As I meet with enterprise customers, whether they be Financial Services organisations, Government organisations or other enterprise service providers, a question I'm often asked when speaking about creating innovative solutions upon Adobe technology is "...but what about web 2.0..."
I often talk to customers about the need to "match the medium to the moment". When we think about creating innovative user-experiences, it's not about "will it run on a mobile", "will it run on AIR" and "will it run on a set-top box" but "when would a user want to engage with their mobile", "what tasks and goals would a user want to accomplish when offline" and "what aspirations would they have engaging in front of their television on a set-top box rather than sitting on their laptop or desktop computer". The medium must match the moment, and the moment most likely defines a different pattern of engagement. When I'm stood at the bus-stop, perhaps I'll want to quickly check my bank balance, or even transfer some money into one of my accounts - but I'm less likely to want to chart my spending and see how much money I've spent this month on home improvements (but that is the kind of analysis I might prefer to do sat on my laptop, not connected to the Internet necessarily, in an offline client).
So often when I am asked about web 2.0, I'm being asked about "gadgets" and "widgets" and integration with social networking platforms. Personally, I think the real innovations around "web 2.0" are when we think about architectures of participation and wisdoms of crowds, and I really want to post some more on how I think companies like Mint and Wesabe are doing a great job of creating experiences in commoditised service industries.
But I did see this announcement today - Albany based credit union SEFCU have created a "Facebook Banking" application that offers secure, one-click access to account information through Facebook APIs and the Facebook platform. The application has been developed by a mobile banking company, MShift (out of San Jose) - and what's interesting here is that 2 different mediums (mobile and facebook) have very similar, I believe, moments.
I see great opportunities here, when you look at how organisations like Mint and Wesabe are delivering innovative financial services by leveraging the collective intelligence of their userbase, with applications like SEFCU are creating. When you start leveraging the collective intelligence of your trusted social network and not just the collective intelligence of a website's entire social network, innovation opportunities abound...
What do you think ? Would you bank on facebook, or on another social network ? Are there innovative services that you can think you might trust more because they were in some way validated or surfaced through your chosen crowd ? Would you refinance your mortgage with a certain provider because your facebook friends did ?
Hi Steven.
Interesting article. - personally I wouldn't do my banking based on Facebook. But I'm sure that the time and tendency is moving towards tings like this. In Denmark, that largest enterprise company, regarding online trading between users (Danish Ebay concept), has just gotten a new competitor in the race for users; A new concept using social networking as part of the business concept, with the key phrase "You'd Rather Buy From a Friend!". I see this concept very web 2.0'ish; using the trust and validation and feedback from the users as business concept. It is not the directly validation from the "crowd", but in this case more the trust you have from the "chosen crowd"; you know to whom you sell or from whom you buy. - I'm very excited about the concept, and looking forward to see how it spans off here in Denmark.
The site is called jomito.dk
Cheers
Asger