It has been a week since my last post, but we have just been so heads down in projects accompanied by a few snow showers that are acting as a large distraction.

I have received a significant amount of feedback from last month’s article on What is Web 2.0? In particular, discussions have centred around the issue of who owns the data and it’s relevancy in the determination of a value or success of a Web 2.0 web project.

For example, in the world of mash-ups a website can be developed completely from other sources of information to achieve a users goal better than the original source of the data. In this case, which is the greater asset; the owner of the determining data or the website that produces the desirable user experience?

We think it is most definitely the website that owns the user experience. To put an argument forward that brand loyalty is surely at an all time low on the Internet and that the site that can attract and retain the greatest number of users through providing the most desirable experience in surely the most valuable. How about the theory sometimes put forward that the Internet will in fact shrink in the coming years as the larger sites buy up the smaller ones and simultaneously the larger sites tighten their grip on the search engine rankings making it therefore nearly impossible to launch new domains names with the regularity we see now. In this scenario the sites that can use the available data from many sources to capture and satisfy their audience will continue to build themselves up as an authority on a particular subject (read keywords) and therefore continue to dominate and in fact grow the distance in search engine ranking over competitors.

Clearly, although really promoted as a concept by search engine marketing companies, search engine rankings are relative - that is, relative to the other websites competing for a particular search term. The sites that build up the greatest customer base (reflecting in the depth of content and obviously the number of inbound links) will increase the relative gap between themselves and their competitors making it more difficult for competitors to rise up the rankings.

Therefore, the most important asset in a web project is to identify the needs of a user and how these will be met through either your own proprietary data or data that you can mash-up to create a rich experience.

Why oh why can’t Xebidy get a contract such as this? Check out the new Tourism Australia website. It is very FLASH - and looks expensive too!

One thing I discovered is that if you navigate on the map to Queensland there is then no navigation to Cairns - a pretty high profile tourism destination I would have thought.