Working in such an environment is fun, rewarding and challenging. At Fatpublisher we like a good challenge. That's why each year we set aside two weeks and devote our attention to strengthening all aspects of our operation. This might be anything from rolling out new features for Site Manager™ (our Content Management System) to finding new ways of incorporating your feedback into our everyday business and development processes. It's energetic team time where we get to throw our collective creativity at the proverbial wall and see what sticks.

We call this time Braincamp and during this period we'll be locking our developers in a very small room ensuring we stay ahead of the game in this dynamic online culture we call the Internets.

Just imagine what would happen if we didn't have our annual Braincamp. Why, the web may very well look like 1996!

Here at Fatpublisher we're committed to stopping 1996 from ever happening again.

That's why, during Braincamp, we will:

• Streamline web development processes
• Improve Site Manager™
• Expand functionality
• Improve client service
• Upgrade existing infrastructure
• Create new web design features

So, what do you think? Have you got some feedback you'd like us to have, a way we might improve our content management and design services? Send us an email and tell us what's on your mind.

And remember: only you can prevent outbreaks of 1996. If you see something suspicious or would like more information call Fatpublisher on 1300 720 734.

Its now 2011 (or so we’ve been told), the initial media stampede has moved on to new pastures and the dust is finally beginning to settle on the social media debate. While there is much we still don’t know, what is abundantly clear at this stage is that social media is not going anywhere. Facebook might shoot itself in the foot and Twitter may never make a cent but, the idea of doing business in a digital age must always acknowledge the role of networked, mobile technologies.

For business this is both a great opportunity and a monumental challenge. This is the first time we have been able to gather substantive and accurate data about our products and services directly from the people who use them. The potential of this new information is exponential. And therein lies the challenge: how do we respond to all of this new data and what does that mean for the way we do business?

Clearly, the question now is not whether you do social media but how well you are going to do it.

So, once you’ve decided to take the plunge into the social web, where do you start? And what do you do once you get there? It’s hard enough to establish a presence online as an individual, let alone as a business. But, the sooner you incorporate social media into your existing digital strategy the faster you will see a return from what is, by far, the most cost effective research and direct marketing tool available.

At Fatpublisher, we know that social media can feel unproductive, that it can be time consuming and, that without direction it can quickly become overwhelming. That’s why we’re here, staying on trend and refining our knowledge, developing tools and designing strategies to support our clients and give them the competitive edge.

With that in mind and continuing our commitment to expand and improve the services we provide, we are happy to welcome our new recruit, Gabriel, to the Fatpublisher Team. Gabriel brings social media expertise, digital marketing know-how and a #winning smile to the Fat portfolio.

Our new colleague allows us to offer a more holistic approach to building online experiences. Gabriel will be working with us to develop tailored social media training, strategy and implementation packages. As well, he will allow us to maintain our high standard in content strategy, email marketing, copy writing and SEO while increasing our capacity to deliver these services. As always our focus will be on building web solutions for our clients that get great results and place them at a distinct advantage over their competitors.

There has never been a better time to go social. So, why not send us your thoughts about a new or upcoming project? It’s easy to get in touch and you can always visit our Create a Brief page if you’re feeling particularly inspired.

If you’re anything like us it was probably quite a lot. As of mid last year it was estimated that 1.2 Zetabytes of information has been digitised worldwide. It’s hard to imagine what that number truly represents so let’s just assume that it’s a headache-inducingly large amount and move on. What we can all understand though, is that information is no longer the scarce resource it has been in the past.

Today the most precious commodity online is attention. Economies of attention and distraction dictate who comes to your site and how they get there, how engaged they are and ultimately how long they stay. It’s time to really think about how we are going to cope with with this new info-reality in light of the increasingly limited attention budget we all have.

For those of us who care about designing online experiences the key question here is: how do we allow our users to find the content they want before we lose their attention to that amusing picture of someones cat?

Call us biased but, we think that engagement focused web design, streamlined navigation and efficient content management are some of the best tools we have for courting the attention of users. One great feature that incorporates all of this is the imaginatively named “mega menu”. Mega menus are exactly what they sound like, huge drop-down menus that use several familiar ways of presenting information and encouraging user participation.

A mega menu uses limited screen space efficiently and has the added benefit of increased interactivity, being designed from the ground up to engage the users attention far more effectively than traditional table-of-contents-style lists.

Obviously, we’re fans of the mega menu. However, the way this feature is usually implemented doesn’t do it justice. What we’re finding is that, increasingly, mega menus are just bigger versions of regular menus, designed to be novel but ultimately pointless.

Here are 25 examples of these boring walls of text.

Over the decade we’ve been in this business we’ve come to understand the delicate balance between standardisation and innovation. On the one hand you don’t want to alienate visitors with crazy design features that confuse and bewilder. On the other, there is a reason websites don’t look the way they did in the 90s.

At Fatpublisher we think one of the best solutions to this problem is to take advantage of something you do all the time: visual search. Visual search relies on image differentiation to locate information rather than textual comprehension. It is a much faster way sorting through large amounts of data.

By blending both visual and text based searches with relevant content in an interactive and engaging navigation feature, users are given every reason not to be distracted. Ultimately this means they get what they want with minimal resistance and distraction, creating a positive experience and brand association, in turn growing your relationship with your users.

For us, features that intuitively interface between user and content are the key to dealing with this data deluge. They maximise economies of attention and limit the frustration factor.

We could keep talking about this (seriously, we love this stuff), but really that defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? Why not see what we’re talking about for yourself; go and play with our latest mega menu. Our web developers this one for our friends at Waterplex who help save water with their innovative water tanks. You can always see other examples of our work here too.

And If you like what you see, maybe you’d like to send us your thoughts on a new or upcoming project. It’s easy, just visit our Create a Brief page.

• $70k Package + Bonus
• Variety of Interesting Work
• Exciting Digital Agency
• Strategic Position
• Room to Grow
• Fun Team & Funky Surry Hills Studio

Fatpublisher is a leading web design, web development, SEO and online marketing agency, delivering highly creative, brand and results driven web services to large and small Australian businesses. You will be working closely with the Account Director and Project Manager throughout the entire SDLC from understanding the client’s scope of requirements and deliver outcomes to their specifications to training and support. There is heaps of room to grow and take on a more integral role in the team. You must love the web and be aware of its major trends and developments.

We have an excellent opportunity for an experienced PHP programmer to lead the development of web applications/ e-commerce/ sites for various interesting clients. The ideal candidate will be a systematic thinker able to break down business solutions into logical steps and clean code in a timely manner. You will need to be proficient in MVC software architecture and have previous experience in object orientated web application development within frameworks such as Zend, Symphony or CAKE PHP using PHP 5. You must also have good knowledge of HTML, MySQL, Javascript, and CSS. You must also have deployed multiple web sites meeting W3C standards. You will be working on a bespoke CMS with enterprise level capability. As the lead programmer we will be looking to you to suggest efficiencies to the various processes for continuous improvement and ensure knowledge sharing and documentation.

Ideally, we want someone with min. 3 years experience within a digital agency dealing with clients and managing the workflow of multiple projects concurrently. You must be able to balance the priorities of client’s scope, budget and timeframe with internal resources and capabilities and the agencies quality and profitability standards.

As the lead of the development team we expect you to have reasonable people management skills to take the team with you to the goal of delivering the scope within the timeframe and budget. You must be able to delegate, nurture and develop your team members. You will need to be able to hold the team accountable and take full responsibility for the outcome. You will need to be organized and manage your time effectively including juggling changing priorities throughout the day. You must be able to remain calm and think clearly in the midst of pressure. You will need good written and verbal communications skills to articulate your message elegantly and eloquently.

This is a permanent full time role with a highly competitive salary package (including 9% super) of $70k.

APPLY for the role of Lead PHP Web Developer via SEEK : Lead PHP Web Developer. Only candidates eligible for full time permanent work in Australia may apply. Please note that we will only reply to candidates that fit our role criteria.

Get to know us first

View the Fatpublisher Photostream on Flickr.
Follow Fatpublisher's tweets on Twitter.
Connect to the Fatpublisher Network on Linked.

Based on your feedback, Talha will be helping us improve our customer service by delivering our online services including web design and web deveopment in a more structured and managed way.

Graduate of Monash University in Multimedia and MBA qualified, Talha has 10+ Years of experience in the new media and IT industry, assuming various positions across Australia, Denmark, Dubai and Pakistan. Talha is looking to create world-class digital marketing solutions and visual design strategies by applying his strong background in web design and extensive knowledge of interpreting business and brand strategies. Talha is a result-oriented project manager interested in raising the standards of the digital advertising and marketing industry. Talha's critical skill sets include project management, process improvement, and usability analysis.

Welcome to the Fatpublisher team Talha.

• Variety of Interesting Work
• Exciting Web Design Agency
• Key Strategic Position
• Fun Team & Funky Surry Hills Studio

The key attribute that this person must have is the ability to be able to SWITCH effectively from being process/ project orientated with specs floating around in your mind to being people/ customer orientated with the answering of the phone.

Your primary strength will be your knowledge of web design/ development/ search. This will help you make better decisions, anticipate/ avoid problems when creating project plans/ functional specs, scheduling tasks, estimating time and dealing with any worst case scenarios. Experience with creating sitemaps and wireframes would be desirable. A history of implementing projects in PHP would also be a great advantage.

Ideally, we want someone with about 5 years experience within a digital agency dealing with clients managing the workflow of multiple projects concurrently. You must be able to balance the priorities of client’s scope, budget and timeframe with internal resources and capabilities and the agencies quality and profitability standards.

As the leader of the web design & web development production team you must have the people management skills to take the team with you to the goal of delivering the scope within the timeframe and budget. You must be able to delegate, nurture and develop your team members. You will need to be able to hold the team accountable and take full responsibility for the outcome. You will need to be organized and manage your time effectively including juggling changing priorities throughout the day. You must be able to remain calm and think clearly in the midst of pressure. You will need good written and verbal communications skills to articulate your message elegantly and eloquently.

As the primary point of contact in the project delivery you will develop into the client’s trusted online strategic advisor. This is where your role as account manager will shine. If you have done your job right as the project manager existing clients will naturally ask you for advice. Your job is to take a consultative approach to understanding the client’s business objectives, budgets and timeframe and propose an action plan for implementing their goals. You will be required to offer scenarios and consequences to help the client come up with the best choice for their business. If the scope on existing projects goes beyond what was agreed you will need to negotiate more budget with the client. You have to do all this whilst maintaining the highest level of integrity and honesty and fulfilling on your commitments and promises.

Depending on the caliber and interest of this person, they could be involved with or have input in several business functions like, invoicing, budgeting, web strategy, recruitment, sales and marketing.

This is a permanent full time role with a highly competitive salary package (including 9% super) of between $75k - $85k. In your cover letter must include:

• Why do you believe you are the right fit for our firm?
• Example of a role where you have had to switch a lot between task/ process oriented (introverted) to people/ customer (extroverted) focused, what was the role, how did you handle the disruption and did you like it?
• Example of a successful project you have implemented and team you lead, the situation, your role and the result?
• What you believe are your strengths and weaknesses?
• How any prior work experience or transferable skills will be relevant to this role?

To apply for the Project Manager/ Account Managers position please visit our ad on SEEK : Project Manager / Account Manager or email your cover letter and resume to: josh_g@winnerperformance.com. Only candidates eligible for full time permanent work in Australia may apply. Please note that we will only reply to candidates that fit our role criteria.

Get to know us first

View the Fatpublisher Photostream on Flickr.
Follow Fatpublisher's tweets on Twitter.
Connect to the Fatpublisher Network on Linked.

Twitter to engage your customers

Can Twitter be used for engaging your customers or even promoting your business? The answer… it depends on who you are trying to reach and how you go about it.  The most distinguishing feature of Twitter is that it is a two-way fare.  Simple push communication will not work. Twitterers that simply push messages are regularly mocked, or just not followed.  If you want to use Twitter you must be prepared to flex and interact with the community you adopt.

Engaging in Twitter requires a little creativity, a thick skin, a little bribery and above all - respect for your followers and those that you follow.

Don't be a commitment phobe!

An active Twitter stream is an interesting Twitter stream.  Post relevant and regular tweets and you'll be pleasantly surprised at the number of people that follow you.  It is about building loyalty and amassing the kind of followers who are likely to give you word of mouth promotion when the opportunity arises.

Posting tweets is one way to keep your head in this game but just as important is to monitor what people might be saying about your business.  If you have undertaken some advertising, or other campaigning that might cause a spike in conversations about your brand, then Twitter can be a very helpful place to monitor what your customers are saying about it.  Providing a helpful hashtag in your advertising and other material can make it easier to monitor the conversation.

Master the hash tag

The hashtag is a great example of how Twitter has evolved to suit its needs of it community.  As Twitter does not grouping posts, users can instead mark their posts with a particular 'tag' preceded with a # symbol (e.g. #ausvotes) .  If a critical mass of people use a common hashtag in response to a particular event, idea or emotion, than this makes it very easy for Twitterers to search and read a rich stream of relevant posts. 

A common question is "who decides what hashtag to use" and "what's the correct format for a hashtag".  The answer is "You/We/They/I do!" and "Anything you like!".  In some instances conversations spring up about what hashtag to use, consensis is quickly reached and off the conversations goes. 

Suggesting hashtags in your tweets, on your website or even in your advertising is a way of making it easy for your customers to talk about you - and for you to hear what they have to say.

Get yourself in their Twitter stream

A good way to use twitter for your business is to get your business or product into the conversations of others.  An example might be a small competition with prizes for the best Twitter Haiku post about an event that includes a specific hashtag.  Or it might be sharing some video that is relevant to your business or product and making it easy for others to share or post.

Getting into the twitter stream of your customers is about encouraging word of mouth communication. Give them somewhere to go after that conversation is started by integrating activity on your website, blog or even your showroom/shopfront.

Take care of your Tweeps.

For those that do choose to follow you it important to respect the fact that your posts go into their twitter stream so give them something interesting to Retweet to their followers. Make it interesting and not simply promotional.  Building a community of tweeps slowly builds a following for your business that becomes a useful way of spreading word of mouth communication.

* Such Twitter behaviour was recently satirised by the comedy group The Chaser and turned into a source of fun when people started to post inane comments with the tag #tweetlikeTonyBurke

Behind the scenes we have been working on our own business. We began by asking our clients their honest feedback in relation to our service delivery. We also asked our clients what were their greatest challenges and how they could see Fatpublisher helping, in order to meet those challenges. We have been doing a lot of things right, but there is room for improvement - and that is what we are now focused on.

I would like to extend my gratitude and special thanks to those businesses that participated in our customer advisory board.

We were proud to discover :

• that our knowledge and expertise, combined with our personalised service and consultative approach were leading reasons why those surveyed choose to buy online services from Fatpublisher, and
• that our team attitude is constructive, helpful and that we often go beyond the call of duty.

We learnt that we can :

• improve the regularity and frequency of communication with our clients
• improve our customer service by delivering our online services in a more structured and managed way
• communicate the availability and value of new products and services to our clients earlier

If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting
- by Stephen R. Covey

In recent months we have made some changes. We now have in place a set of core customer promises. We want to incorporate great customer service into everything that we do. We listened to what our clients wanted and created an important list of 7 core customer service promises. One of these promises is to 'Share web insights and recommendations with our clients every 3 months'. We will do this via a regular email newsletter. We welcome any suggestions on what you would like us to talk about i.e. online strategy, google adwords, email marketing, website upgrades etc

A new website

To further demonstrate our commitment to better communication and customer service we are proud to announce the launch of our new website. Importantly, we have clearly described our services, all on one handy page. We offer 15 services ranging from online strategy and web design to adwords marketing, advanced analytics and email marketing. We look forward to discussing our products with you and above all, we promise to recommend only those products that your business or organisation needs - products that are structured and targeted to meet your online marketing objectives.

Fatpublisher, interesting name

Ever wondered why we called ourselves Fatpublisher? Our name was formed out of a vision to connect communities - a vision we continue to share today. In the year 2000, the web, and all that it represented, sparked a great number of many great online start-up ideas... continue reading

The web is awash with online social networking sites ranging from those targeting a very broad audience group (such as Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, Flickr) to more niche communities (such as LinkedIn, A Small World, Couchsurfing).

User generated content dominates the scene by forming the source of power for popular social networking sites as well as giving users power to create their space.

An example of this is the power source of Twitter being the high participation rate creating a wealth of 'content' that entices users to join. Meanwhile users are able to engage with that space in their own way so a variety of causes and events have used Twitter as a vehicle for connection – including the use of hashtags to create momentum for a cause such as the protest against the #IranElection.

The extent to which personal information is freely offered by users to social networking sites – in particular Facebook – creates a different level of information that now competes with the more uni-directional medium of websites. In fact Facebook seems to be throwing down the gauntlet to über-power Google by looking to change the shape of web search from the mathematically based algorithm for relevance to a aggregation of personalised recommendations form your own community. User generated content is not even just the explicit information users are providing about their birthdate, high school and relationship status but also extends to getting a full picture of who your friends are, the music you like, books you recently read, writers you are a fan of, political causes you believe in, restaurants you have eaten at and rated and on and on. Whether a search of this type of content is enough to take the masses away from the power of the current search engines remains to be seen.

While the bank of user generated content continues to accrue exponentially, social networking sites dance between all out exploitation of content by advertiser access to demographically segmented groups and respecting the privacy of the users who bring the power source to their medium. Different ways of exploiting user generated content becomes the challenge as users have outgrown the traditional advertising revenue model and vote with their feet when such approaches are made too obviously. Some more innovative examples of exploiting the collective have come through sites such as Threadless where users submit t-shirt designs, other users vote for the designs and everyone can buy the t-shirt with the web designer getting a cut of the revenue. This approach has been called Crowdsourcing – the use of a community approach to completing a task you would normally pay someone to do. Other businesses are also adopting this approach with varying levels of success for such things as raising money to make a documentary or even to search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

The agile pervasive user

How do users engage with their chosen social networks? With the amount of data around, there are many ways to slice and dice the demographics of social networking. You may like to know the average age of users on the major social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn; there is data available on the overlap of users across major Social Networking sites. Statistics abound – so choose carefully!

What can be assumed is that with breadth of online social networking sites available users have many options for tailoring their own package of social networking.

Some may keep it simple and stick to one site where they have strong ties to their particular community. Some single medium users may try other networks by creating their profile but then leave them inactive. Some users may set themselves up on many different networks using them in specific ways – e.g. Facebook for family and friend networks, LinkedIn for business networks, MySpace for their band networks. Some users may set up multiple profiles within a network such as Twitter to manage their communication with different networks. There are also many applications for managing multiple profiles on multiple networks

Location based social networking

Location based social networking emerged out of a desire to connect to a geographical local community and is developing into a way for local businesses to reach out to the community. One such site is Foursquare whose 'game' like approach had users 'checking in' to places they had visited and anointing people as 'mayors' if they were the most frequent person to 'check ini at a particular location. Location based sites have been able to take advantage of the improvements in mobile technology to utilise GPS to create such experiences as offering user recommended locations when a user checks in to a nearby place.

The future of such location based social networking is, similar to the rest of social networking, tied into how best to mine the data being offered by users to create a personalised and engaging experience while respecting the privacy of the users themselves.

Engaging in Social Networks

The primary concern for many social networking sites is about how best to monetize these networks to benefit the operators of the sites while ensuring that users' privacy and experience are honoured for the value that they provide the networks.

The question many businesses and organisations ask themselves how they can take advantage of these social networking sites for the benefit of their own enterprise.

The answer to this question lies in the time and resources that each organisation can put towards maintaining the freshness of the content on their social networking profiles. Certainly most social networking sites have created tools that enable organisations to utlise a common space to interact with customers/members/collaborators. Some examples are

• a member based organisation that uses a Facebook page to rally people to a cause and generate comment on the cause.
• Organisers of, and delegates at, a conference utilise a relevant hashtag to post their experience of sessions, workshops, speakers and lunch!
• Recruitment agents that use LinkedIn to advertise a job that's landed on their desk

An efficient and effective way to engage in Social Networks is to find ways of inserting your organisation onto the pages of your members or customers.  This is done by integrating such apps as Facebook Connect - allowing users to login to their Facebook account from your site and/or indicate that they "Like" your website/blog/article and have a "Like this" link posted to the reader's Facebook Wall.  Another integrative tool is the ShareThis widget which can be placed on your pages to encourage word of mouth recommendations from individuals to their personal online networks through social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, Blogger, MySpace, Digg, AIM Share, Stumble Upon, and Live.

Building Your Own Community

Given the popularity of established social networking sites why would you build your own community? The reality test comes in being able to convince others of the why they can't miss out on your party! The For this reason utilising existing social networking sites is a great way to gauge whether you have the critical mass to justify your own.

The idea of a community of followers ready and willing to engage in a space created by you, your company, organisation or cause is undeniably attractive.

The responsibilities that come with building your own community include allowing community members ways of making the space their own, injecting stimulating discussing and ways to engage, promoting respectful community behaviour. Another responsibility is to listen to community members – once people make themselves home in a community they will make demands on the renovations and changes you make to the site. An example of this is when Facebook users create pages to indicate their dissatisfaction with changes to page layouts and privacy changes.

First, the definitions:

Search Engine Optimisation 'SEO' : a process undertaken in order to improve a website's position in the search engines. The process may involve such exercises as 'keyphrase research', 'semantic programming', 'page title and meta description optimisation', 'external and internal link building', 'article publishing', 'social media blogging' and of course writing great content.

Pay Per Click 'PPC' : A form of advertising whereby the advertiser pays for every click of the advertisement. Fortunately, the larger PPC models (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN adCenter) have developed anti click-fraud strategies so that advertisers receive genuine referral.

SEO and PPC are online marketing techniques. Both have the affect of increasing your websites visibility. If your site, or links to your site, are more widely available on the web, then this will result in an increase in traffic and sales. Everyone that uses the internet uses a search engine so it makes good sense to make sure you appear regularly when people search for information, goods or services that relate to your company.

The differences between SEO and PPC

• Costing methods : a click of a natural or organic search engine listing will cost the website owner nothing whereas a click of a PPC advertisement will. SEO is usually costed according to the amount of time it takes an SEO consultant to achieve a certain position in the search engines for nominated search phrases
• Speed at which results appear online : PPC ads can be live within an hour whereas a search engine optimised listing may take months to achieve
• Longevity : A PPC ad disappears as soon as your budget has been reached whereas a search engine optimised result may remain for months after an SEO consultant has completed their work
• Expertise : The two techniques require varying types of expertise and knowledge. An SEO consultant knows where best to publish a unique piece of content and a PPC consultant knows now to adjust an ad's title in order to increase the best return on investment

Advantages of SEO

• Once an effective SEO program is underway, there can be little to no cost involved in driving traffic to new product and/or service pages
• A search engine optimised listing can remain for months after it is achieved. The longevity of the optimised listing depends on the competitiveness of the search phrase
• high ranking sites are regarded as being more credible by search engine users

Advantages of Pay per Click

• A PPC campaign can be launched and begin receiving traffic within hours
• Results are highly measurable
• Great tool for improving visibility when waiting for the results of your SEO program to materialise

Disadvantages of SEO

• Can take a great deal of time to achieve high rankings for competitive search phrases

Disadvantages of Pay Per Click

• PPC costs have been increasing and may not always be a good return on investment

Our recommendation is to run a regular review of your companies position in the search engines and engage the services of an SEO expert to maintain and share knowdledge on how to maintain your ranking. Budget willing, complete your online marketing strategy with a well targetted Pay per Click campaign.

So how do you make video look great and work reliably on the web? We have found that there are 2 important factors involved in producing a great online video:

• the player
• encoding

The Player

Every visitor to your website is unique. They may arrive using a variety of web browsers, operating systems and plugins. The first step in producing a great online video is to make sure your visitors do not have to interrupt their browsing experience to install something. The best solution therefore is to serve your video using the very popular Flash Plugin. Our current statistics indicate that 98% of visitors to our client sites have Flash installed, and 95% have the latest version (9). Flash delivers video using the FLV format. Once our video has been encoded into FLV format we then serve it using an FLV Player. Our player of choice is the JW FLV Player (Thanks Jeroen). If you use the player for commercial purposes, you must buy a player licence beginning at 20 Euro. While the feature is not heavily documented, the JW FLV Player does its own bandwidth detection and can serve an appropriately encoded FLV from your FLV stack. The result is a stutter free, visually rich online video experience.

Encoding

There is extremely fast internet, extremely slow internet and everything in between. It is very important therefore that the file size of the video being served can be downloaded without causing buffering. While buffering is common place, and often accepted, its not ideal. We want our video to hit the visitor quickly, play without delay and not be interrupted. The secret is in the encoding. We follow these steps:

1. Work with only high quality video files i.e. DVD, AVI, MOV
2. Convert your high quality video files to AVI if they are not already. We use AVI.net
3. Determine your visitors common bandwidth speeds and set your encoding bit rate ranges accordingly. In Australia, your visitors will typically be connecting over cable, ADSL, ADSL2 or dial up. We set our encoding ranges at 100kbps, 200kbps, 500kbps and 1000kbps.
4. Confirm that your FLV encoder is producing file sizes that match your chosen bit rates. For example, a 60 second video encoded as a bit rate of 100kbps should produce an FLV file size of 6,000 bits, or 750kBytes. If it is not, then reduce the bit rate in your encoding software to suit. We use the standalone video encoder that ships with Adobe Flash.

The recent growth of Social Networking online has been seen in the proliferation of sites such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Bebo, Flickr, Friends Reunited being among the more well known ones.

Some of these have a deliberate spin towards a target audience: for example, LinkedIn has a focus on professional networks with listings on where you have worked, allowing for references/recommendations to be made on your page, and even introduction requests in the same way that business networks tend to grow. As people move from one company to another, this site offers the chance to maintain your networks through your login instead of through your business card collection or paper address books.

MySpace with its focus on the ego, or the alter ego has attracted a younger demographic (13-27 years). On this site users can customise the appearance of their page to better represent who they are (or who they would like to be). As an adjunct to this demographic, MySpace has opened up the social network to allow musicians/performing artists to upload some of their music and many independent bands have taken advantage of this functionality to promote themselves.

Facebook takes elements of both LinkedIn and MySpace and enhances it for their own application. The networking element is enhanced with not only limiting your contact to people you know and are introduced to but to allow you to search and make contact with people you don’t know. The egocentric element is enhanced with news feeds of your personal activity and that of your friends. The personal status field is a very simple idea that allows for self-expression without a lot of effort.

Other social networking sites that have become hugely popular are sites that have an object centric model rather than an ego centric model. This includes sites such as YouTube where the object is the video uploads and Flickr where the object is photo uploads. They are not personality or individual dependent but allow for personal expression (video content, photo content) and personalisation such as tagging of photos.

WHO USES SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES?

The social demographics of Generation Y and Generation X are seen to be the predominant users of social networking sites and the blurring across these two demographics - within the digital media world has come to be known as Generation C.

Generation C has been called the Click Generation, the Content Generation, the Connected Generation and a whole host of other possibilities. It breaks down the concept of an age based generation because it is about values and ways of living that are gadget centric (mobile phones, handheld computers) and about staying connected in many different ways (SMS, instant messaging, email, websites).

WHAT CONSTITUTES A SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE?

Builds Communities

The key to a social networking site succeeding and remaining relevant to its users is to build loyalty to the site. While many people join the site because of existing offline networks, they will stay because of the networks they build within the site. These communities give participants the opportunity to express themselves amongst 'similar' people - whether it is sharing information about their interests (e.g. car enthusiasts, home gardeners) or connecting along common backgrounds (e.g. school, college, corporate alumni networks). Social Networking websites provide participants with tools to facilitate this interaction - e.g. blog posts, polls, reviews.

Personal Profiles

A personal profile or page gives the user the primary place for personal expression. Personal expression can come in anything from the selection of a username to uploading an avatar or profile picture, to personalising the layout, colour and appearance of widgets on their profile page.

User Generated Content

Social Networking sites rely on the user participation for their success – imagine YouTube without any videos being uploaded by users. In a study of user generated content, a team at McKinsey & Company concluded that around 3%-6% of users generate the content for the other 97% that consume it:
McKinsey study on user generated content confirms the longtail
How companies can make the most of user-generated content

Tagging, User Created Applications

While tagging and user created applications are not specific to Social Networking websites, they are features that are quite the standard for social networking websites.

Another element of having content created by the user is the ability to make that content meaningful by allowing for tagging. Photos can be tagged with mapped areas to identify who is in the photo. Tagging is also done as a way for bookmarking. Sites like Digg and del.icio.us take user input into what articles, blog posts, web pages are relevant to particular topics. By gathering this input, they create a view of what the web community believes are useful articles on (e.g.) ‘skateboarding’.

In a previous resource on the Fatpublisher website, we mentioned that one of the main beneficiaries of more user-centric webspace is the web developer and those more broadly involved in web design. Facebook , YouTube and other social sites, specifically provide developers with full information about how to create applications for use with those particular sites.

HOW DOES IT AFFECT MY ONLINE PRESENCE?

Advertising Opportunities

Social Networking websites are a valuable store of demographic information and some of these websites are now taking steps to exploit this fact by on selling opportunities to reach specific markets to advertisers. MySpace and Facebook have most recently announced their plans for targeted advertising packages. Facebook has also identified the opportunity to create brand advocates by announcing plans to allow users to publicise their purchases to their networks. It is a chance to facilitate word of mouth communication.

Opportunities to engage your customer

Social Networking websites provide an environment for discussion and debate. From the perception of safety and anonymity behind their computer screens, people tend to be more vocal and free with their opinions. While this may seem to be a positive opportunity to connect with your target audience, businesses should also be aware of the public nature of this feedback. Brands seeking feedback should also seek to manage that feedback as it is also a source of publicity. At best a brand can be rewarded with strong positive word of mouth advocacy while at worst a brand can be destroyed and the efforts of the rest of the marketing mix can be wasted.

Intelligent use of Blogging, and online discussion can generate positive publicity and provide constructive feedback for ongoing improvements to products and brands.

Social Networking websites are also shaping online behaviour by creating standards around how people interact on the web. Businesses now have the opportunity to incorporate elements of social networking into their own websites, intranets, campaign sites, online competitions etc.

Opportunities for Documenting Knowledge Capital (Wikis)

A collaborative tool, which provides businesses with an intelligent tool for knowledge management, is known as a Wiki. A wiki is essentially an open database where contributors can add what they know about a topic, edit information added by others.

The concept relies on a system of trust in contributors acting in the interest of the system. Critics of the system point out its vulnerabilities to malicious or mischievous entries. This weakness can be overcome by implementing systems of user authentication and accountability through citations.

A Good Link

There is often some confusion over what makes a good link. Much of the confusion arises when a website owner receives either a link exchange request from another website or is offered a link from a directory site (in return for payment or otherwise).

Link Exchange Requests

Website owners are often approached by other website owners requesting an exchange of links. Do link exchanges work? The short answer is no... website owners should spend more time focussing on building inbound links rather than a two-way exchange. If however the website requesting the link is a reputable website with a higher page rank than your own (preferably with a page rank of at least 3-4) than a two way link can be helpful. I talk more about page rank below.

Directory Submissions

Website owners are also often approached by directory sites where in return for a small fee, or for free, they offer a link to your website. It is believed that links from directory sites can be helpful however you should only seek links from directory sites that relate to the products/services/information your website offers and that has a page rank greater than your own. Website owners should not seek too links from directory sites as this may be regarded by some search engines as a breach of its guidelines. A link from a highly regarded, established and related directory site will help, it won't hurt.

So tell us!

A good link should carry the following basic characteristics:

• originate from a website that has a higher page rank than your own. To obtain the page rank of your website download and use the Google toolbar. The Google toolbar has a page rank indicator on it
• originate from a page that relates to the products/services/information you offer
• include link text that relates to the products/services/information you offer
• originate from a website that is geographically close to you
• be located near the top of the originating web page
• be located on an originating web page that is updated regularly or regarded as a definitive source of information

The perfect link - good question!

The perfect link would be a link from Google, but really, what chance do we have of that? A great link would be a link from a very high page rank website (ie > 6) to a web page on your site that you want to rank highly, with link text that relates to both the topic of the originating web page as well as relating to the page you want to rank highly. Ideally the originating link would be on a site that is located in the same country as your own. Go digging!

• From content centric to user centric models…
• From the web as a virtual space for storing information to the web as a platform for services…
• From program based innovation to web based innovation.

From Content Centric to User centric models

Websites started out as (and predominantly remain) content centric. Organisations often jumped into their web initiatives with intentions of meeting customer needs but with little understanding of how to do this. Often businesses fell back on the web being a store of information and adding their own store of content to the web which, like the universe, kept on expanding. Portal sites provided a useful business model to deliver useful information to particular industries and subgroups albeit with little interaction.

Our means of controlling this information was through search engines of which we saw many: MSN, Yahoo, Dmoz, Alta Vista, Excite, Looksmart all of which seemed much like each other with no real market leader.

One search engine experiment was a human edited directory by Dmoz called the Open Directory Project. They created a voluntary community of content experts to review websites and determine the categories to which websites belonged.  But the web was never meant to be slowed down by such human processes. Other search engines created webbots to crawl the webspace basically trawling pages to sift through the content and determine what the site was about;

Then along came Google with a new way of looking at web content. In hindsight it is the smartest way of looking at the web. That is: an interconnected world of websites! Google came up with the PageRank system that looked at the relevance of sites by using many elements including:

• semantic indexing (or looking at related words on a website), 
• inbound as well a outbound links (who’s linking to you and who are you linking to?), and 
• the page rank of sites in your neighbourhood (how relevant are the sites linking to you and how does that impact your page rank). 

Google search has had a huge impact on both website space (aesthetically and programmatically). Now that search results are so useful to users, the need to become more visible brought about the new science of Search Engine Optimisation.

From the web as a virtual space for storing information to the web as a platform for services

In the early years, in website design and development, we talked about the stickyness of websites. Holding people within your virtual space for as long as possible. Attempts to create interactive experiences involved flash animated sites to deliver some 'wow!' factor and make the experience memorable if not completely engaging.  People watched fancy introductions that eventually came with a standard 'skip intro' link to take you directly to the site. That very standard was a clear indication by users for more engaging content and experiences than impressive graphics and slick presentations.

Minimal interaction creates a passive experience. Although some recent developments have been more successful in implementing an interactive experience and some success can be seen with ebay and Amazon

Websites were seen as virtual real estate with shopfronts in cyberspace. This made it easy to take our existing models of operation and place them over the web.

Advertising was going to make us all billionnaires. The dot com age was largely built around the business model of large portals that brought many eyeballs connected to brains that made purchasing decisions. The advertising model was largely lifted off other passive mediums – television and print. We saw big flashy advertisements, popups, pop-unders and so forth. But clicking and closing ads on the web was even easier  than flicking the channel on the remote.

In the early years web advertising gave more power to advertisers and the result was a compromised user experience.  The over application of advertising created so much noise that the content was getting crowded. Advertising did much to hinder the usability of the web.

While the web continued to be places where users were talked to, advertised at, but basically ignored, email became a powerful means for user power. Viral campaigns were popular and developed an air of being in the know. At first it was jokes and chain letters but then came the attachments with ads and other clever means of demonstrating the power of word-of-mouth.

Other emerging technology is challenging the traditional website design. People are not only viewing the web using a PC or Mac but they are also using hand held devices. The cleaner the development is, the more likely that your website can be seen on the various mediums. Also for consideration is that sites are no longer only viewed at a desk at work or at home, they are being viewed in the car, in the park, at a bar over drinks, on the ferry, bus, train or plane. 

The tendency to want to engage users through a slick presentation of a website can sometimes be your worst enemy when considering the multitude of devices now able to access the web.

From program based innovation to web based innovation

Early in the web industry, the big players came from software worlds and we saw innovation largely in email programs, web browser technology, portable document file creation all of which provided aids and supports to working on the web but innovation within the webspace was light on.  Players like Netscape, Microsoft, Adobe all provided program based applications that set up the infrastructure for the web. Web developers in the meantime lobbied, pushed, discussed but mostly waited for these players to deliver a more stable platform that would allow for more innovation.

So the evolution of the web since the dot com boom has been an ever expanding space of content used for promotion and research.  Let's look at some of the issues and challenges that have come out of this evolution.

RSS - Aggregated syndication of content

One new technology that brings content to you is RSS. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a feed of information from a particular source. As new content is generated from that source website, the recipient receives the latest feed on the next page refresh. You can get RSS feeds from sites such as as smh.com.au. Some bloggers provide RSS feeds on their pages.

What this means is that you may find a particular site (or you may find many many sites) that interest you in your many and varied roles in life (as a media strategist, as an art collector, as home owner, as soccer coach etc) and you may choose for these feeds to come through to your personal site to keep track of the things that interest you. From a business perspective, it means you can get dynamic and relevant content fed to your news reader.

Web democracy e.g. del.icio.us, flickr, digg

Google search and it's page rank system is sort of where we started to see web democracy in action. It wasn't the website designer telling Google what their site was about, it was Google gathering the web community's opinion about whether the site was important enough to link to.
In the next generation we are seeing a new democratic process arising called "tagging". Tagging is a form of collaborative bookmarking. So you might read a really good article or blog about the "Skateboard culture" so you tag it on a site like del.icio.us under relevant keywords and the site/article is boosted in it's importance on del.icio.us (some sites are now adding a convenient link to tag their content).

Flickr operates in a similar fashion for photos. This application takes our burgeoning cache of digital photos and allows us not only to share it with our friends and family but also to store it, and mark it for it's relevance. Your friend may come along and tag it for relevance to them and can access and use that photo as well.

Context sensitive advertising: Google Adsense, Yahoo Search Marketing

Because so many sites are still looking to earn the advertising dollars, I think we will see banner advertisements and other forms of flashy ads for a while to come. But there is a definite shift in the layout and style of advertising on the web.

Instead of the agency preferred colour-rich, attention grabbing ads, Google and Yahoo Search Marketing have adopted a subtle approach with minimal intrusion and in many cases blended in with the content of the site.

Through heat map eyetracking, research has shown that users tend to consciously avoid advertisements but will often look directly at ads that fit within the aesthetic context of the site.
The other shift is in moving to self-service instead of a labour intensive advertising and billing infrastructure.

Web as a platform for web based application e.g. housingmaps.com, andale.com

One of the more exciting things for web developers is the emergence of APIs. API stands for Application Programming Interface. What it is, is a set of routines, protocols and tools that can be used to build applications on top of other applications.

An example is the recently release Google Maps. The guys who created google maps have basically come up with a fast, comprehensive tool for mapping. While there have been other tools around for a long time, they have tended to be very slow and required long calls to databases that returned a half way result. Google maps is a click and drag application that uses a new breed technology called AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) to access and display maps.

What happened after releasing google maps was that many developers started building on top of it to create their own applications. Google released an API to give developers the right tools to do this.

One example is housingmaps that takes two web based applications - Google maps and Craigslist.com and comes up with its own application.

Another example is andale which provides a service to help sellers gain an overview of buying patterns better on ebay.

Incorporating user contribution e.g. BitTorrent, ebay, Cloudmark, blogs

One of the most powerful things about the web is the number of people who are participating in it. And some next generation applications have sprung up that harness that people power to build sites where users enhance the performance of their application or content.

BitTorrent is a P2P digital download application that maximizes transfer speed by gathering pieces of the file you want and downloading these pieces simultaneously from people who already have them. This process makes popular and very large files, such as videos and television programs, download much faster than is possible with other protocols

Another example is is ebay with it's buyer/seller ratings system.

Cloudmark SpamNet is a collabroative spam filtering application that collects information from it's users on email sources identified as spam. It has a high success rate of spam detection and a low rate of false positives (genuine emails being marked as spam).

Continuous improvement cycles e.g. Google Maps, Flickr

Another marker of the next generation of websites is that there is an acceptance of continuous improvement. Some in the industry have coined the term 'perpetual beta' referring to the fact that web based applications are continuously deploying new versions, enhancements and releasing themselves from the old software release cycle that didn't fit with the speed of the web.

For web developers it means a lot more access to technology innovation that was previously held closely by software giants. This in turn creates a world where developers can more easily create tools/applications for specific user needs.

Improved user experiences through improved technology

Through such new breed technologies as AJAX, we'll start to see such enhancements as click and drag operations like we saw with housingmaps.com.

Increased contribution to website's relevance and performance

Websites will also be more inclusive of users including such interaction as tagging like we saw in del.icio.us and flickr and feedback mechanisms such as ebay

Building social communities of need online

Through blogging and means of connecting through sites such as Technorati, we'll see more online communities forming in a real time fashion. Where previously we had discussion groups and mailing lists, there are more forums and blogs to share and debate common ideas.
More applications for specific purposes

Instead of the juggernaut applications to do everything we'll see more niche applications being developed. And many more tools will become available for specific needs.

All these are positive impacts for the user and as with any models of operation and interaction, applications will come and go, a shakeout will occur and the stayers will be determined by the users.

Trust in the user

User centric models mean that businesses will have to engage in a bit of trust in the user community to create and contribute to content. Some good examples of trust can be seen in Amazon, ebay, Cloudmark

Wikipaedia was described as a radical experiment in trust and many skeptics thought it would fail because there was no qualification of the sources. But it has proved to be a useful tool for information and not completely unreliable.

Niche application development with a faster time to market

The opportunities for niche application development means businesses can take the larger web applications and mashup their own applications to suit their purposes. For example consider a Market Research Company that could create a tool for demographic mapping of Australia.

Content is still king

Core data sets have become valuable assets. For example weather data, calendars, product identifiers. Owning this content will make some people very rich but there are also opportunities for uses of these data sets to brand the content in their own way. A good example is Amazon who have taken the ISBN registry of book information and enhanced it with cover shots and user feedback on titles. Now Amazon who weren't the original source are being seen as a preferred source and have actually created a new market for themselves in providing data to other relevant sites.

Broad brush tools for surface research e.g. Technorati, del.icio.us

Because so much of these applications take a user centred approach, this information can then be useful for those who might be interested in monitoring the popular thoughts and opinions within particular groups. Sites like Technorati provide an engine for searching blogs - what are people talking about, what opinions are out there. From this perspective, the Business Community is benefiting from the next generation as a user of the applications on the web.

Summary

The evolution of the web has taken us:

• From content centric to user centric models;
• From the web as a virtual space for storing information to the web as a platform for services;
• From program based innovation to web based innovation.

The Impacts on the user community are

• Improved user experiences through improved technology
• Increased contribution to website's relevance and performance
• Building social communities of need online
• More applications for specific purposes

The impacts on the business community are

• Trust in the user to contribute to content and performance
• Niche application development with a faster time to market
• Content is still king
• Availability of broad brush tools for surface research