Web Apps Developers Told to Aim for Lofty Goals

— -- Beyond commercial success, developers of social applications must aspire to trigger significant change via their software and aim to improve lives and businesses, keynote speakers said Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Expo.

Focusing only on generating loads of revenue is the wrong approach and will derail software development efforts, speakers told hundreds of attendees at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Web 2.0 application development is still in its early days and plenty of opportunities exist to tackle big problems and make society better, said Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly Media, the event's organizer. "We really can change the world," he said.

He listed examples of Web applications designed to keep citizens better informed about the workings of government and to track environmental problems. "I don't know if there's money there, but damn, it's important," he said, drawing applause from the audience.

Later, Max Levchin, founder and CEO of Slide, reminded developers in attendance that the key to creating a popular Web application is to make it useful for people.

"If you build something of great value, you have nothing to worry about," said Levchin, whose company has developed many of the most popular applications and widgets on social networks like MySpace and Facebook.

Levchin, who answered questions on stage from Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li, reiterated that if developers "focus on something that is of real value to users" then "you have a business."

Of course, if you have a business, you have to generate revenue, especially at a company like Slide that has raised half a billion dollars in funding from investors, as Li pointed out while inquiring whether Slide, with its entertainment-focused applications, is a fad or whether it can justify its valuation.

Levchin said he's confident about Slide's ability to capitalize on its applications' popularity via online advertising. Because Slide's applications are so intensely engaging for users, advertisers, including large brands, recognize the value of marketing themselves within the applications' "context," he said.

The link the applications can provide between people and advertisers is much more interactive and ultimately effective than conventional online ad formats, like banners, he said. "Every [ad] campaign we've run in [Slide application] SuperPoke has been a smashing success for advertisers," said Levchin, a PayPal co-founder.

Asked how Slide viewed the problem of application spam, which boils down to social applications that have self-promoting -- and often intrusive and annoying -- features, Levchin said it is "one of the most intellect challenging issues" in this market.

The reason is that social networks' user bases are very heterogeneous, so what might feel like intrusive spam to a set of users might not be objectionable to another set of users, he said.

Scott Berkun, author of the book "The Myths of Innovation," said that developers and entrepreneurs, as a prerequisite to innovating, must have identified a specific and difficult to tackle problem.

"What problem are you trying to solve?" he asked, adding that this is a question that software developers can't afford to skip or answer unsuccessfully. "Sometimes we forget the need to find a real problem."

At Microsoft's TellMe division, their problem is clearly defined: injecting voice recognition and voice commands into mobile applications, which rely too much on "typing and touching," said Dariusz Paczuski, TellMe's executive in charge of consumer services.

This is particularly important given that mobile phones increasingly pack more and more applications and are used for a rising variety of tasks in multiple scenarios, such as driving, Paczuski said.

"There has to be a better way and voice can be a part of that solution. People should be able to say what they want [from their mobile application] and get it," he said.

Web 2.0 Expo runs through Friday.