Web 2.0 - it's about customer engagement, not product !

Published : 07 October 2008

According to Deloitte's  report in a recently completed study of more than 100 businesses with online communities,35 % of the online communities studied have less than 100 members; less than 25% have more than 1,000 members – and 60 of these businesses spent over $1 million on their community projects. “A disturbingly high number of these sites fail,” the study suggested.

It turns out that 60% was a misprint for 6% - so the failure rate is high, but the costs of failure not quite as catastrophic!

The message to our clients is still the same - community building is very different from publishers' tradtional push culture of product delivery and communications. It is about customer engagement and retention and will yield high rewards if treated thus.

But if you don't have the resource and commitment to treat it as such, then choose other means of product development rather than following any gaderene-like rush to Web 2.0