Re-Discussing The Design: How Is Openness Managed? A Study On The Web 2.0 Platforms Continuous Openness Phase

The phenomenon of Web 2.0 services is expanding, generating at the same time questions on its management. While services such as Facebook or Google Maps are often cited as examples of "openness" in innovation, there are no studies that analyse concretely how collaboration in this framework is happening (for instance, Facebook has more than 500.000 applications built by exterior developers installed on its platform). A first answer is to be found on the common design of Web 2.0 platforms, permitting the aggregation of third party innovations on them, after their launch and during what we call the "fourth phase of continuous openness" . Yet, design choices are not sufficient in order for the platform to expand. The existence of an active developers' community is a crucial factor towards this direction. For this, firms are obligated to communicate and interact with these developers and manage this communication. In this paper, we identify and analyse two different means of interaction between firms and exterior developers: the "Barcamps", which are exploration events realised at a local level, and the developer support forums, which are feedback infrastructures based on the geographically dispersed collaboration. After analysing the characteristics of these two cases, we propose some further research fields and questions in order to contribute in future studies on openness management.