Bob Johnson's Blog on Internet Marketing

Time for a little Friday speculation on a fine spring day in Michigan.

A visit to AdAge this morning linked me to an April 14 article at http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=126364 with a title that will scare some people: "It's Web 3.0 and Somebody Else's Content is King."

• The article reports on a new online venture by Tina Brown, of New Yorker and Vanitry Fair fame, to launch an "aggregator" service that people will use to find information on topics that most interest them. Consider it a sophisticated version of present-day search. And an opportunity for focused online advertising.

The scary part of this for traditional communication and public relations plans is that the "aggregation" efforts won't be limited to "just" formal websites. Instead, they will pull content about a particular topic from any place on the web that somebody is creating it. For colleges and universities, that means that it will become even more likely that when people search for something at your school, what comes back will include a Rate My Professors site, a Wikipedia entry, videos on YouTube about your MBA program, and blogs that people write about you.

Even more so than today (when Wikipedia, for instance, is almost always returned by a Google search not far below your official site), you won't be able to control the content that people see about your institution. What's on your own website will become less and less important, especially in the early stages when people explore to build a list of possible "best fit" places to study. You can continue to describe your faculty as if they have sprung forth from Lake Wobegon, but people will pay even less attention to the superlatives than they do now after they've reviewed your Rate My Professors list.

Will "aggregation" services indeed successful in the Web 3.0 world? Various people are busy diasagreeing about that now. But you can be sure that movement toward continued collapse of the Internet walls that separate sources of information will continue.

Two other places are worth a visit if the this topic interests you:

• The Wikipedia page for Web 3.0 for various definitions and predictions of what's to come at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_3
• The Pew Internet report on "Financial Woes Now Overshadow All Other Concerns for Journalists" (not about salaries but the survival of the business model) at http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=403 

Will individual college and university websites remain important? Yes. But their value as an early marketing tool will diminish in Web 3.0. People will visit your sites in the future because they have already put you high on their list of possible places to enroll. The experience they have on your website at that point, and how it compares to your competition, will play a major role in sustaining or diminishing initial interest levels. Two elements will rise in importance: 

• More than before, strong marketing sites will be built around knowledge of the content your future students want to find and the tasks they want to accomplish on your site. That includes, for instance, information about real college costs similar to what a handful of colleges are providing with online cost estimators (see a list of 7 at http://bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/2007/12/5_online_financial_aid_scholar.html).
• You'll have to engage people with web-friendly language when they visit your site. Web editor positions will proliferate in a Web 3.0 world. And that is a very good thing.

Enough for now. More later. A great weekend to everyone.