The Coming Wave of Web 2.0 Consultants and Vendors

By Matt Howes, Director of Technology, Media Matters for America

Remember when the webmaster did everything from graphic design to information architecture and content writing? Those days are long gone: Creating a website, which used to be a weekend project by the president’s niece, has become a large endeavor involving various vendors and consultants. I believe that we will soon see a class of web 2.0 and social networking experts emerge and offer their services as these new tools gain prominence.

Wikipedia is one place where consultants could shortly play a supporting role for issue organizations. It has become a great resource and many people are flocking to it on a daily basis. However if you, as a well-meaning representative of an organization, try to inject your side into the debate, your edits might be summarily deleted and you may be accused of violating Wikipedia rules in quite harsh terms. Instead of spending the months necessary to build credibility and then inserting yourself into the debate, why not hire an expert Wikipedian to fight the battles for you? As Wikipedia becomes more mainstream as a reference source, there might be substantial benefits from helping ensure it frames the debate in a truly balanced manner (and presents your organization’s critical information, of course).

How about Digg? I thought one organization I was working with was getting great traffic from Digg, in part due to highly placed users who seemed to really like our stuff. But then we were approached by a high profile Digg user and asked to work out a reward for future links (i.e. he wanted to get paid for linking to us). We deferred since it violates Diggs terms of service, but our opponents might not be so ethical.

With the rise of MySpace and Facebook, it will only be a matter of time before there are Facebook consultants who can develop and implement a comprehensive Facebook strategy for organizations and campaigns. Will there be conferences for Orkut experts to exchange best practices?

In systems where expert users have significant knowledge or control in comparison to newcomers, I guess it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that these amateur experts might want to get some money out of it by becoming consultants. The good side of this transition is that we will be able to hire experts to take on new campaigns instead of learning it all ourselves and making newbie mistakes. The downside is that it will be another cost to worry about, another consultant/vendor to evaluate.

Oh well. For now I’m having fun learning the ropes and hope to hold off on sending out an RFP for a MySpace campaign for as long as I can. And I’ll keep my eye out for a good Second Life consultant....

Matt Howes is Director of Technology at Media Matters for America, a progessive media monitoring organization with more than 50,000 website visitors a day. This article represents his personal thoughts, not a Media Matters position. Contact him at mhowes@mediamatters.org. 

Comments

[Tompkins Spann]

Justin, thanks for publishing this. I completely agree with Matt, it's only a matter of time. I believe the reason we've not seen such efforts already is the relative newness and uncertainty of these methods. I know of many nonprofits who've dipped their toe into MySpace with minimal success, but the results pretty much equal the resource investment so perhaps a savvy MySpace consultant could increase the results and such. Also I would add to Matt's list consultants and technical practictioners with mashup expertise. Imagine someone who can offer to mashup your Advocacy Campaign results with Google Maps, or Fundraising Campaigns with Amazon and eBay. Perhaps your eStore products within Craigslist and so on.

There's no question that such creative strategies will emerge in greater volume during 2007, and while some existing consultants are already helping groups make this work, there's plenty of room for some savvy specialists to get in the game.

I believe that vendors like GetActive (who I work for) will provide the toolkits, but it's the community of organizations and technologists in the nonprofit world who will actually develop the innovative results.

[Steve Bridger]

I think Matt is right, although not-for-profits should also identify internal champions who may already be doing this sort of thing.

If not, they should recruit a "buzz director"...
http://www.nfp2.co.uk/2006/11/03/buzz-director/

[Jean Locicero Shankle]

I was happy to read your post and I think you are right. We are teaching a 3 credit course for teachers that shows them how to use the very tools you mention and more as a way to support academic excellence. Social networking should truly be a part of the education process, as I wrote recently on my blog, http://inkwells.aretao.com.

[Kc]

Hey this was really interesting. I am sure that with Google now running the ad department on myspace the site will soon be filled with endless and messy ads, that will only open a new spot on the net for the next Myspace. In terms of consulting I this myspace is the solution for teen or preteen work-forces to get a jump start in the financial world. We all know how bad the economy is and this can solve a few problems but lets not forget that with every good thing comes 2 bad thing. I think the bad things will be that big business will try to push the little guy out of the way and some new legislation will to through in record time calling for changes in the child labor law. But all in all I think that if the internet and places like myspace and google don't get competition we will suffer from I-Spam (Instant Spam)

[Hans Mundahl]

This is something that we're exploring as a school right now quite a bit - both from an institutional point of view (how can we better tell our story to our audience) as well as an educational one (what kinds of skills should our students have in these areas going forward).

I wonder how much of this type of consulting will be in starting and engaging in this technology or will it be more in optimizing and getting the most value from it?

[TheMySpaceConsultant]

I have to tell you as a MySpace Consultant myself, I just posted an article on my blog about how MySpace Consultants are becoming more and more popular! Even NY advertising firms are getting into it!

It seems that in having a myspace page people, businesses and organizations want to have a good-looking myspace profile page but just don't know how to do it or they just don't have the time but with the whole world looking they at least want their myspace pages to look good!