Today when a client asks me to build a web site containing:

• Blogs, mem­bers need to be able to blog
• Mar­ket­place, like eBay
• Photo gallery
• Forum
• Cal­en­der
• Edi­to­r­ial space (for arti­cles and fluffies)

my advice to them is always the same.

“You don’t need to. Let’s use what’s already out there”

Our roles as web devel­op­ers/ web strate­gists is shift­ing within this new era when most of the base func­tion­al­ity such as blogs, social net­works, cal­en­ders, project col­lab­o­ra­tion and even video edi­tors are actu­ally avail­able for free already! In this vast space of ter­abytes there is more then enough apps to meet the cus­tomers need. Why rein­vent the wheel?

Most of the traffic/market/people/users are already on Face­book for exam­ple. How do we reach them through that spe­cific chan­nel? Within Face­book there are room for groups, events, mes­sages and even com­mu­nity based games. It’s perfect!

So, insted of forc­ing the users to join yet another social net­work / sign up for a cam­paign, let’s make it easy for them. That should be our main goal, I think. To make it easy for the user.

ps. If any cus­tomer feels tar­geted by this, don’t. I get requests like these all the time, and there is noth­ing wrong with it. It’s just up to us web // whatever  (we’ve got LOTS of dif­fer­ent titles, but mostly we are the same) to get you on the right track. It’s our respon­si­bil­ity as experts to lead the field and to make the best out of your ini­tial idea.