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I Think We'll See More Of This
March 17, 2008 By Jon Husband
Categories: Social Networking Web 2.0
I got up early this morning (5h15 am) so that I could go and frolic in that nice white fluffy powdery stuff called snow, falling down the steep sides of cliffs in a barely-controlled fashion. I love very much this activity, as you have to stay completely "in the present" to avoid doing significant damage to your face or various body parts.
Anyway, just before leaving I noticed a Twitter message posted by Eric Rice:
"social media makes me want to go back to liking the Old Way of Doing Things. Publisher-Consumer model."
... and I replied on Twitter that I thought we'd see more of this.
I think we will see that there will be waves of activity, of significant change followed by retrenchment or push-back, and continued moves by mainstream media to contain or subsume "social media".
After all, we're humans, we've been social since we learned to make noise (and before, no doubt), and there's only so many ways you can say things.
Arguably aggregation and categorization and display in various UI formats is what many areas of social media are about these days, other than the permanent difference of connecting one individual to others, individually or as groups, on a continuum of publicly visible networks.
And yes, there have been some important changes to business logic and business models due to the interconnectedness of people. And yes, there are changes yet to come to governments and other organized activities with constituents and stakeholders who want and need information.
Oh, there will be lots more of "here comes everybody", but we may yet find that the next few years bring even more top-down control, of sorts with which we are not familiar yet ... less visible, more electronic and coded into systems and services, related to money, and / or more socially embedded in the codes that are replicated in integrated systems than we yet realize today.
As ever, we'll see. The big question, I suppose, is whether "we" are indeed THE second superpower, as Jim Moore of Harvard once wrote early in the bloggy Web 2.0 era (his expanded blog post now comprising a chapter of the online book Extreme Democracy)
As for me, I used to believe a lot more than I do today that "knowledge is power", At the moment, I believe more that "who controls information has power", but I also think that is more of a temporary thing than ever before.
Which is why I still think this phrase has meaning and will for a while: "A dynamic two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected technology and people".
Again, we'll see over the next ten or twenty years how things will shake out ... should be clearer by then. But a lot of people do not care so much about finding out more than what they are told.
I suspect that things will be more like they are today than they are not, except with a lot more to (try to) pay attention to, and a lot more people kinda / sorta angry with each other and probably themselves too, if they are honest.
Jon Husband
Wirearchy
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Del.icio.us questions I can sink my teeth into
February 27, 2008 By Glen Farrelly
Categories: Social Networking
My current course is covering tagging this week. As such, I posted this blog's prior del.icio.us primer to my class forum. There were two responses that offer interesting concerns about usefulness and safety of del.icio.us.
Value of del.icio.us
From S.C.:
"I used to be a information junkie and file folder fanatic, the literal sort, collecting information in case I ever needed it. But then I realized that I was a collector and not a user, so I threw away my files and downsized my cabinet ... all except my favorite ten. So this phenomenon really intrigues me and would love to know how the info that is tagged gets used, as opposed to collected."
My response:
First, I agree that a lot of people tag things on del.icio.us that they will in all likelihood never retrieve again. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have value.
For one, conventional tree-system bookmarking via your browser gets limited very fast, particularly if you have a lot of bookmarks, bookmarks hard to classify, or, like me, you think more in terms of keywords rather than rigid classification structures. Even if you only return to very few of your bookmarks, knowing you can find them again fairly easy is worth the effort. Of course, if you're fairly good at googling you can retrieve things that way - but sometimes I forget everything about a bookmark, except a vague sense of the topic, so keyword tagging is great for that. Also, del.icio.us gives you a search engine for your bookmarks, which no browser has.
Second, when you bookmark via del.icio.us you automatically share your bookmarks with the rest of the wired world. You can opt out of each individual tag by clicking the "do not share" option, but that defeats a lot of the value of it, which is social bookmarking. You contribute to the classification of scattered, overly-abundant online information when you tag on del.icio.us. So others can benefit from your findings and one day computers will be able to read these tags effectively and then we'll have a search engine that will probably beat Google for its accuracy.
You can do other things with your tags too. My favourite is sharing a specific tag automatically on my blog. So I get a Reuters-type feed of Internet news on my blog automatically by reading the news (as I normally do) and tagging them. A friend set up a del.icio.us account for all research by their communication team, so that they can all share their findings.
So there's lots of uses for del.icio.us even if you don't retrieve your bookmarks very often.
Privacy concerns
From S.T.:
"When I show (and show off!) my del.icio.us site to my co-workers, the first question that comes back at me is 'what about security and privacy?"
My response:
Security concerns would be along the lines of can someone hack into your account and if you have a good, long alphanumeric password then I wouldn't worry any more than I would when registering with any online service.
Privacy is a more complicated concern. When you bookmark on del.icio.us or many other similar sites , you are by default (which can be changed), making all your bookmarks available to the public. Furthermore, search engines index your bookmarks page and this will bring more exposure to your bookmarking.
So if you do not want all your bookmarking public,ere are some tips:
- When bookmarking/tagging in del.icio.us, you can always click the "do not share" button for any or all your bookmarks and it is private. You lose some of the benefits of social bookmarking, but then you do get better privacy and can still use the service for your own bookmark organizing.
- If you still want to participate in social bookmarking but are a bit concerned, don't chose a username that can be identified with you.
- Choose to make any bookmarks that can be identified with you or your life (eg. your hometown website, your portfolio, the company you work for, etc) as "do not share".
- Under account settings "edit profile", indicate that you don't want your name or a url used.
- If you don't want to others to see those in your network - you can choose to have that not display. This is also done in account settings under "network privacy".
I don't want to scare any one off as I have never had any problems with del.icio.us and I am as open as possible on it. But I wanted people to know about the privacy options as they are important considerations.
To close, I'll include a quotation from a classmate on my del.icio.us knowledge that was cyber-candy to me:
'Your knowledge of del.icio.us is astounding! I am learning so much, thanks! You could be a tagging consultant, make oodles, retire at 40 and live in the Caymans!'
I intend to start a custom tag, "Tagging_to_Caymans" and put all the ways I can make money from this trivia.
Glen Farrelly
Webslinger
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Facebook as the intranet
January 9, 2008 By Neil McIntyre
Categories: Social Networking Web 2.0
When I first heard about the company using Facebook as their intranet, I wasn’t sure what to think.
"Serena Software is really replacing its existing intranet with Facebook as a front end linked to a low-cost content management system behind the firewall. The firm is just over 800 employees but is still globally based (operations in 18 countries) with 35% of their employees working virtually. "
I could see how something like this would be valuable for a company like this, where employees need to work together from different locations towards a common goal. But what about in an accounting firm? On audits you’re working closely with audit team members in one location, at least in my experience, so it may not be as useful.
But the value of a system like Facebook is its emphasis on people, and facilitating document sharing and collaboration. Which is where the typical corporate intranet fails to serve its customers adequately:
Like many companies their existing intranet was a poor platform for document finding, much less sharing. As an aside when I speak on web 2.0, I often ask anyone in the audience who can more easily find stuff on their company intranet than the web to raise their hand. This is a question I learned from Andrew McAfee. He reported that no one has raised their hand to this question and I have found the same results.
My hand wouldn’t be raised either.
How would a company implement something like this? WorkBook:
"A secure enterprise overlay for Facebook. WorkBook allows employees to securely interact with their peers using the hugely-popular Facebook service. WorkBook combines all the capabilities of Facebook with all the controls of a corporate environment, including integration with existing enterprise security services and information sources. "
The picture is really worth a thousand words in this case, as it shows you just how WorkBook appears to users.
Andrew McAfee, a professor at Harvard Business School, blogs about WorkBook and addresses the security concerns and technical operation:
"Inside this [corporate] section were a number of standard Facebook features — friends, groups, Q&A, profiles, etc. — presented using the standard Facebook UI. But the data populating each of these were specific to [the company], came from the Worklight server installed at [the company], were encrypted as they traveled across the Internet, and did not pass through Facebook servers. "
I really like the idea, and the implementation is perfect because it doesn’t try to do too much. Facebook already exists and works well for its users. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. For corporate intranets usually designed and maintained by the IT department, less involvement on their part from a UI perspective is a big improvement.
What do you think? Could this be just the thing to push Facebook onto the intranet for many companies?
Neil McIntyre
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Facebook mourners broke the law
January 7, 2008 By Peter Wolchak
Categories: Social Networking
Police have just made public the name of a teen killed on New Year's Day in Toronto. The release of her name was delayed until her parents gave permission for the publication. In keeping with the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the identity of the two teens arrested in connection with her death have not been released.
Not released officially. However, anyone with a Facebook account learned almost immediately not only the name of the victim but also the identities of the two accused. Those close to the victim wanted to mourn her passing, and teens today do that online, on Facebook.
But as the Department of Justice made clear this week, posting prohibited information on the Internet is the same as printing it in a newspaper or magazine--publishing is publishing--and therefore these young mourners have broken the law and could face charges.
What happens to them will be worked out in the next few weeks, but the larger questions will be with us for a while: in the Internet age, how can we manage publication bans such as those in the Youth Criminal Justice Act? Should we even bother to try?
The easy answer is to simply forget about information-based bans. In the current case, the police know who set up the Facebook account and could charge him fairly easily, but that will just ensure people in the future will hide posts behind Web aliases and obscure e-mail addresses. In that environment, enforcing a ban would tie up a great deal of police time, and is chasing teen mourners really a good use of resources?
But while ditching publication bans is the expedient answer, it's not a good one. These provisions were created for a good reason: keeping identities secret gives youth the best shot at rehabilitation and a normal life, and it also protects those charged but later found innocent.
The Internet makes enforcing publication bans impossible, but it does not remove the reason those provisions were created.
The right answer is a public awareness campaign along the same lines as those around seat belts and second-hand smoke. There has been very little public discussion or education on why the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act are good for society. Like seat belts, once you explain that it is in our best interests to follow the law, most people will do so.
Publication bans are a good idea in certain specific situations, but enforcing them is all-but impossible. The answer is public awareness and education. However, like with seat belts, social change is a slow process and, in the meantime, many young offenders are going to be outed by teens eager to share their thoughts online.
Peter Wolchak
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In praise of old-fashioned lazy entertainment
December 19, 2007 By Peter Wolchak
Categories: Social Networking Web 2.0
From a recent Nokia press release: Up to a quarter of the entertainment consumed by people in five years time will have been created, edited and shared within their peer circle, rather than coming out of traditional media groups. "The trends we are seeing show us that people will have a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up and pass it on within their peer groups -- a form of collaborative social media," said Mark Selby, Vice President, Multimedia, Nokia.
Selby added, "We think it will work something like this; someone shares video footage they shot on their mobile device from a night out with a friend, that friend takes that footage and adds an MP3 file -- the soundtrack of the evening -- then passes it to another friend. That friend edits the footage by adding some photographs and passes it on to another friend and so on. The content keeps circulating between friends, who may or may not be geographically close, and becomes part of the group's entertainment."
I personally don't doubt the validity of the statement--it was based on interviews with "trend-setting consumers from 17 countries about their digital behaviors and lifestyles" after all--but I do rue the conclusion. That's because the last thing I want is entertainment that I have to create.
Most adults spend all day creating or assembling stuff, and when we're done we don't want to do more. What we do want is to relax and be entertained: watch a ball game or a movie, read a book or, at most, press buttons on a video game controller. We don't want to sit at another computer and edit video footage.
At least I don't.
This brings to mind a conversation I had a few years ago with a Bell Sympatico employee. The topic was IP TV, and specifically why Bell's plans to launch an Internet-connected, interactive television service had been stalled. He told me that one fundamental problem was that TV is a passive, sit-back activity, while IP TV promoted a more active, sit-forward interaction. And the company and the IP TV movement in general were struggling with that basic disparity.
Perhaps Nokia's research points to a growing interest in creating and shaping our entertainment products, and Bell and others can finally get interactive TV into consumer homes.
But I think I'll sit out this movement. As much as I love the Internet and technology in general, sometimes I just want to relax. And I don't care if video footage of me also has photos of me added to it or not.
Peter Wolchak
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BDO chooses blogging partner to head up international network
December 12, 2007 By Neil McIntyre
Categories: Social Networking
Jeremy Newman of BDO Stoy Hayward in the UK is a trailblazer as a managing partner who blogs regularly, primarily about the audit market in the UK. He’s recently won the job to be BDO International’s new CEO starting in October 2008.
Jeremy has been emphatic about getting the message out about audit choice and pushing BDO further into the market for large public company work.
A post he made about trusting people not to waste time on Facebook while at work, and being against the trend to ban it in workplaces, was quoted by yours truly in a post I made a short while ago that caused partners in my office sit up and take notice.
I wonder when others high up in accounting firms will join Jeremy and make blogging part of their regular routine. Communication skills are going to be key to his success in the new role, but judging by his blog, BDO will be in good hands.
Neil McIntyre
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eOD ... A Fledgling Domain For Enterprise 2.0 ?
October 5, 2007 By Jon Husband
Categories: Social Networking
I've alluded before to what for now I'll call eOD (Hyperlinked Mass Collaboration Will Create A Field Called eOD).
Various people with whom I have talked have expressed dislike, or boredom, with the notion of e-anythingmore, saying it's an overworked prefix. Nevertheless, it seems clear that social computing and the use of social software to collaborate in many or most areas of knowledge work will be with us from now on, and will spread and grow (I believe to the point where the use of wikis and blogs, combined with increasingly flexible ERP systems, will be THE way work is done in organization within the next decade).
Many organizations already spend a lot of consulting dollars on team-building, facilitation of "employee engagement", buy-in to and alignment with vision, mission, values and objectives ... all in the search for improving organizational effectiveness. And all that without really considering much the impacts of hyperlinks, the ability to assess and comment and add one's voice directly into the mix, the more subtle effects of collaboration on an organization's culture.
I remember reading that one of the big HR / human capital / organization al effectiveness consulting firms (Watson Wyatt) intended to start a "social media" consulting practice last year. I think that will be problematic, for both Watson Wyatt and its clients.
First and foremost, the use of wikis, blogs and social computing in an organization does not lend itself all that easily to a clearly defined set of solutions, or a defined methodology (other than perhaps acting as a strategic advisor and some coaching, and perhaps a few workshops). Secondly, if I were a client I would not trust anyone to advise me unless the were a wiki-er or a blogger and had been doing it for a while. I don't believe it's the kind of thing you can offer advice about and support with just from a conceptual and theoretical base .. and most consultants in a large firm will be too busy - between billing their butts off to support the firm's business model, selling new projects and then trying to maintain a private // family life - to become very experienced in the use of blogs or wikis. At least up until now ... as their use becomes more and more widespread and they become a core medium for knowledge work, more of these consultants will have more experience with them. But that will still not easily address the firm's business model issue.
And .. with respect to the mapping and tapping of social networks in an enterprise, a la Valdis Krebs or Karen Stephenson ... if it is the case that an organization sees and accepts that the social networks in an organization (and out to its customers) are where the work happens and how things get done, in my opinion this has significant ramifications for the organization's structural assumptions, the compensation philosophy and practices, how performance is measured and managed ... all that consulting stuff.
I expect that there will be a lot of head-scratching about the re-definition of roles, and about how and why more seems to get done when different areas of knowledge are seamed together and put into use horizontally rather than along reporting lines or in vertical silos. It bring to mind a conversation yesterday with Luis Suarez about William Halal's concept of "internal markets for knowledge" and how to use internal department-or-functional-silo "advertising" to help facilitate cross-silo and cross-functional communications and break down the obstacles related to still-too-often silo-ed knowledge and expertise.
I consulted in that area for a long time in a previous career. I began learning about blogging, wikis and social computing about five years ago. I know lots of ex-colleagues who have essentially no clue about blogs and wikis (either how to start off, how to use, how to evolve, and all the nuances of the interactional dynamics discovered along the way). I know several blogging / social computing friends who I believe to be knowledgeable, careful thinkers who can provide useful, practical and wise advice and coaching. But as far as I can tell, those consultants who can do so at the present time are few and far between, thin on the ground so to speak.
That said, I think that a lot of what has emerged from the OD world over the past two decades, such as Open Space, large-scale employee involvement / engagement, team-building and team development, participative work design, coaching, and so on, are very relevant to the demands of the emerging field of eOD.
I may very well be wrong, and will be glad to have someone show me that I am wrong. But at the moment, with respect to the increasingly interconnected workplace and the organizational development issues it engenders, I don't think so.
Jon Husband
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