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Presentation I gave at the annual meeting of the Finnish Technical Communication Society.
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Web 2.0 and Technical Communication
Laura Katajisto
STD Fall meeting
Tampere 28.11.2007
Contents
What’s Web 2.0 about? Web 2.0 examples Criticism Technical communication and Web 2.0 TC 2.0 examples Unanswered questions
Web 2.0
Web development
Web 1.0 Static pages, rarely updated (Perlin 2007) Producer consumer distinction (Bombosch 2007)
Web 1.5 Dynamic pages generated on demand from a
content management system (Perlin 2007) Producer consumer distinction starts to blur
(Bombosch 2007)
Web development
Web 2.0 Total hype or a new level of the internet (Perlin
2007) Opposite of shrink-wrapped produce; producers no
longer have monopoly over public discourse; empowered consumers have instant access to huge amounts of expertise and they must rely on their own judgment (Bombosch 2007)
Read-only webpages upgraded with social interaction features (Katajisto 2007 )
From http://kosmar.de/archives/2005/11/11/the-huge-cloud-lens-bubble-map-web20/
Examples of Web 2.0 services
Wikipedia Flickr YouTube Del.icio.us DIGG Pãgii TopTable Writely Reddit TripAdvisor
Sphere Stumbleupon Jaiku Twitter Netvibes MySpace Facebook
Criticism
Kevin Farnham, author of Myspace Safety: 51 Tips For Teens And Parents:
”The problem in this world, of course, is that indeed everything IS published and what's published into the digital domain is imperishable. Which means that idle chit-chat that once was dissipated into the summer breeze is now carved into digital stone, as it were, becoming part of the permanent public record that exists for all participants in the […] world.”
From the comments section at http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/07/levels_of_the_game.html
Criticism
The Economist
22.09.2005
Technical Communication 2.0
Paradigm shift in TC
Traditional technical communication Gather information
Author a deliverable
Publish
Update
Shift in user behavior
Four trends of user behavior Users produce, share and organise content
Users access site content and functions well beyond the borders of the site’s ”pages”
Users are pursuing social goals, not just work goals
Hart-Davidson, Intercom Sept/Oct issue 2007. ”Web 2.0 – What Technical Communicators Should Know”.
Paradigm shift in TC
Technical communication in Web 2.0 Assistance for people, not just ”users”
Google as the quick start guide, user guide and help system
Perpetual release cycle – goodbye print release deadlines!
Non-writers produce content, technical communication specialists moderate and edit
Paradigm shift in TC
Technical communication in Web 2.0 Direct feedback from ”Rate this topic” features
and feedback forms
New (?) components of user assistance» Training movies in Flash or MP4 format» Wikis» Blogs (written by product specialists)» Webinars» Podcasts» RSS feeds
TC 2.0 Examples
Forums and mixed media
User support for Pãgii (www.pagii.com)
FAQ produced by Pãgii The rest of the support
comes from a very plain-looking Forum
Video tutorial on how to create a pagii is posted in and played from YouTube
Wikis as user support
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Video tutorials
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/
Podcasts as user support
http://www.rastervector.com/resources/podcast.html
Oh happy day – web 2.0 is here to stay?
Unanswered questions
Legal risks ”If an outsider posts bad information or instructions
that I follow, who’s at fault and who do I sue?” (Perlin 2007)
Loss of control DIGG riot,
http://infowars.net/articles/may2007/020507Digg.htm
“Web 2.0 'neglecting good design' “ Jakob Nielsen,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6653119.stm
Unanswered questions
Designing for a minority http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia ”over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the
users” ”the most active 2% […] have done 73.4% of all the
edits”
Final words…
…from YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g
