Wondering on the usefuleness of web sites (in the traditional sense)
After designing web sites for various people and companies, I’m wondering how necessary is for a company or a professional to have his own website in today’s Web?
Three or four years ago the web-presence was absolutely equivalent to a site, but the invasion of social media networks radically changed the landscape. You can now have your own corner of the web setup in minutes, with absolutely no cost, in a super-friendly user interface. You can even have multiple corners: a professional profile in LinkedIn, a more personal one in Facebook, a blog for expressing your thoughts and ideas, a YouTube channel for your videos, a Twitter account for your status updates, a delicious account for organizing the bookmarks you like and the list keeps going… Furthermore, Web is not about presence anymore, it’s about connection: Being in the Web means nothing if you are not connected to the people that are of interest to you. While in a traditional website in order to keep in touch with people you had to struggle with search engine optimization, creation and maintenance of large and inflexible mailing lists and other strenuous (in terms of time and cost) activities, in SM the connection is an inherent, core situation.
In my opinion the same thing goes not only for individuals but for SMEs as well (let’s don’t forget that SMEs account for a whopping 96% of the European economy). Why would a small business invest money and effort in designing, deploying and maintaining individual web sites instead of exploiting the social networks for providing information, finding audience, receive feedback and promote their reputation? Why trying to attract users to you instead of placing yourself or your company in the environment that the use every day?
Of course, the traditional web is not dead. E-shops, service providers, news agencies and companies with large and complex information will still continue to maintain sites, although I strongly believe that the marketing strategy for these organizations will migrate to the Social Web as well. No one can actually predict whether the social media explosion is just another trend that will fade out in the long run or if SM will prevail as the new meaning of the Web, but personally my bets would be on the latter.
Finally, I ran into some very interesting facts and figures from http://socialnomics.net/ (an excellent resource for the social web). Enjoy the video!
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