FaceBook now has 600 million users, less than 6 months since it passed the 500 million mark, and membership growth shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. It seems almost unbelievable that in less than seven years we have witnessed its transformation from a protected walled garden for the best universities to the fastest growing social medium the world has ever known. But, explosive growth usually comes at a cost. In this case we have relatively inexperienced and trusting users sharing their lives on social networking systems that are evolving quickly and with unknown consequences.  This has implications both for the users and the businesses that reach users through social networks.

For me, the real issues for users are anonymity and trust. Most people feel protected and insulated using social networks because they think they are posting content in their own environment and using the internet makes them anonymous. They seem to think that the only way their information will be found or used is if they tell someone about it and give them access to use it.

It is truly amazing what you can do with the Internet these days. The ways we keep abreast of subjects of interest and the options to disseminate information has been completely revolutionised over the last 15 years. But a by-product of revolution is complexity, with a myriad of different specialised technologies, each with their own way of doing things and different user interfaces that need to be used. With all this technology and resulting fragmentation, complexity escalates at an unmanageable rate. So, how do you turn the tables and use the escalation of the Internet to your advantage?

Boundaries are blurring in many industries.  For an example see our article "Who's Looking After You?" which focuses on how industry boundaries are blurring in the health and wellness value space.  Value in this case being defined from the consumer perspective. 

Put a lot of consumers together and you find communities of choice emerging, often enabled by social networks. And we are spending increasing amounts of time on these networks and in these communities. Nielsen estimates that nearly 70% of online users globally visit social network sites, and that social networks/blogs now account for one in every four and a half minutes online -- or 22% of total time spent online worldwide. The average visitor spends 66% more time on these sites than a year ago, almost 6 hours in the month of April 2010 versus 3 hours, 31 minutes last year.

If you are a follower of Activate Media you are probably aware we have a long history in developing websites on the Joomla CMS system. Over the years it has had many revisions, and it only gets better! The next major release of Joomla, version 1.6,  has almost completed it's beta testing phase meaning it will soon be ready for production deployment, and with this release come some very exciting new additions to the framework.

My personal view; this version should probably be called Joomla 3.0, because as with the previous major update 1.5 it requires a complete paradigm shift in the way extensions are built. It adds a number of significant improvements to the core system, which in the past required substantial bespoke programming to achieve anything close to similar functionality. Some of the noteworthy additions are:

Earlier in the year while knocking back a drink or two on a night out with an old university friend, who also works in the web design and development industry, I was inspired to think about the way we work and how we introduce our methods to our clients. It was the first sunny Friday evening of the year in London for a long time and the pubs down Kingly Street were packed with a throng of creative types, office workers and a few shoppers who had dared to venture off the main streets of the west end.  The arrival of the spring weather had also seen some new shoots of inspiration work wise.

Now I must admit that my friend had approached the topic of agile project management and web development during previous nights out. Maybe the glorious weather that had brought an upturn in mood helped, or perhaps it was the enthusiasm that he approached the subject with, but this time we eventually got into fundamentals of what makes the agile approach work. We discussed the ideas behind the agile methodology and how they were implemented within his company and I instantly saw many similarities to the way we work at Activate Media.

As an agency, a good relationship with new and existing clients is the bedrock of our business. Our challenge with new clients is how we communicate with them taking into account the different levels of expertise and expectations we experience with them.

The best and worst-case scenarios have wide chasms of differences to the agency. In the best, a client will have a good understanding of the technologies you utilise (In our case as an Open Source house utilising My SQL and Joomla )as well as understanding how a project is put together.. They would also have clear ideas of the functionality, design and any additional requirements for the site they wish to have built and can clearly deliver and communicate these points to our team.

As one of London’s oldest and most experienced web design and development agencies we often are asked why a client really needs Content Management System (CMS) for website management. Our response; in this day and age a website without content management is about as useful as a car without fuel. It is our view that a CMS absolutely critical to provide both time and cost effective website management, here is the background and our reasoning.

The best websites are the ones that are kept up to date with breaking news and current information. In most cases, the client, or website owner, is in the best position to provide updates, but generally does not have the have the time, or the skills, to programme the site. This is where an owner operated content management system (CMS) comes into play, the only truly efficient and cost effective way for most website owners to keep their sites up to date.