Home Smart 100 2014 Webcred.it (VIC) – 2014 SMART 100

Webcred.it (VIC) – 2014 SMART 100

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This SMART 100 profile and the information it contains is a duplication of content submitted by the applicant during the entry process. As a function of entry, applicants were required to declare that all details are factually correct, do not infringe on another’s intellectual property and are not unlawful, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, obscene, or otherwise objectionable. Some profiles have been edited for reasons of space and clarity.

1. THE BEGINNING

This innovation came to life when…

When the founder was assisting large retail giants build their web sites, working with teams of experts – none of whom would ever get any public recognition for their efforts.

This sparked the notion that, of all mediums, surely the web itself would be the best platform to describe itself… but no: there are no online standards for “web site credits” as there are for movies, TV and games.

Webcred.it, a standardised platform, was developed to be an industry standard of the people, roles and technologies who build web sites, to give recognition and credibility to the web industry.

2. WHAT & HOW

The purpose of this innovation is to…

Help people who build web sites to centrally claim credit for their work. Apart from the rare logo in the footer, the teams of people who build websites are mostly hidden.

It does this by…

Webcred.it is a centralised web service, free for all users, to allow everybody who builds web sites – from the superstar designers right down to the one-week contract testers – to claim credit for the work they did. As an industry reference, it’s about giving credibility to all facets of the web community, and a standard for the industry.

3. PURPOSE & BENEFITS

This innovation improves on what came before because…

Remarkably, even though the web is 20 years old, the concept of crediting the makers of web sites has not been standardised: a group called humans.txt is using a similar ethos to Webcred.it, but does not have a standardised nor centralised format. LinkedIn, of course, is the huge professional social network, but focuses on the individual, not on web sites.

Its various benefits to the customer/end-user include…

Webcred.it allows for recognition of all the experts that go into making a web site: especially all the behind-the-scenes roles, like project managers, testers, contract coders and many more. In this way, it captures the richness of the web industry.

4. COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

In the past, this problem was solved by…

People hiding their credits as logos in web site footers, or simply going unacknowledged. As an industry, this is a loss, since the web is the most self-referential of mediums – and the loss of recognition of the depth and breadth of the millions in the web industry contributes to the lack of a coherent “web industry”.

Its predecessors/competitors include…

LinkedIn has the same networking and personal focus, but cannot look up who built which web site. IMDb is the clear predecessor, being the first database driven web site on the net, and the central reference for the entertainment industry.

5. TARGET MARKET

It is made for…

Sadly or gladly: the entire web industry. There are well over 100 million web designers, both professionals and amateurs; developers, content creators, administrators amongst others.

That’s a) awesome, b) not likely, and c) hard to target without “boiling the ocean”. But it is worth nting that there’s no particular subsector within that list that needs Webcred.it any more or less than the entire industry as a whole.

It is available for sale through…

It’s currently live (in public beta) at http://webcred.it, completely free for all users – forever. There is a ‘Pro’ upgrade in the pipeline, with future plans for companies and industry users.

Our marketing strategy is to…

Spend this period in public beta getting the features and market fit – and then to leverage the viral nature of the site to go global. The site is inherently “viral”, by nature of the interlinking between people in the web industry as they have partnered with different colleagues for different projects.

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FINE PRINT
This SMART 100 profile and the information it contains is a duplication of content submitted by the applicant during the entry process. As a function of entry, applicants were required to declare that all details are factually correct, do not infringe on another’s intellectual property and are not unlawful, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, obscene, or otherwise objectionable. Some profiles have been edited for reasons of space and clarity.