Jonathan Robinson

Should music download sites be worried about their increased downtime?

Unprecedented demand for the new Radiohead album reduced the official website to a standstill last week when fans from all over the world tried to take advantage of an offer to download the new album for just one penny.

Massive demand for the Radiohead album, and elsewhere in the music industry concert tickets for the Spice Girls, resulted in websites experiencing huge usage spikes, which can have a serious impact upon the user experience if not managed properly. Both examples raise the question of scalability and resilience issues for web hosting providers and their customers alike.

These websites are experiencing enormous demand within a very concentrated timescale, but with careful consideration of business critical solutions such as load balanced and high availability infrastructures, plans can be put in place to ensure that spikes in demand do not bring a website to a standstill. This is especially true if there is an anticipated flurry of activity on the site, such as a product release, promotional campaign or user generated content.

Organisations can consider hosting providers that offer short-term contracts with burstable bandwidth for the period of time surrounding a campaign or product launch. In both instances, the site remains accessible and the user experience consistently positive throughout the promotional campaign in spite of the large amounts of data being downloaded.

This situation is further exacerbated if websites or online applications have an international audience with users wanting to access information across different time zones. When Radiohead fans in the US found out about the special offer, the already struggling website was further deluged with stateside fans eager to take advantage of the special offer.

It seems music, and indeed any, download sites should be aware of the impact of promotional offers and product launches on the resilience of their sites. Increasingly users expect websites to be up and running 24x7 but at these most profitable periods, availability should be a key consideration early in the planning process.  

 

The rise and fall (and rise again?) of social networking

In my last piece I talked about how podcasts, social bookmarking and social networking have moved from being the preserve of early adopters to a regular feature of mainstream websites. It's easy to see the extraordinary pace of change on the web, with hugh volumes of users eager to engage with Web 2.0 applications. The demand for sharing personal information, photos and videos has already extended to online invitations, friendship networks and recruitment tools. Brand recognition for MySpace and YouTube illutrates just how commonplace the practice of interacting online has become.

The sheer volume of consumers and individual professionals makes the question of commerical opportunity even more interesting. For example, there is a whole raft of new possibilities for advertising and PR in virtual worlds such as Second Life. A recent discussion about 'Wispa it' campaign is a case in point. The problem is that as more generic sites are springing up, more and more people are competing for attention. Blogs, which are already reaching critical mass if not total saturation, seem to be a staple of almost every website. Add this to the thousands of sites solely dedicated to them and you can see how crowded this market place is already becoming. Take social networking as an example of this, sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Bebo and YouTube are all fighting for their own foothold.

Even though subtly different a lot of these sites are targeting markets that overlap. With this saturation comes an opportunity for other more niche players. A small proportion of successful companies are already directing their energy in this way with targeted sites like iSporty and LastFM attracting a focused community of users. These sites experience lower traffic volumes, fewer spikes and perhaps fewer bandwith issues compared to that of the big players yet will have a dedicated and loyal following nonetheless.

It's clear social networking is creating its own enviornment. Generic sites have had their meteoric rise, but each one seems to be overtaken quickly by the next online fashion. Maybe it is the turn of the targeted sites to take the baton and reap the rewards.

Businesses are finally waking up to Web 2.0

The business world is finally realising that Web 2.0 is an extremely useful value add technology. A poll recently conducted turns the tables on the view that Web 2.0 has poor uptake, revealing 60% of respondents are actively using Web 2.0 technologies. The survey also contradicts the view that Web 2.0 is just marketing spin with 69% of respondents feeling there is real substance to the new technologies being deployed. So, why doesn't this view seem to be commonly accepted?

As always there is scepticism about new technology. People initially questioned the worth of email and very few people could imagine a world without email now. It's gone from no use to mass use, becoming invaluable as a primary source of real-time communication in business.

Businesses have to decide how, and at what point, Web 2.0 applications can add value to their operations. To stick with the same example, we all know that email can be a hindrance if there's too much spam overloading an inbox and even in some cases an unwelcome distraction. Phones4U famously banned email in the workplace in 2003 when John Caudwell felt that staff were being constrained by the volume of internal email. Companies have to make sure they know how to use the technology they are implementing properly and, equally importantly, why before they can fully embrace the value of Web 2.0.

Business managers face an interesting challenge because organisations that are slow to get off the starting block with new technology or innovation in existing communication channels can miss out on serious competitive advantage. Whilst companies don't want their work force socialising over Instant Messenger all day, there are still many opportunities untapped around Web 2.0. Gartner, for example, has been calling for some time for financial services firms to adopt Web 2.0-based applications to imporve services to customers and promote cross-enterprise collaboration.

In amongst all of this reluctance, the interesting point is that the same survey of Internet World delegates revealed that Web 2.0 is seen as a nautral progression in the usage of Internet technology with 83% agreeing that it is an online 'evolution' rather than a radical step change in the way we use the World Wide Web. We are seeing a move towards podcasts, RSS feeds, social bookmarking and social networking increasingly becoming the norm and providing clear potential for business to benefit from a more collaborative way of working.   

The way Microsoft has used blogs to proactively engage with its communities is just one example. Companies can test the water with new ideas and ease the path for proposed service or product launches in a way that just wasn't possible before blogging. It's a powerful communication tool that can create an operational environment where stakeholders, staff, suppliers and the public feel part of what's going on. Companies also shouldn't underestimate the importance of user-controlled content in an era where we are in danger of information overload. 

Of course, some Web 2.0 applications still have a long way to go before proving their worth but it's undeniable that technology with so much potential to enable collaborative working and empowerment isn't going to go away. Companies need to assess where Web 2.0 fits in their operational and communications strategy.