Much attention has been paid in recent years to personalizing the web experience. This emphasis on providing the user with a highly personal experience, focused on his/her interests, has had moderate success and helped build loyalty. However not enough attention has been paid to the other side of the web - the people that create, manage and contribute to a particular web.

The development of personalities has a long history in the traditional media. The columnists, commentators, celebrity reporters as well as the totally obnoxious personas of your local television station news teams are part of the attempt to engage the user (viewer or reader) in a more personal relationship. 

The basic idea of 'peopleizing' your web is to humanize the net and recreate the sense of doing business with people you know something about, rather than faceless computers. Early on in the history of the web there was a lot of personality on even the larger web sites. This disappeared with the fear of putting real people out on the web for anyone to encounter. More recently we have realized that this was a mistake and are now moving to restore the age of humanity to the web.

Almost any website, whether it be an intranet, internet or portal can benefit from peopleization. Here are a few ideas on how to bring your staff onto the web.

Content Providers: Writers, Researchers, Reporters, Editors and the like are a natural for more development. The trick is to keep their work straight forward (unless it is a personality column to begin with) and to provide ancillary profiles and commentary. Readers are used to this on news and information sites. The really interesting possibilities are in the less expected spots like product information, product specifications and other types of content. If the person who updates specifications provides some commentary, or someone from manufacturing has a little piece about what is involved in creating the product (with a photo) you have moved a step closer to drawing the potential customer to you. If the person responds to e-mail from users, so much the better.

Help/Customer Service: help should be personal. The help desk person asks lots of questions of us, so why not return the favor? I would love to see a Frequently Asked Questions page that has a personal touch. Add some short stories to illustrate specific points.

Contact Us: Tell the user who is going to answer the phone or respond to the e-mail. Have the person give a few hints on how to effectively reach the right person and what might delay a response.

There are many possibilities for providing the personal, human touch to your net-enabled portals and business process extensions. One of the easiest exercises for deciding where to add people, is to think about what you would say in person to a user as that is viewing specific content on your site.

How to make it happen: Get an Editor: Every site needs an editor. It is unreasonable to expect that all your staff will be able to write witty and articulate content. Getting good material is often a process of teasing out stories, perspectives and ideas. Hence an editor. This provides both consistent quality and a uniform presentation of the personalities.

Keep it fresh: It is not enough to generate content once. It must be updated to reflect changes in people, situations, products, and services as well as seasons and circumstances. This is a commitment of time and resources.