The Web 2.0 Audience: Who Are We Building For?

My favorite Web 2.0 pundit, Drama 2.0 , wrote a guest article for Mashable that's generated an interesting debate about the Web 2.0 audience. In the article, Drama 2.0 asserts that Data Portability is all about the techies. While eventually, it may end up being used by the unwashed masses, the only people clamoring for the ability to port all their data from one app to another are people who are power-users of any app to begin with. In other words, tech is becoming an inbred population that has lost site of who most application users are.

The commenters are even more vocal, especially when other services are brought up, like Passpack. I've made no secret that I'm a huge fan of Passpack. The last time I bothered to look at my number of log-ins I have saved there, I was at over 75, and those are only the userids and passwords I use for services I've signed up for to review here at Profy. I keep none of my personal log-ins or banking information there. Do I think I'm a typical user? That's doubtful; I think most average Internet citizens use far fewer applications and log into far fewer sites than someone who writes about it.

But Drama 2.0 makes an excellent point; the enormous amount of press coverage of Data Portability started with what? An incident in which Robert Scoble was trying to port contact information for over 5000 contacts out of Facebook and into Plaxo. Most people don't have nearly that number of contacts, nor change or add sites with the frequency of people immersed in Web 2.0, so the assumption is that it's not something that the regular folks would want or need, right?

I used my personal brand of scientific testing; asking “regular” web users. My college-student sitter has over 300 contacts on Facebook, and I think the majority of college students have similar contact lists. What if she wanted to move networks? Would she rather start from scratch, giving her the power to weed through that freshman roommate she'd rather forget?

The simple answer was no. She wants the ability to easily move that data to a new service if she were to move. Her rationale? People are inherently lazy. They want to be able to move quickly with the least amount of work possible. They may not be Scoble, adding service after service, but they know that people move services all the time. Wasn't there a huge migration from MySpace to Facebook? Won't a lot of college students be adding LinkedIn once they enter the workforce?

Of course, the other perspective comes from those who have no interest in it. As a cousin of mine (a recent college graduate) responded, “If you can just transfer your friend list then there is really no point in leaving facebook. Finding your friends and adding them is part of the fun.”

Yes, a lot of technology is being built for, and reviewed by, people whose lives revolve around tech. But in a lot of cases, we either underestimate or overestimate what the “average” user. Just like tech addicts, they have different feelings about Web 2.0, and want different features from it. One commenter on my Jooce review felt the app wasn't ready because it didn't provide detailed information about file types and sizes. But does everyone want that data? Unless I'm cleaning up my hard drive, I don't look at the detailed view of my documents. Tech will always filter down from the techiest down to the least tech-oriented users, but assuming what those users want without actually asking is the biggest folly of all.