Conference with Dave Mc Glure from Stanford

Two days ago, I want with a couple friends to a great conference in Edinburgh University. The theme was "Web 2.0 and the Facebook Phenomenon". The speaker, Dave Mc Clure, came the University of Stanford, USA (no needs to remind that the creators of Google studied there). He is currently teaching a class about the creation of Facebook Applications and how to make them popular. Apart from that he has been doing many things in the Silicon Valley for the last 15 years (investment, consulting, etc... ) In particular, Dave launched SimplyHired.com and worked at PayPal. He is also as "geek" as he likes to call himself.

I found this conference very interresting. It was targeted on the web 2.0 services, how they are important and how to make profits from them.

Here is some points that I think have to be remember:

1. The developers have to pay more attention to the online metrics. The ability to measure customer feedbacks in real time is essential. The different features of an application or website haven't to be measured and analyzed separately in order to see what works or not but also how and why.
   
   
2. Emailing can be a good way to keep users and make them visiting regularly your website. Of course this has to stay reasonable and not spammy. A link allowing the users to unsubscribe to the mail list should be include in the mail.
   
   
3. There is different steps to take into account for the good success of a website:
   - The first impression is essential: it will be the determinant factor for the user to come back or not.
   - At the second step, you have to make them addicted, you have to create an interest for them to come back regularly.
   - etc...
   
   
4. About Facebook: The fact that when a user adds an application to his profile it gives you the list of his friends is a very powerful idea! For Dave, "it is maybe the greatest thing that happened on the internet for the last ten years". Of course this has to be use with respect of the privacy of everyone and not for spammy purposes. However, it is a very powerful way for a service to grow up and this is something Facebook done very well.
   
   
5. Google has a very good way to monetize its services but no social network (apart YouTube)
   Facebook has a huge network of users but a very crappy monetization of its services.
   => Both have to work on way to change the situation.
   
   
6. In summary, strengths or Facebook:
   - The social graph = Friend lists
   - Shared social activity stream = Feeds
   - Social Platform & API = Apps