. Users can be individuals, businesses, nonprofit organizations, or just groups of people organized around a topic.
Micro-Blogging. Twitter is the best known example of a micro-blog, but others include Friend Feed, Plurk and Jaiku. Micro-blog users post short messages throughout the day, and these messages are automatically published to anyone who “follows” the user. When done badly, micro-blog posts can be frivolous and self-referential. When done well, the posts provide insight and information to a community of interest.
Social News. With the profusion of information on the Internet – much of it user-generated Web 2.0 content – it has become increasingly difficult to find the “good” content, meaning content that is interesting, accurate and relevant. Social News sites allow users to “vote” on content so that the best content moves up the list and the worst ends up at the bottom. Sites like Digg, Delicious and Technorati all make it easy for readers to quickly access the best – as determined by their peers – of what’s online.
So what does this mean for nonprofits? Web 2.0 is actually very exciting, because it offers the opportunity to create deeper and more lasting relationships with supporters.
People love to hear themselves speak, and they love even more to see themselves in print. You probably know from experience that one of the most effective ways to create a positive impression with someone is to ask them to do you a favor. Similarly, a supporter who has written about you or shared your story verbally has invested a little bit of herself in you, and is more likely to support you in the future. Enabling and encouraging supporters to create content about you turns them into advocates and can impel financial support as well.
You also know that the most effective advertising is user-generated testimonials that come across as conversation, not as marketing. The user-generated content of Web 2.0 is a perfect application of this principle, and has the potential to be a major new driver of growing your support base.
So, bringing this conversation full circle, why do we call our products “2.0”? We do it because they extend the benefits of Web 2.0 into the mobile space, facilitating user-generated communications via Facebook, Twitter, Email and SMS and making it simple for supporters to become advocates. And in just the way that every organization today has a (1.0) web page, and most organizations have a presence on (2.0) Facebook and Twitter, it won’t be long before having a mobile presence is a baseline requirement as well. Your increasingly-participatory advocates will demand it.
Some great links for further reading on Web 2.0: