What is 'useful'?

Apart from the inkling that working from a garage increases your chances of success (David Packard and William Hewlett launched Hewlett-Packard Co. in a garage. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple Computer Inc. in a garage. Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google Inc in a garage) I know very little about what it takes to create something useful on the web. As affordable garages are a little hard to come by in London (proof of this fact here) I set about doing a bit of research about other recurring traits of recent success stories and thought about how what I found out might relate back to my brand of choice, TopShop.

Look for opportunities where the personal and the collective can overlap
This seems to be one of the main reasons why sites such as Digg, and Del.icio.us are a success. They generate a sense of self, or allow you to express your identity as part of a collective or community. And this is all thanks to a wonderful thing called tagging (which I admit until now I hadn’t quite grasped the true worth of).

I got to wondering which is most important as I thought this might help to filter my ideas, and started to read about what Joshua Porter calls the “Del.icio.us Lesson”. He believes that ‘personal value precedes network value: that selfish use comes before shared use. Even though we’re definitely benefiting from the value of networked software, we’re still not doing so unless the software is valuable to us on a personal level first.’ i.e. he doesn’t believe that tagging for the benefit of a community is primary why people use sites. I disagree. Certainly in the case of flikr I think that the fact that you can share your experience with others is the reason they are so popular – otherwise you might as well save your pictures on your hard drive (although I suppose it depends on whether you define friends and family as ‘personal’ or ‘community’).

Any way, my learning here for TopShop is to start with something that is of use to the individual but can incorporate the collective. And to make use of tagging.

Identify a niche audience
It’s widely acknowledged that the key to MySpace’s success was music, as it is a defining factor in how young people create an identity for themselves. MySpace focused on a niche audience and found what would be useful in their world. It’s when you try to be everything to everyone that it starts to go wrong – which for many is the reason that Yahoo! is in a spot of bother (see the interestingly titled article 'How Yahoo! got bogged down in peanut butter')

But just because you don’t start out catering for everyone doesn’t mean that your site or idea won’t end up with mass appeal, if you subscribe to the ‘tipping point’ thinking of Malcolm Gladwell that is. Identify the right early adopters and your niche will become mainstream in time.

I think identifying the right niche for TopShop is going to be relatively difficult as part of the reason for TopShop’s success is that it appeals to such a diverse audience. From teenagers right through to the most avid fashionist. May be in TopShop’s case it’s more about defining an attitude than an audience (interesting fact: when the term Web 2.0 was coined in 2003 by Tim O’Reilly, it was with reference to an attitude rather than technology. Hilarious then that the wikipedia entry is very techno-focused.)

Ensure there’s a reason for your content to be constantly updated
Usefulness is often short lived. This is why user generated content = lifeblood. It’s important to give people a reason to keep uploading new stuff, to keep it fresh.

This should be quite easy to bear in mind when coming up with an idea, as TopShop is constantly refreshing and updating its offering.

Solve a problem
If you have a experiencing a problem or are frustrated about something, you can be pretty sure that there’s others out there experiencing the same thing, One of the best things I stumbled on illustrates this well. Zootit.com is a site that shortens long links. You upload the long link to their server, and link to it via a short link of your choice. Probably the best known example is Facebook, which was a way for university students to keep in touch.

As most of the best sites are a result of problems their creators have experienced, I’m going to focus on a problem that I have that I want to solve in relation to fashion.

People like to vote
Web 2.0 is really good at letting people vote – and it’s obvious that this is something people like to do.

As one of the key insights I pulled out of my research on TopShop was that girls like to get and give opinions I think that voting will be central to the success of my idea.

Make use of existing technology
In fact the majority of the today’s most popular (successful?) sites have made use of existing technology rather than come up with something new. The back end was already in existence, they just found a way to use it.

For TopShop I’d like to think of a way to use the mobile phone in line with on line technology because this is what people are going to have with them when they shop. This also feel the right way to go with the recent advent of mobile internet – prices are coming down and it’s becoming standard on most handsets.

With the above in mind I had a look to see what else was out there in the online fashion world that might inspire me. Whilst I didn’t set up a del.icio.us page, I did find it a useful way to search for related sites, as was Technorati. Killerstartups.com was another interesting place to browse. The site I found that interested me most was Wishpot.

Wishpot is a social shopping site that probably ahead of the game. Whilst there are a host of different sites that allow you to list or tag items you’d like to buy (or even make money out of someone buying something you’ve tagged) e.g. gifttagging.com, Stylehive.com, Wishpot has taken this concept one step further. With Wishpot social shopping goes mobile. Basically when you’re out you can record the stuff you’re interested in by sending a text (with barcode, style, colour, size etc) or picture message to you Wishpot account. When you later go online you can view your saved items, research prices, view ratings, ask others what they think.

My idea – i-want
With all the above traits in mind, and the best bits about Wishpot, I decided that a MattCam probably wasn’t the way to go and the idea of a guest blog to take away some of the reliance on Kate Moss a little dull. So I started by thinking about problems/frustrations I have.

I hate it when I see something I like on someone else, but don’t seem to be able to find anything similar in the shops. And I hate it when I have a favourite piece of clothing that’s reaching the end of its days and I wish I’d bought it in multiple colours, or could have a replica made, but unfortunately I haven’t planned a trip to the tailors in Bangkok (who’ll copy pretty much anything for you) for another couple of years.

I think it would be great if you could take pictures of looks or items (clothes, bags, shoes, accessories) you like with your mobile phones out in the street, then upload them to the i-want part of the TopShop site where you can tell people what you like about them (the colour, the detail, the cut). Visitors to the site would be able to vote on the things they liked too (tagging would help people search for a ‘look’) – as well as see what’s ‘hot’ on the street right now. The most popular items uploaded would be the inspiration for new ranges. TopShop would take the essence of the item and commission their own piece, which would end up in store.

What’s also great about this idea is that it’s of use to both TopShop and its customers.

From TopShop’s point of view:
- It’s an easy way to identify new trends, fresh ideas and what their customers want.
- It would increase traffic to the TopShop site, and there would be an opportunity to flag any similar items which are already in store, driving revenue.
- Risk of producing an item that no one actually wants to buy could be minimised by giving the people who vote on the piece that is most popular the chance to buy one of the made pieces (almost a pre-order list) which would help indicate the sort of stock levels required.
- This idea is also a perfect fit with the brand’s offline model - TopShop’s success is built on uncovering what’s hot on the street and getting it instore quickly.

Customers can not only get inspiration from the site, but has a genuine opportunity to input into what they see in their favourite store, probably appealing most to those who are constantly on the look out for new ideas.

Click on the links below to see my idea in glorious youtube technicolour

Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4

Be sure to read the description of each clip as the sound isn’t great, and neither is the focus!

I decided to show my idea by uploading video clips onto YouTube from my mobile as this was the one thing that wasn’t touched upon in the Cyberchase challenge, but something I’ve meant to learn how to do for a while. What a palaver though! I’ve been to Vodafone stores, to help desks, got passwords and codes, sent goodness knows how many messages to different sites… But apart from not being able to get the clips onto youtube in the right order, I’m pretty pleased with myself! Ideally I would have liked to have edited the clips together into one video, but due to time and the fact that I only just managed to get them online at all I thought I’d had enough experience of teccy stuff for one week.

So in summary, my TopShop i-want idea pretty much ticks off all of the ‘success’ traits identified, and relates back to the TopShop insights from the last challenge: it combines the personal and the collective, content will be constantly updated, it solves a real problem, it allows people to vote and uses existing technology. And not a garage in sight.