When Web 2.0 “goes bad” – part 2 – simple steps to help evaluate services and avoid problems

In my last post I looked at three examples of Web 2.0 services that had changed in unexpected ways and the impacts on their users. I also identified some of the associated issues with Web 2.0 applications, including data security, service closures or change in focus, the ability to extract data and unanticipated changes in fee structure.

Its time to look at some steps councils and small organisations can take in evaluating Web 2.0 applications they are interested in. But first, an extra disclaimer – the web is a volatile place and Web 2.0 applications are particularly subject to market forces and competitive pressures. In other words, there is no guarantee that even if you do thoroughly evaluate a service it won’t change in the future, possibly in ways that you don’t like.

So, what can your organisation do to help protect itself when looking at a Web 2.0 service?

1. Evaluate what the service does and how well it does it. Don’t be seduced by the hype – most Web 2.0 services have a free version which you should systematically evaluate (though these often involve a cut-down feature set). If you are seeking an online replacement for an existing application it should be easy to develop a checklist of your requirements; if the service promises something which you don’t already do, you still need to check that in fact it can deliver on this promise. Also check out how easy the service is to use, how quickly it loads and runs, what browsers it is happiest with and, if there are different service levels, what additional options they provide (see next point).
2. Confirm exactly what you are paying for. Beyond the limited free version most sites provide two or three service levels with increasing fees, usually paid for on a monthly basis. These service levels may be distinguished by different features and/or different limits on the number of users or concurrent projects. Make sure you are not paying for a higher service level than you actually need; if you require additional facilities for a once-off project, some applications will allow you to upgrade and downgrade on a month-to-month basis. Also find out how much notice you need to give to terminate a service – again, this can usually be done on a monthly basis.
3. Find out about storage, data security and backup systems. Check out if the service website provides information on how data is stored, whether there are adequate back-up systems and how secure your confidential data will be. If there is no information on the website, contact the service provider to request this information.
4. Clarify if you can extract data to backup and use outside the service. It’s important to sort out whether and how easily you can download this data and the formats in which it is provided, especially if you want to integrate information with other services or applications. How important this facility is depends on the nature of the service and the value of the data; for example, for online survey services you probably only need to be able to download the questions and the survey outcomes, whilst for online databases you would need to able to backup the whole database offline.
5. Setup your own backup systems.  Obviously you will also need to setup your own systems to backup downloaded data. If the Web 2.0 service you want to use is event related – for example, Poll Everywhere, which provides a mobile phone-based polling and voting facility for meetings – consider the possibility that the internet might be down on the very night you are holding your meeting and take along a manual voting system as a backup (I’ll review Poll Everywhere in a future post).
6. Assess the service’s maturity and popularity. Find out how long the service has been around and how often it has been updated – and whilst this may be harder, try to get a sense of whether it is attracting interest and users. Obviously an application that has been online for longer than a year or two,  has been updated a few times and appears to be popular is likely to be more stable and financially viable – though newer services are worth considering if they appear to be well-designed. Also be wary of older services that look like they have been neglected for a while and seem to have few users. These services could be struggling financially and the owners may already have plans to close them down.
7. Review service guarantees and support arrangements. See what if any promises are provided about continuity of service provision and carefully review the application’s user help and support arrangements. At a minimum, Web 2.0 service sites should provide a set of frequently asked questions and answers as well as an email address or form for support requests. Better sites will also provide product tours, webinars and/or tutorials on the service’s key features, knowledge bases, a list of tips and tricks, templates (if appropriate) and user forums.
8. Test the service provider’s response to support requests and feedback about product development. If you have any questions regarding the service after trialling it, ask them. Apart from getting an answer, this will also test the site provider’s responsiveness. Likewise, provide suggestions about the service and how it could be improved. Most service providers appreciate feedback and may indicate whether your suggestions are being considered for a future version.
9. Check out the views of users and reviewers. Some services will list prominent companies using the service and may even provide testimonials. Other Web 2.0 services may host user forums which can provide an insight to common problems. These may be moderated, however, so you should also search the web for references to the service in independent forums or blogs by either users or reviewers.

These are just a few suggestions for your council or organisation to consider in evaluating Web 2.0 services - please leave a comment if you have any additional ideas on how to review and choose web-based applications.

When Web 2.0 “goes bad” – part 1

What do a social bookmarking site, a web-based database and a social networking service mainly used in Vietnam have in common? The answer is that all of them have either recently changed, or are about to change, in ways that will disrupt thousands of their users – thus providing a timely lesson for everyone who depends on social networking or other web-based applications.

Services on the social bookmarking site, Ma.gnolia, stopped abruptly in January 2009 when its host computers suffered a database crash, irretrievably losing all the site’s data, according to Data Center Knowledge. The Ma.gnolia site, which was apparently hosted on two Mac OS X servers and four Mac minis, now carries an announcement that it will be reborn as a as a “by-invitation community bookmarking service”.

More recently the owners of Blist, one of the better-known online databases, announced that the site is morphing into Socrata, which will concentrate on “delivering social data discovery on government data sites around the world”. No doubt this has the potential to be a useful service, but the news must have come as a surprise to current Blist users who will apparently lose the original service in August.

Even bigger companies aren’t immune from these changes. Just ask the Vietnamese users of 360 Degrees, Yahoo’s social networking site. Whilst 360 Degrees failed to make an impact on Myspace and Facebook, it was an unexpected success in Vietnam, where in a country with strict government controls on information and dissent it became the dominant social networking service.

Yahoo announced that the service would close in 2008 but, according to the EarthTimes website, it is only now that the 13 July cut-off date is looming that many users are hurriedly trying to migrate their data to alternative sites or Yahoo’s Vietnam-only replacement service.

These three examples demonstrate why councils as well as public and private sector organisations need to exercise caution in choosing web-based applications to use in managing their operations or in providing services to residents, clients or customers. They also illustrate some of the potential issues that users need to consider in evaluating Web 2.0 services. These include:

• Data security: whilst the Ma,gnolia example of a catastrophic loss of data is thankfully rare, it does demonstrate that these things can happen. Potential users need to assess whether the services they are interested in provide adequate storage and backup facilities. More common concerns are whether and how online services maintain the confidentiality of the data that users or thier clients or customers store on their sites.
• Service closure or change in focus: again, whilst complete service closures are very rare, the Yahoo 360 Degree shut-down illustrates that they can happen. Even a change in focus such as that underway at the former home of Blist can amount to a service closure for dedicated users of the service being replaced.
• Service downtime: all websites can be affected by brief periods of downtime for essential maintenance or uploading software upgrades. These interruptions should be rare and advised to users well in advance.
• Ability to access data: users need to be able to access and download easily any data that they store on a Web 2.0 site, as well as contact information for their clients or customers.
• Upgrades and backwards compatibility: from time to time, all online services need to upgrade their services. These upgrades should be advertised well in advance, along with advice on whether users need to change any of their settings. Apart from the downtime involved, users will need to check whether there are any compatibility issues with new versions of software.
• Fee changes: users need to check out the different fee levels on web-based services – and how easy it is to terminate an agreement or change the level of service. They also need to be mindful that fees, service levels and conditions can be changed at any time by the provider.

Whilst these is an obvious need to proceed cautiously, these concerns should not be used as an excuse for councils and other organisations to not engage at all with social networking or other Web 2.0 applications. In my next post I will outline some practical safety checks for users to apply in evaluating these applications.

Web 2.0 tools for the “back of house” – part 2: MyCommittee review

In my last post I outlined some of the key steps for small non-government organisations and councils in managing board and committee meetings, highlighting the difficulties in finding a single program that would manage these tasks.

So far I have found only one Web 2.0 application specifically targeted to these processes: MyCommittee. This is a classic Web 2.0 program – hosted entirely online and managed through a web browser. All the data is also stored online and you can purchase different feature levels, paying for the application on a monthly basis.

Charges range from free (effectively a trial of the program, allowing you to set up one committee only with only 1 Mb of storage and limited features) through personal (US$19 per month, five committees and 200Mb of storage), standard (US$49, 15 committees and 1Gb) and premium (US$99, 35 committees and 3Gb) to enterprise (US$149, 100 committees and 10Gb). All paid levels of the program allow access to the full range of features.

How does MyCommittee work? Well, to quote the website:

“MyCommittee allows you to create and share indexed meeting agendas, minutes and documents and provides your members with a central location to collaborate and stay connected between meetings. It is designed especially for committees, boards and other groups that have regular and recurring meetings.”

After you have registered and created your own profile you set up basic information about your first committee, such as its name, meeting schedule and terms of reference. At this stage you also create standing items that occur at the beginning or end of every meeting.

You then access a dashboard with a number of tabs covering activities such as nominating committee members and other significant contacts, uploading documents and of course creating meeting agendas.

Choosing this option takes you to a set of new tabs which cover the sequence of creating a new meeting for the committee. You have the option of using the tabs or a wizard to step you through the creation of the agenda – or you can prepare the document in one go. 

The wizard starts with general information about the meeting. The second step is to input meeting attendees from the committee’s membership, plus any guests. The third step allows you to upload and attach documents and the fourth to confirm the standing items. The fifth provides an option to incorporate “old items” – what might generally be called business arising, or items deferred from the last meeting.

The sixth step is the guts of the program where general business items are created. Sub-items can also be created, in effect allowing the creation of headings under which items can be grouped (though this could be better implemented). These items can be either be discussion or resolution items – if the latter is chosen, then additional fields for mover and seconder appear with a drop-down list of the names of attendees, though these can be left blank at this stage. Documents can also be attached to individual items.

In the seventh step the agenda is reviewed and then in the eighth and final step the agenda is distributed. Every attendee receives a notification of the meeting, the items (if any) that they are required to lead and a link to the stored agenda on the MyCommittee website. PDF versions of the agenda (and minutes) can also be created.

Whilst MyCommittee doesn’t go out of its way facilitate real-time use in actually running a meeting, the minutes wizard – basically a cut-down version of the agenda wizard – can be used during or after the meeting to prepare the minutes. Each resolution item now has extra fields to record what the decision about the item and whether it has been resolved or is still outstanding.

There are a number of additional features, especially for purchasers of the paid versions of MyCommittee. For example, you can automatically create tasks for members from action items identified during the meeting which will show up as business arising at future meetings – though these have to be added as separate items rather than being attached to a previous business item. Committee members can comment on agenda items online and there are facilities to discuss any subject, take polls of meeting attendees and search previous meeting minutes for information.

Verdict: there is a lot to like about MyCommittee – which is just as well, because so far it is one of a kind. Although there is a small learning curve, it would suit a small to medium organisation that has reasonably but not excessively complex agendas and which needs to handle attachments. Its interactive features would also suit organisations with active committee members, especially if the task management features are adequate for their needs.

The program still needs refinement, however. Whilst it is well laid out the interface can still be confusing and sometimes you lose track of exactly where you are. MyCommittee could also do with a split-screen presentation mode so that it could be used to actually run a meeting as well as recording the minutes. The task management feature is problematic for organisations with a staffed secretariat as it appears that actions can only be scheduled for committee members. The ability to change some of the terminology and to customise the layout of agendas and minutes, especially in the PDF versions, would also be helpful.

The biggest omissions however are the inability to view resolutions in anything other than chronological order and the lack of any facility to extract them for storage in a separate database. This would be a major problem for those organisations that need to track or refer to resolutions. The program’s creators have indicated that these features might be included in later releases, so organisations that need these facilities might consider holding off until they are implemented.