Faster Than the Speed of Thought
by Joe McKendrick
With Enterprise 2.0, information travels faster than the speed of thought…. Geek & Poke’s Oliver Widder shows us how:
Archive for December, 2007
The Social Web - A “New World”
by Rob Paterson
Why do so many people really not get it? Why are so many institutional efforts to become expert about Web 2.0 such failures?
While working on a project for a client, I had a personal aha about this that I would like to try out on you.
I think that Web 2.0 is not just a set of tools but is more a label for a real “New World” that shares many of the characteristics of America in its more innocent years - post the Civil War. If it was just tools, any one could pick them up. No I think that Web 2.0 is a place. A world in fact that offers the same kind of opportunity and barriers that America did in 1890. Between 1870 and 1914 50 million people left everything of their old way of life to come to America. Why?
Because Europe was a place where you had to fit into your place - where the hierarchy ruled - where land was scarce - where no matter how talented you were, the system kept you in your place. You were also deeply embedded in your local society - often your entire world was bounded by your village or neighborhood. America was going to be hard work and had many risks BUT there you could be your own person, hard work could take you up in the social order, there was space and land, there were new relationships available throughout the country. There was social and absolute mobility.
So what then was the immigrant experience? If you were the grandparents - it was very hard. You might be able to learn the language and you were hard wired for the old ways. You came because your children came and they were your lifeline. For the young couple it was still a major struggle but all the incentive was present to put in the effort. If the young adults had children however - everything became easier.
A central theme of the immigrant story was the kids. They picked up the new language, culture and ethos very quickly. There were the advisors to their parents and grandparents.
So I am wondering might be the process for adopting the new Web. Of course there are exceptions - I am nearly 60 and am very comfortable in this new world - I bet there are some young who hate it. But generally, the kids, like the immigrant kids from Eastern Europe in New York in 1890, have no problems and can be a huge resource.
Many at the top of large institutions are like Grandparents. Some junior executives are like the core immigrant. So long as there are no kids involved, the Grandparents are going to make the call. I think the key is to give the kids a lot of power - in institutions that means access to key people and to key processes.
This summer at KETC, the interns, whose historic role has been to make and serve coffee, came into their own. I saw them showing the “old farts “how easy this tool or that one was to use. Or as to why we had to use You Tube or Facebook - because “everybody” was using them. The “Old farts” rather enjoyed being taught by the young - they were much less threatened and could be awkward and vulnerable. The power system had not been turned upside down, but the kids had access to the power people and to the power meetings where they had a say.
It was such fun to attend a meeting of the senior folks and watch them all ears as a 22 year old journalism student took the floor and held them spell bound as she used her own experience and knowledge to shift the group to take the decision.
It was just as it must have been in the immigrant tenements, where the kids became Americans first and helped their families cope and become Americans themselves.
My bet is that the secret ingredient for any organization that is serious about moving from the Old World to the New, will stack the deck with the young and give them a key role to play.
Enterprise 2.0 and Blue Ocean Strategy
by Sean McClowry
In 2004, two professors from INSEAD, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne published an article in the Harvard Business Review, introducing the concept of “Blue Ocean Strategy”. A number of articles soon followed and a book was published in 2005. This approach has quickly become one of today’s more influential works on business strategy and the book has published over a million copies.
Blue Ocean Strategy is about creating new markets through the introduction of new products. The reference to “Blue Ocean” comes from the authors’ use of a metaphor of markets as oceans. They claim that most organsiations compete in Red Oceans, with essentially the same products against a shared core customer base. In this model, companies focus all their time and energy competing with each another: products become commodities and victories are pyrrhic. With all this fighting, the marketplace is bloody – a Red Ocean.
Blue Oceans are about creating product offerings that are so fundamentally different, they create a new market. The competitor is innovation, not a similar company. As is shown in the book, companies that have created Blue Oceans have been the big winners in the 20th century and the authors believe this trend with continue. Examples include Henry Ford with the automobile and Southwest Airlines with budget travel. Most case studies from the authors are not technology companies or even new companies.
The authors provide plenty of case studies that show that creating a Blue Ocean is not necessarily about technology. That said, I believe it is becoming increasingly difficult for an existing organisation to be innovative without good technology or at least simple technology – especially large companies. This is because their legacy systems are so complex and difficult to manage and their products so tied to this infrastructure that thinking beyond the current-state is extremely difficult.
Implementing systems based on Enterprise 2.0 principles of agility, collaboration and simplicity enables a much better way to innovate. It’s long journey for big company, but worth starting now. And sailing on the Blue Ocean gets a lot easier without a bunch of leaky boats.
Circular Progress in Social Media?
by Bill Ives
I really liked Rob Paterson’s post, History of Social Media, as well as the earlier one on More on War as the Accelerant for Social Software, where he also looked at some of the historical aspects of social media. Trains and planes have transformed how people connect and transformed the world as a result. However, the history of connections and social media is often one step forward and one step backward. Many of the early forms of connecting were more social than some of the stuff that replaced them.
In the late 1890s my great aunt liked to listen to music but the only place that you could hear music was the saloon in her newly-organized town in the Oklahoma Territory. In her day, this place was not appropriate for young single women. Fortunately, she was the first telephone operator in the town. So she called the saloon and left the line open, getting “piped in” background music, while she worked, whenever the band played. There was an added benefit to this technology. She was able to also hear whenever a fight broke out in the saloon, a frequent activity, and notify the local police by running a flag up a pole at the telephone office across from the police station. These features, piped-in music and location monitoring, have taken on new forms and become disaggregated from her primitive phone lines.
There were other added social aspects to this early social media. My great aunt operated a system of 64 phone lines. She became known in town as the “hello girl.” She was also at the center of social connections so people called her or stopped by when they wanted to find someone or find out what was really going on in town. As mentioned, above, she could leave lines open. In addition to getting music from the saloon, she also kept an open line to her fiancée who worked at the bank. They could talk between tasks during the day, facilitating their courtship.
We lost a lot of this social nature by taking people out of the connections but the web is bringing it back in new ways. The other day, I listened to a live digital feed of Cajun music from one of my favorite music bars, Tipitina’s in New Orleans, while I blogged in Boston. So it has come full circle from my great aunt but now I can get music from many places besides the local saloon. Happy new year everyone. I will pick up this thread in 08.
Facilitating Networking
by Paula Thornton
This is in response to a comment from my colleague, Bill Ives, who asked for my thoughts as to the potential shakeout of social networking tools in the Enterprise. Bill has previously reported both on a major software developer, Serena, which has adopted Facebook to REPLACE their intranet (supporting 800 employees — the numbers can matter here) and WorkBook.
There are a number of factors at play here. Which of these are most relevant, depends on the circumstances.
1. Size/Effort/Culture
These are so closely tied together it’s hard to unravel them from one another. The success of social networking technologies depends on adoption and buy-in. The culture of 800 employees can be far more readily influenced, as a collective – particularly when replacing an intranet in total — than situations with the following:
- Thousands of employees. Likelihood of a ‘cohesive’ culture diminishes and increases the effort to implement/adopt, unless it fills a void, or replaces and enhances the value of something already in use (e.g. the results of a people lookup).
- A technology culture with security phobias. Many enterprises would never consider the Facebook path Serena embraced, simply because of firewall/security policies (based on sound rationale or not).
- A social culture that may have pre-conceived notions that the technologies might be non-productive, threatening, or fill-in-the-blank-challenge (we’ve seen this with all 2.0 technologies — because of the perceived ‘control’ factor). This list would also include outright apathy (which is fairly significant in many cultures, both on the ‘permission’ and the adoption side).
2. Degree of Interconnectivity
You can’t really use the term ‘online’ any more to cover all aspects of being ‘connected’. Regardless of device or means of interaction, the value of social networking goes up the more resources are enabled to contact and interact with one another. There are many business models that provide limited means for employees to connect to the company, let alone one another. For a technology company like Serena, nearly everyone is likely ‘connected’ to do their work. But being connected isn’t the same as being interconnected.
Using a computer for mostly ‘offline’ activities (stand-alone applications), is not the same as doing ’shared’ work that is constantly showing updates, where individuals are connected to the ‘pulse’ of the business and can ’see’ exchanges of activities going on. The further away an employee is from a ‘live’ pulse of the company, the less likely a social networking technology will add value, unless it is being leveraged in an intentional effort to connect employees. Connecting people to have conversations and/or debates when they have limited facts is counterproductive.
Many companies are not strategically leveraging their intranets as ‘the face of work’ within their organizations. Employees go there on a ‘have to’ or ‘as needed’ basis. Such environments can reinvent themselves either by replacing or adding a social networking dimension, but then, this was often the justification for many companies implementing portals (aka. collaboration). Such strategies have to be brought together — they’re pieces of the same story (or should be).
3. Interface Saturation
We’ve lived a long history where every application has its own interface. Even though internet browsers brought some degree of continuity to an online experience, its influence over the total experience is limited. Adding another interface is not the goal here; adding a capability is. Exactly how would employees’ ability to network among themselves be increased?
Serena was on the right track replacing their intranet for Facebook because:
- They weren’t competing against themselves for attention, or asking employees to choose an allegiance (what’s set as your ‘home’ page at work?)
- They enhanced Facebook to better meet their own needs (expanding its purpose reinforced their commitment to it)
- [There are a lot more…add yours.]
What about something like Worklight’s WorkBook? My first question would be, what will it replace and/or what will it bring together? Then, how is it different than anything else already in place that offers access to friends, news, groups, or applications, including email? If I can look up the current status of my colleagues today in Outlook, or grab their phone number, why wouldn’t I expect the same interface to give me direct access to ‘more’ about that individual? Or, how will the social networking solution ‘play’ with the conversations already going on via email? How will it replace or divert email exchanges?
Why do I need to have all these competing interfaces asking for my attention, diverting me from my work? Remind me again, what was I doing?
STEP AWAY FROM THE INTERFACE. What are the functions being delivered and how do they fit with all other existing functions?
Let me simply ask companies some very serious questions.
- Social networking is not a technology, although the label can be used to identify unique technology solutions. What do you know about how employees are already interacting with each other (IM, email, phone, text messaging, etc.)?
- How would a ‘new’ function/interface enhance existing social networking and what specific value would/should it add?
- What role does social networking already play to contribute to increased productivity? Where does the ability to connect to one another break down and how does this impact productivity? Will a new technology address this?
- Where does corporate/enterprise social networking end and industry social networking begin? [I existed before I joined my current employer and will exist afterward…my identity is not unique to my employer. My incentive is not to maintain my corporate identity but my industry identity, which may be separate from my alter-ego
]
If you don’t know, you’ve got bigger issues to deal with than making decisions about social networking technology.
And yes, some 2.0 junkies might insist that it should just evolve. There should be an element of evolution balanced with insightful decision. Evolution has a premise: survival of the fittest. ‘Fit’ is not something that happens randomly. Evolution is not equal to random. There are already far too many careful, restricted decisions made that are still quite random (e.g. forced by process, culture, power, naivety, time constraints and combinations thereof).
P.S. To put the value of my opinion in perspective, I advised my husband in the late ’90s that ERPs were not a good stock investment — they ended up being the high-flyers of the market at that time. The problem was that I tied my opinion of the technologies (their lack of robustness/completeness, and/or solid design) to their market potential. I failed to factor in the absence of alternatives to address a serious ‘perceived’ problem at hand. I also failed to adjust for the afore-mentioned randomness factors that drive major technology contracts – not tied to outcome.
The Royal Channel on YouTube
by Rob Paterson
Wow! 50 years on from the first TV broadcast, the Queen speaks directly to the world.
Her 1957 message - about change, constancy and heart - remains timeless.
“If you look through the years, the queen’s always kept up to date with changes in technology,” a spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace said. In fact, the monarchy has had its own Web site for the past decade, and the queen made her Christmas message available as a podcast for the first time two years ago.
The new site , www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel, went live just after midnight on Sunday. It includes footage of royal-related events, including garden parties, funerals and a documentary called “Long to Reign Over Us,” about the monarchy. There is also the queen’s first-ever televised Christmas message, which took place 50 years ago, in 1957.
A spokesman for YouTube said that the Royal Channel had been a huge success so far, drawing hundreds of thousands of viewers by Monday. The most popular clip so far is the 1957 broadcast, with more than 400,000 viewers, while a clip of Prince Charles visiting a school has drawn slightly more than 3,000.
“The content has clearly struck a chord with a lot of people,” said the spokesman, who declined to be named citing company policy. (NYT)
So what is your organization’s excuse for not using this type of direct approach?
Amazon SimpleDB: A New Database in the Cloud
by Joe McKendrick
Run an entire enterprise — including sophisticated IT — from the cloud? Just a couple of weeks again, I posted Ismael Ghalimi’s list of all the Office 2.0 tools and technologies you could ever need to avoid bloatware of any kind and run your business entirely from services delivered over the network. Ismael cited Dabble DB as an example of a cloud database that can provide such functionality.
Since that posting, Amazon Web Services announced a “limited beta” of a new service called SimpleDB.
SimpleDB, Amazon says, is a Web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which provide the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud.
Amazon charges for SimpleDB services on a per-use basis, which initially is priced at 14 cents per machine-hour consumed. Data transfer rates range from 10 cents per gigabyte for data transferred to the database to 13-18 cents per gigabyte for outgoing data. Structured data storage is $1.50 per gigabyte a month.
Cloud computing has interesting implications for enterprises in the long run. Already, cloud computing appears to be leveling the playing field for many start-ups, helping to basically avoid the necessity of any enterprise IT investment at all.
For example, online podcasting service GigaVox Media, an Amazon Web Services customer, reportedly spent just over $80 in its first two months of business on storage, messaging and processing. (I went into some detail about this case and cloud computing over at my ZDNet blog.)
GigaVox uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) to store files from podcasts, videocasts, and advertising images. The alternative would have been to buy disks and storage arrays to provide back-up storage, which typically range in price between $2,500 to $20,000 for network-attached storage units. GigaVox would also have had to invest in switches and hubs, as well as the expertise to put it all together and manage on an ongoing basis.
The company then adopted Amazon EC2 to fulfill its transcoding and automated show-assembly needs, and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to serve as the glue between these services monitoring EC2 server instances, queuing transcoding requests, and issuing instructions for program processing. As Doug Kaye, co-founder and CTO of GigaVox, put it in a Webcast:
“Even if we could have done this with a cluster of outsourced managed servers, which still wouldn’t have been as scalable, we would have spent tens of thousands of dollars more,” said Kaye. “We didn’t have to buy a single server. We didn’t have to spend any time in a ‘cage.’”
Cloud computing services such as SimpleDB are more likely to catch on among smaller companies and startups. However, Oracle and Microsoft have little to fear at this point among enterprise customers suddenly dropping their onsite databases installations in favor of cloud databases. In fact, open source databases such as MySQL may suffer the most.
Along with small businesses, the cloud databases will most likely start to catch hold among individuals or departments within organizations that need to pull something together quickly, without the necessary budget machinations. But as with all new paradigms, cloud services may start at the peripheries of enterprises and slowly be absorbed into more and more functions. That’s the route open source is taking now, and Microsoft technologies took in the 1990s.
Scenes from the New Workplace
by Joe McKendrick
Enterprise 2.0 may have interesting ramifications on workplace interactions. Once again, Oliver Widder of Geek & Poke fame enlightens us.
Facebook as a Corporate Portal Platform?
by Paula Thornton
Respected colleague, Tony Byrne (editor of CMS Watch, which often does deep industry reports) took an interesting look at Facebook in his piece, Is Facebook in the Enterprise an Oxymoron?
Since Tony is one my top respected resource for all-things-content, I know he is not one to take this subject lightly. I consider his attention to this topic as a call to take serious note. He shares:
“At CMS Watch we’ve been experimenting with Facebook as a collaboration platform internally and with external partners, and we like it. There are some definite limitations to Facebook as a portal. The inconsistent behavior and security profiles of different Facebook applications will be familiar to any portal developer struggling with third-party portlets or Web Parts. Facebook applications seem to revolve principally around people rather than groups, which can be inconvenient for professional collaboration (where typically micro-applications are applied selectively to workspaces). Facebook doesn’t have real document management — although arguably you wouldn’t want it seated there anyway — and Alfresco and others have developed hooks into Facebook from their repositories.”
Then he cautions:
“But when does Facebook-behind-the-firewall stop being Facebook? I think the minute a central authority gets behind it — and instinctively mandates some available MOBIG (Microsoft/Oracle/BEA/IBM/Google) software because it happened to be familiar or free — is the minute the system will lose its appeal to rank-and-file employees.”
In comparing the use of Facebook to the simplicity of SharePoint, Tony notes:
“…the problem with SharePoint is that there is no native way to manage multiple instances of it. “
I ‘m particularly supportive of his recommendations to IT:
“I suggest offering (or just allowing) a set of collaboration alternatives. Then step back, keep lifecycle management as unobtrusive as possible, and see what takes off. This may mean allowing multiple collaboration solutions — including hosted solutions — to compete internally. May the best one win. I’m not suggesting this will be easy; in fact, it may take hard work to retrofit suitable retention and security services onto a newfangled collaboration package that was not explicitly designed for enterprise-wide deployment — but became popular across your enterprise nonetheless. “
Here’s my only caveat to the latter…I fundamentally believe in the principle of evolution, but when not having a ’standard’ creates islands of identities then there’s a problem. If you can ‘architect’ a cross-offering so that people can search for an individual based on attributes and be able to find them, then I’m ok. Maybe someone at FAST can weigh in on meaningful architectural/governance approaches here?
In the end, the result should accomplish what I normally champion, but Tony did a great job:
Start by institutionalizing an attitude that says, “how can we help our employees be more effective?” Specifically, “how can we support them in the way they really want to work (as opposed to the way we think they want to work)?”
21 Dec 2007 UPDATE
Tony shared with me directly: “And btw, I quite agree with your caveat about silos. We are seeing the lack of standards come home to roost here (though it’s not anybody’s fault). It’s really more of an intuitive feel that product selection for collaboration/networking tools has to be bottom-up, rather than top-down, and the price we’ll pay in the short run is a proliferation of repositories until a standard is set….“
Somehow colleagues in Europe were on the same wavelength as today they forwarded this “Social networking ‘white elephant’ warning“. This piece reminded me of my insistence on a ’synthesized’ profile for individuals, which should provide for internal ‘confidential’ content/references and yet leverage the public profiles/identities individuals may already have and maintain (i.e. don’t recreate reality), including blogs. Besides, in this faster-paced, rapidly changing work environment, resources can and should have public identities separate from the company/entity they happen work for at this moment in time.
I’m reminded of the time where I was so struck by the backwardness of accepted thinking around work relationships, when I had to go to considerable lengths to explain to my daughters why I was up at 5:30 on my computer the week after I’d been laid off from a job (never mind I should have been working to land my next relationship). I said: “I do what I do regardless of who I work for. I just sometimes happen to do what I do for a specific company.”
The one observation from the warning that I totally disagree with: “There is also little evidence that social networking will be as beneficial for businesses as other web-based communications tech such as instant messaging and VoIP.” Good grief. The PRIMARY justification for social networking from an enterprise perspective is to connect resources TO each other, by way of the context their profiles provide. You can’t leverage instant messaging and VoIP, until you’re aware of the other resource’s existence. It’s a matter of ACCESS (findability). So yes, “Ultimately, Gartner suggests, the value of social networking tech comes from content rather than the product itself.“
Worklight Enters the Enterprise Facebook Market
by Bill Ives
Yes, there is an enterprise Facebook market. You knew this was coming. I got an email a few days ago from Worklight, Announcing WorkBook, “a Secured Facebook for the Enterprise. WorkBook, an addition to the WorkLight 2.0 software platform currently in use by Global 500 companies, allows employees to interact with their colleagues using the hugely popular Facebook service, while eliminating the security issues that have constantly dogged organizations looking to leverage and embrace the social networking revolution.” Look what happens when you open up your APIs.
Unlike Facebook which is free, Workbook pricing starts at $10 per user per month, with volume discount pricing available. I hope that their security features warrant this. Serena, as I wrote about on the blog, created their own security features through custom Facebook apps. Not every company may have that capability but Serena assured me the apps were quick and easy. However, there are many companies that may want more security than they can build themselves.
Now I am not knocking Workbook, in fact, I have been in favor of Facebook for the enterprise 2.0. If this helps get it in the door then that is great. I wonder if Facebook shares in the $10 cover charge per person? Do other Facebook apps charge? Could they charge? Who gets all the money? I am showing my lack of depth here. Perhaps the gold rush for Facebook apps has more direct revenue that I thought.
Here is what Dan Farber & Larry Dignan said in WorkLight secures Facebook for enterprises. They have pictures. They also link to Andrew McAfee on the related security concerns around apps like Facebook in People, Computers, and People People.
John Hagel: The Web 2.0 vs SOA Chasm
by Paula Thornton
With John Hagel on the speakers list for FASTforward ‘08, it seemed reasonable come up to speed on some of his more recent thoughts (if nothing else, to prepare ‘zinger’ questions for him). Somehow I stumbled first on comments about Web 2.0 and SOA, where I was struck by the dimensions of time and space in conversations: the reference to the date of his post had to be uncovered in small print at the bottom of several page views (I’ll let you discover what I mean), and more recent voices have offered perspectives I consider more reasonable, but these aren’t connected to his post (not a criticism, just an observation).
The fact that in his piece he calls out another FASTforward ‘08 speaker is even better. I found Hagel’s insistence that Andy McAfee overfocused on knowledge capture and not enough on knowledge creation interesting, because from the quotes Hagel included, McAfee was talking about access. He also suggested that McAfee and Nick Carr saw things from different perspectives, when, they appear to totally agree with one another. Indeed the Carr reference Hagel offers includes the following quote: “McAfee first explains why past knowledge management ’solutions’ rarely solved anything. He then explains what makes Web 2.0 technologies different. ‘The good news,’ he writes, is that the new technologies “focus not on capturing knowledge itself, but rather on the practices and output of knowledge workers.’” And McAfee responds to Carr in another reference offered by Hagel, “Hear, hear. The spread of Enterprise 2.0 technologies is definitely not a sure bet, and one of my deepest professional nightmares is being a hype merchant for each new IT gizmo that comes along.”
I did find Hagel’s specific advice about bridging the chasm between SOA and Web 2.0 interesting (but admittedly a bit one-sided):
“What is required to break this SOA logjam? Two things. First, Web 2.0 technologists need to work on connecting directly with line executives of large enterprises without trying to go through the IT departments. Second, they should avoid the temptation to present grand visions of new architectures and concentrate instead on starting points where these technologies can deliver near-term business impact. (This should not be too hard since by nature Web 2.0 technologists are bootstrappers and hackers.)”
Certainly there is a lot of this going on, but it doesn’t do anything to bring the two camps to a deeper understanding of perspectives (is there a theme here with Hagel?) and will miss opportunities to truly leverage the strengths of both.
But since Hagel has neither tags or search on his site, I can’t readily determine if he’s updated his position over the past year (but that would be an access issue :) .
[Hmmm, did you also notice that not once does Hagel reference the term “Enterprise 2.0″ except when quoting McAfee? Perhaps there are subtile perspective issues at play?]
I hope Mr. Hagel isn’t feeling too abashed. Somehow, McAfee is always my champion in differences of opinion, particularly when jousting with Tom Davenport (I’m disappointed that these two won’t be on the same stage with one another at the ‘08 conference, but maybe we can stir up an exchange or two here on the blog).
OPB - Public Insight Network
by Rob Paterson
Oregon Public TV is starting a TV version of Public Insight Journalism. Here is a link to a neat video that they are using as the invitation - it makes it all come alive for me.
My own bias is that I want to be connected to people that know a lot about things that are important to me. Knowing what my friends had for breakfast is important - one of the reasons I like Twitter. But I still value expertise.
The web enables me to get connected to individuals who really do know a lot. For instance, the man who runs the music department at Nicholas Hoare’s Book Shop in Toronto is a genius who seems to know everything about serious music - I would love to have him talk online about what he knows and to be available to host a chat.
Safa Rashtchy Extends User Revolution to FASTforward08
by Hadley Reynolds
This post is the third in a series in which we are introducing keynote speakers who will be contributing to the conversation at the upcoming FASTforward 2008 conference at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando, Fl, February 18-20, 2008. Check here for more detail and registration info and here for a special discount for readers of this blog.
We have introduced so far Don Tapscott and Andrew McAfee from the lineup of keynote speakers at the conference. We are particularly pleased to announce here that Safa Rashtchy will be with us at the conference on Wednesday 2/20. Safa has been a star financial analyst for over a decade and a true thought leader in the emergence of Internet investment plays and the globalization of online opportunities, particularly those involving China. He’s a man who’s made a living predicting who will make money in the new world.
While Managing Director at investment bank Piper Jaffray, Safa was responsible for the seminal 2007 report: The User Revolution: The New Advertising Ecosystem and the Rise of the Internet as a Mass Medium.
In this influential and comprehensive study (the report features 217 Exhibits - we’ll let you guess the number of pages), Safa and his team lay out a cogent story about the shift of “attention” to the web, the rise of “2.0” phenomena, the increasing diversity of channels and sources, the explosion of rich media - especially video, and how all this and more is working together to create a new world for audiences, consumers, producers, and marketers online. Needless to say, one of the key findings is that search is a key business enabler in many of these developments. [Click here to see that it’s not just FAST who thinks so.]
At the conference, Safa will be giving us all a glimpse of how he sees the “user revolution” moving on from here, and the ways it will create fundamental changes in the way that companies from all industries – especially media, entertainment, retail, and communications companies – engage with their customers to drive value. Since leaving Piper in mid-2007, Safa has been traveling extensively and updating his sense of the emergent business opportunities that the trends he and the team documented in the report are creating around the world. He’s also been a featured presenter at such gatherings as the Web 2.0 Summit.
If track records are any indication, Safa’s views here will be well worth paying attention to. As a leading financial analyst for over a decade, Safa earned top rankings in The Wall Street Journal’s ” Best on the Street” analyst survey for 2002 (not a stellar year for investors, need I remind you). He was also a winner in Institutional Investor magazine’s “Home Run Hitters of 2001″ top stock pickers list.
Don’t miss the chance to learn about Safa’s top trend picks for 2008 - on view Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008 at FASTforward, Orlando.
FAST
Using Blogs for Project Management & Review at Bridgespan
by Bill Ives
Here is another enterprise 2.0 success story where blog transparency trumped siloed email. The Bridgespan Group is a nonprofit organization that focuses on the management and recruiting challenges of the nonprofit sector. It was launched with the support of Bain & Company, Inc. and applies management strategies and tools to help non-profits and foundations achieve greater social impact. I had lunch a few months ago with Cris Peterson, their CTO, and we discussed uses of web 2.0, especially blogs. Cris had been skeptical of blogs, siding with Guy Kawasaki who said, “A blog is written by someone with nothing to say, writing for someone with nothing to do.” Cris said he occasionally found a blog with good content, such as the work of Larry Lessig, but his perception was primarily that blogs provide a platform for viewpoints.
We met again a few weeks ago and I discovered that Cris had reconsidered blogs as a platform with more possibilities. He now looked at blogs for what they could do, not simply the use examples he had seen so far. Cris saw blogs as a simple system of linked entries that allow for comments and provide transparency and search. You can link together entries and have the comments incorporated as part of the value. They can replace email as it does not allow you to easily find anything and is difficult to use with rich media.
Cris was leading a media project and decided to use blogs to support the team review process. Bridgestar, the Bridgespan initiative dedicated to recruiting and connecting senior leadership talent for the nonprofit sector, wanted to present the answers to frequently asked questions about nonprofit careers in an engaging new format. . They produced nine videos and formatted them into a three by three Hollywood Squares-like matrix. To gather feedback from all the stakeholders during production and editing, Cris set up a blog on his iWeb account through his Mac. He posted the nine videos and the stakeholders were able to comment and see the comments of others in an easy format. They got updates through RSS and everything was searchable. The blog format saved a large amount of time and enabled a better product.
Cris is now looking for other uses of blogs. He plans to blog the next IT conference he attends so that his staff can get immediate updates on what he sees, again saving large amounts of time for him and them. It will also enable him to get feedback from his staff while he is still at the conference so he can ask additional questions while still on site.
In summary Cris said that he now finds blogs useful as long as a few key components are in place:
-the technology has to be simple
-the payoff for the investment has to be clear and significant
-the context of the discussion has to be right for the message to have value
Andy Carvin advises an unusual Client - Has Good Advice for us all
by Rob Paterson
This is so cool that I had to quote Andy in full - My read of the client is that they are very sophisticated in the use of Social Media and could teach the US Military a lot if they chose to listen to an expert practitioner. The Roman Army was never too proud to learn and to take on technology from their opponents.
According to Al Jazeera and a number of other news sources, the latest video from Osama bin Laden’s wingman, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, came with a brief note that Zawahiri would like to take questions from the public and answer them in his next propaganda video. The Al Qaeda-associated websites that first published the video said that Zawahiri would conduct an “open interview” in which user questions could be submitted over the Net. However, they didn’t go into too much detail as to how those questions would actually be collected or selected.
Just in case Dr. Zawahiri is reading this blog, I thought I’d offer some friendly suggestions, from one Web 2.0 enthusiast to another.
1. Accept tough questions. If all of the questions you answer are along the lines of, “What’s it like to be the coolest surgeon-turned-terrorist?” “What’s your favorite hidout?” or “Diamonds or pearls?” you’ll quickly lose credibility among bloggers.
2. Be sure to vet the people asking the questions. You may have heard that CNN and YouTube recently had a debate in which some of the people whose videos were used had connections with various political campaigns. CNN is still taking a tongue-lashing from the blogosphere, and Anderson Cooper even had to issue an apology. So when you select questions, be sure to note publicly if they have any potential conflicts of interest, such as, “This question comes from David, who as an undergrad attended a rally against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and once sent Yassir Arafat a birthday card.” There’s nothing worse than having anyone question your professional integrity.
3. Consider using open source. I’m sure you must be a big fan of Digg, so perhaps you’ve come across Pligg, an open source content management system that lets you do Digg-liking social news polling. The online community is a sucker for anyone who embraces open source, so that’ll go a long way in getting coverage on sites like Techcrunch, Boing Boing or maybe even Slashdot. Speaking of Slashdot…4. Be prepared for the Slashdot effect. If you’re gonna ask the public to contribute questions, be prepared for the traffic. If your server goes down for even a few minutes, you’ll never hear the end of it, and it’ll be the last time Osama lets you pull a stunt like this. And who wants to go back to the old-school way of coming up with your own questions when all the cool kids are doing otherwise?
5. Trust your users. If the public rates a question particularly highly, you ignore it at your own risk. There’s nothing worse than participating in a social news project only to find out that the editors have completely ignored the community’s preferences and gone with a question they wanted to use.
6. Consider tagging. One failing of the YouTube debate was that users had to go to YouTube to submit their questions. 10questions.com, on the other hand, let users go to a variety of uploading tools and then “tag” that content with a keyword, so it could be aggregated easily. For example, if you told users to upload their question to whatever site they chose (including their own blog) and tag it AskDrZawahiri or AskATerrorist, you’d go a long way in terms of winning kudos from folks who are skeptical of anything YouTube does.
7. Remember to have fun with it. You’re bound to get lots of questions like “How could a person trained to do no harm adopt a philosophy that seeks to do as much harm to innocent people as is humanly possible?” or “What do you expect to gain from killing so many of your fellow Muslims?” Try mixing it up a bit and consider questions like, “So Ayman - what’s the story with your forehead?” You know you’re bound to have that question rise through the voting ranks like a softball question for Ron Paul, so why not embrace it? You know we’re all dying to know.
Social Trend: Getting Real
by Paula Thornton
I’m not so certain that there’s as much of a User Revolution going on as there’s a deeper embracing of reality and the adoption of “no BS” policies in personal agendas. The media has encouraged people to become more aware and involved, and they have.
Taking a quick look at the Dove campaign for real beauty, I was reminded by their self-esteem fund of the recent uproar of body image and social pressures across talk shows when Jennifer Love Hewitt was pictured by the tabloids and called ‘fat’ across the blogosphere, when she’s a size 2 (never mind she’s reportedly pregnant — as if pregnancy isn’t even all-the-more difficult for body-image-conscious women to cope with). This is clearly a relevant social topic to be aligned to, not just because it’s popular, but because of it’s potential to damage the social fabric — real lives.
In looking at social-issue alignment/advertising, there has always been some corporate efforts toward social issues, but Dial took on a topic to a much deeper perspective when it wasn’t expected, and leveraged it to their advantage. Clearly, many brands establish their identity based on certain social alignments: REI evolved as a buying coop among serious outdoor enthusiasts (members still get annual refunds for their own purchases), Ben & Jerry leveraged their commitment of social investing of profits including creating specific products, Seventh Generation has deep sustainability commitments for all their products. As of late, not having a sound green position can put brands at a disadvantage (including even raised floor architectures).
The public is taking a no-nonsense approach to being marketed “to” and reversing the trend to being treated like trained monkeys. Clearly e-Loan had to take on an entire industry to allow consumers the right to their own credit score information. e-Loan’s business model and entire advertising campaign capitalizes on the flip of this power base. But what happens when the innovative brainchild of the e-Loan concept sells his creation and goes to the next problem? He applies a little 2.0 and comes up with another lending model to bypass the large lenders altogether — by capitalizing on both the long tail of consumers and average people with money to invest.
I close with a quote I came across illustrating the shift recognized by others: “Marketing 2.0 is as much about paying attention as getting attention.” [Sigh…] Wasn’t that the goal of Saturn’s business model over 2 decades ago?
Advertising + Social Networking = New Equation
by Paula Thornton
Dove (Unilever) is taking social networking to a whole new dimension as it relates to campaign development: they’re letting customers not only create ads (which they did last year) but vote on them and then announce the winner at the Oscars. Someone has looked at every angle of cross-integration for this (including mobile voting).
I can’t even feel comfortable calling it either a promotion or an event — it’s both and more. It’s synthesis in a decidedly different way that is a mashup of sorts, but focused on reframing and repurposing existing methods in unexpected ways. It introduces an interesting leap from incidental product positioning in productions (actor drinks well-displayed Coke during scene) to intentional co-event creation.
Read the details at MarketingDaily, “Unilever to Unveil Dove Ad Winner During Oscars“.
What’s also interesting is how significant a role the metrics played to reinforce additional investment this year.
“…last year’s campaign leading up to the Oscars resulted in over 1.5 million people visiting the official entry site at dovecreamoil.com, and the company got more than 1,200 ad submissions.”
With the growth in social networking over this past year any guesses as to the growth in submissions for this year?
Wonder what’s in the works for the Super Bowl?
The History of Social Media
by Rob Paterson
Andy Carvin will be on air on Morning Edition talking about the history of Blogging and its impact on society. In preparation he asked for help on identifying milestones.
Here is the list that he is currently considering - he and I both agreed on the first - unusual one - What do you think?
1st Century BCE: Julius Caesar writes De Bello Gallico, raising the bar for military bloggers more than 2,000 years later.
1690: Benjamin Harris of Boston publishes the first independent newspaper in North America, presaging the golden age of late-18th century American pamphleteers. The four-page broadside left the final page blank so readers could add their own comments and news stories before passing it on to another person. The paper was a flop.
1776: Thomas Paine, unofficial blogger-in-chief of the American Revolution, publishes the influential pamphlet Common Sense.
1945: The Atlantic Monthly publishes Vannevar Bush’s As We May Think, which examines the future of knowledge and prophesies the development of the Internet, desktop computing and personal publishing, among other innovations.
1984: The creation of Listserv, the first email discussion group software.
1986: The launch of Cleveland Freenet, one of the first “community networks” through which residents could post community updates and discuss local issues.
2003: Iranian Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi launches his own blog, well before many U.S. politicians catch on to the idea.
2003: In one of the first major audio blogging experiments, public radio host Christopher Lydon publishes mp3 files on a website, using an RSS feed developed by Dave Winer so people could subscribe to them. That same year, Winer would organize Bloggercon, one of the first national gatherings of bloggers.
2004: Ben Hammersley, in an article for the UK Guardian newspaper, described the audio blogging technique used by Lydon, Winer and others as “podcasting,” creating a whole new industry without even knowing it.
2004: Videographer Steve Garfield launches his video blog, a blog containing video clips, and declares 2004 “The Year of the Video Blog,” more than a year prior to the birth of YouTube.
February 2004: The launch of Flickr, a photo-sharing community that helps popularize photo blogging.
iTunes TV - Now Available in Canada
by Rob Paterson
Finally TV is here in Canada. The CBC are making a push in the iTunes space. You can download Rick Mercer for $1.99 a pop.
What I would really want to see however is largely on Public TV in the US. I want Masterpiece Theatre, Nova, Ken Burns…. I will pay.
It could be so easy - split the fee between the producer and my designated station.
Try it guys - try one good show ….. Please!
Andrew McAfee Returns for FASTforward 08
by Hadley Reynolds
This post is the second in a series in which we will be introducing keynote speakers who will be contributing to the conversation at the upcoming FASTForward 2008 conference at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando, Fl, February 18-20, 2008. Check here for more detail and registration info.
For those who attended FASTforward 2007 in San Diego and for most readers here, Andy McAfee needs no introduction. He has simply become the leading business academic generating thought leadership around the concepts and practices of Enterprise 2.0 (E20 here).
Of course coining the phrase itself earned him some credit, but his Spring, 2006 Sloan Management Review article Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration did more than introduce a new buzz term. In the piece, he clearly laid out a set of business considerations that continue to inform the developing thinking that we see 
here at the fastforward blog and elsewhere.
Andy’s SLATES model (search, links, authoring, tags, extensions, signals), for example, remains a source of core insight into the nexus of technology and interaction patterns that trigger when any thoughtful E20 prac