(later comment of the author: please note my epilog comment before cursing my post for its length, please – I’m just a novice in the blogging filed and I’ve already learned my lesson for the next  post)

I am addicted to mobile phones! Besides their indispensability in today’s world of constant communications – for professional as well as for private use – (just image you lost your mobile with all your contacts as my fellow student Vanessa did. Read more about that topic in her blog.) – I’m enthusiastic about the constant technological progress and the over and over changing designs. It might sound a bit crazy, but for me my mobile is more than just a communication tool – it’s some kind of lifestyle, too. While it is important to remain true to your partner you fell in love with in human life it’s the opposite with the mobiles I ‘fall in love’ with: It’s a frequent change of brands and designs. Consequently, I follow the development in the mobile phone industry with keen eyes. (By the way, as I don’t want to waste my money I only buy a new mobile if I could lucratively sell my old one e.g. on ebay – again: all over Web 2.0 activities).

The last mobile I ‘fell in love’ with was a Sony Ericsson (SE). And it has not been my first ‘liaison’ with this brand. How is this possible? Definitely because of the mobiles of SE in general – they are technological up to date, reliable and stylish. But there has to be something else… any idea? Right! The communication of the company with me as a potential customer – in my case their communication via the corporate website: Because if I want to buy a new mobile the internet is always my first stop on my shopping trip and almost ever the final stop, too. Let’s take a closer look at the website of SE together. Why? The answer is easy: I’m convinced that an informative and interesting corporate website is indispensable for winning new customers and selling products in the Web 2.0 environment.

Will the SE Website stand the test?

Has the company realized the potential of its website? Did it catch me directly? Did it enrich my time with content?  I’m sure you’ve already got an idea how the test will end, haven’t you (as I’ve just betrayed that I’ve bought the phone)? But keep it to yourself Here we go!*

*My reflections are based on the findings on content-rich websites by David
Meerman Scott in ‘The New Rules of Marketing & PR – How to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing & online media to reach buyers directly’.

First ‘brownie-point’: design

Let’s go to the UK SE website. Quickly the side opens, right? My first visual impression: Lively colors, well-arranged space, easy navigation. ‘Brownie-point’! But, I’m sure you share the following opinion with me: An appealing design does not make a good website at all! Never overlook the content aspect, please!

Second ‘brownie-point’: site organization

Let’s click a bit on the different icons – the content of the entire page is very well organized, isn’t it? From the front page which is broken into several main sections including products, fun & downloads up to useful categories within the several topic based subpages. ‘Brownie-point’!

Third and ‘fourth brownie-point’: content-richness and entertainment

Fifth ‘brownie-point’: cultivating relationships

The last brownie-point I’d like to give today is for the following: It seems as if SE especially makes an effort to keep its customers (e.g. me!) after they bought  a mobile as the website offers a lot of support and entertainment for SE mobile users. To my mind, not only winning new customers makes profit but also cultivating the reached relationship is an important step to company success.

What would be interesting but seems to be missing so far is a forum or wiki where customers can share their experiences and help each other. That’s why I fell back on the following useful websites as an alternative:

xonio.com: A reliable German website testing mobiles and computers. Offers a blog and a forum, too.

blog.se-nse.net: Unofficial SE blog.

se-world.info: Because of 240 000 members the provider calls this website the biggest German community discussing SE mobiles.

cellphonesail.net: By chance I found this wordpress blog. I like it because it discusses unusual or new variants of existing SE mobiles. In fact, I found the first picture of my current SE in this blog even before the German SE website published it.

Anyway, in conclusion the SE website provided all the information I needed and took me through my consideration process as a customer very well.

Epilogue: No ‘brownie-’ but minus point for the length of my post

In the end, I’m afraid I have to give a minus point to myself as my ‘never ending SE story’ is much too long for a blog post! Learning by doing!

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It’s amazing! Without great effort I’m already an integral part of the Web 2.0 business economy. Because of my blog? Far from it. Because of my facebook profile? Far from it. There’s a much more simple reason for it. Let’s check some of my web activities within the last week:

Monday: I sent an email via Windows
Life Messenger and bought some books at amazon.co.uk

Tuesday: I sold my old mobile phone on ebay and bought some DVDs there

Wednesday: I searched for information on Wikipedia and googled a journal article

Today: I called my friends in Germany via Skype

I could easily go on like this! To put it into a nutshell: There has been hardly any day within the last weeks… months…let’s say even the last year (maybe even years?) without network
effects caused through my usual web activities.

Curse and blessing of ‘traffic’

I really like the following quote of Amy
Shuen in her book ‘Web
2.0: A Strategy Guide – Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web
2.0 implementations.’ (by the way: as this is already my second quote of Shuen’s book you see I’m really satisfied reading it. It’s a great, very well written book I really like to recommend to every PR student who deals with Web 2.0) “FOR MOST OF US IN THE REAL (OFFLINE) WORLD, TRAFFIC IS A BAD THING. More cars on the highway at rush hour create negative network effects. Each driver reduces the quality of the experience by congesting and overloading the highway network past its limit. But in the online world, traffic is a powerfully good thing.” Just try to picture it! Her figure of speech is great.

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What Shuen refers to: There’s no doubt that positive network effects increase the value of a good or service the more people use it (To get an idea of it: A well known theory illustrating this is Metcalfe’s
law stating about the value of communication). Positive network effects created the Web 2.0 network platforms and contributed the online hypergrowth of networks such as Google, Yahoo!, ebay, Skype, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Flickr and other.

Apropos: Why not watch Amy
Shuen talking about network effects herself? For me it was very interesting to see this famous lecturer in person – but be aware that it’s more an informative video than an animating film! Suen has
got a blog, too. Unfortunately, it has not been updated for a longer period of time.

What comes to your mind first?

Let’s go back to where I started: I just followed this train of thought about my web activities within the last week because it seems to me as if many people think they aren’t a part of the Web 2.0 business economy at first glance. In fact, they are! Just to give you an idea about two of the web services I used last week: ebay counts 86 million active and Skype 400 million registered users (see
source).

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Not bad! Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling that people first notice all these social networks like Facebook or MySpace when thinking about Web 2.0. activities. I sometimes even catch me thinking the same although I know it better!

Everybody’s doing it – blogging! Finally, even I set foot into the ‘blogosphere’. It seems to be nothing special at all but I must admit: I was a bit unsure to push the button on my first post. I’ve never written a blog before. It’s inspiring and strange at the same time to know that from now on anyone can read what I put on my blog – everywhere in the world!

But what’s the big deal?

I’m sure I’m not the only one who was a bit frightened putting the first post on his blog. Actually, I recently read in David Meerman Scott’s famous book ‘The New Rules of Marketing & PR – How to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing & online media to reach buyers directly’: “Everybody I’ve spoken with about starting a blog has said the same thing (but in slightly different ways). They all were a bit uncomfortable when they started a blog. They felt a little dorky because they didn’t know all the unwritten rules. They were even a little scared to push the button on this first post. We’ve all been there.”

Web 2.0: A great opportunity for PR – and the individual

I’m looking forward to discover all these unwritten rules and Web 2.0 in general. So far I’ve been more or less passive using all its versatile opportunities (I will tell you more about my current experiences within my next posts). Perhaps because I was a bit unsure where to start? The offer is incredible! Nevertheless, I’m highly interested to get an insight into it. On the one – professional – hand, because Web 2.0 opens enormous opportunities for PR. Just think about all the new communication channels such as blogs, wikis or RSS, for example. On the other – personal – hand, it’s exciting to check it’s assets for everyday life. What comes to my mind first, for instance: Networks sharing the same leisure time interests as you do.

Let’s just start

In the end, the term Web 2.0 is present in everybody’s mind and useful books have been written on it. For example, I recently started reading ‘Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide – Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations.’ by Amy Shuen. In her book she demonstrates how a Web 2.0 strategy can make your business more competitive. Out of interest I googled the question “What
is Web 2.0?” today as Amy Shuen did in her book published in 2008. The result: 347 million web pages returned (Suen mentions 65 million returned web pages in her book). Like in Amy Shuen’s results, the first-ranked entry is still the Wikipedia
entry followed by Tim
O’Reilly’s article ‘What is web 2.0?’ and two YouTube videos (The
Maschine is Us/ing Us and What
is Web 2.0?). You see, not only the opportunities within Web 2.0 are incredible but the loads of post about it as well and they increase every day.

To my mind, the best starting point to understand Web 2.0 in general and the ‘blogosphere’ in particular is discovering it myself.

I only stand to gain from it, I can’t lose!