Where I get queasy with the Wisdom of Crowds . . .

July 25, 2008 at 10:44 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

Isn’t the whole premise a little off?

I have seen a dozen or so Digg-like decision making systems inside of organizations right now and every time I look at them I get a heavy feeling in my stomach. I see hundred, and thousands of individuals, thousands of smart people all reduced to one cumulative number mashed on to the side of the screen.

You, me, everyone. Just a number.

Lumping a mass of people in to an aggregate is not what Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 is about. I believe more than ever that the excitement of the gospel of the Wisdom of Crowds was a mistake in judgment by many of us.

I also know why it has been successful in being piloted inside of organizations.

The idea of compiling all of the thoughts, emotions and aspirations of your workforce or customers in to one simple, easy to digest number is something that appeals to people who don’t want to deal with the messy thing we call humanity.

This is about the Wisdom of Me. The Wisdom of You. The Wisdom of Us.

I’m sorry, but this whole thing about being social is really messy. Messy like children, messy like love, messy like business. Messy like life.

Put on your rubber boots and an old pair of jeans. You are going to have to learn some names, you’ll make some mistakes and I can promise that it will hurt at times, but you can do this. It has already gotten started.

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Portals or Content Service – The Future of Newspapers?

July 23, 2008 at 5:13 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing

We have been hearing about the imminent collapse of the newspaper business for the past few years. Various reasons are often cited, including: declining revenue from subscriptions and newsstand sales; declining revenue from ad sales in the print editions; and declining revenue from classifieds. In a nutshell, declining revenue from all things print related as reading habits shift from the print medium to digital. And of course the capper—online readers expect content to be free. With a few exceptions, newspaper sites follow a free ad-supported model. The big question now is how will newspapers grow their online revenue (and it is growing) fast enough to offset the declining revenue on the print side.

In some ways the imperative for online newspapers is deceptively obvious—grow your audience and you grow your ad dollars. It is interesting to look at how some newspapers are beginning to tackle this problem. One approach is to become a portal—utilize strong brand recognition and a focus on being the authority around a particular locality. The Boston Globe has taken the portal approach with Boston.com. Boston.com utilizes its brand recognition and content to be the authority on all things Boston. But it does not rely on Boston Globe content exclusively—to do so would make the site just an online version of the newspaper. Instead, they provide a local search feature where they aggregate content from external sources, even competitors.

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The goal is to grow their audience by providing the best service possible. The Boston Globe content and brand may be the centerpiece, but providing the audience with whatever content they need keeps them coming back. The washingtonpost.com has followed a similar model with their city guide feature.

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The New York Times, on the other hand, appears to be moving in a different direction. They recently announced that they were developing a set of APIs to make their content available for consumption outside of NYTimes.com. The strategy here is to disseminate the content as widely as possible and to make it as useful as possible. The thinking seems to be to allow the content to go out and find the audience for the site. As more and more developers build mashups around New York Times content, their audience grows. If the content is mashed up in interesting and creative ways, all the better. Presumably there will be a monetization strategy which will involve driving the audience back to NYTimes.com or perhaps advertising will be delivered as part of the content service.

These two models are hardly mutually exclusive and I think it’s likely that the most successful newspapers will become both a portal and a content service. It will be very interesting to watch this evolve over the next two years or so. Clearly, some newspapers are not going to adapt and will not survive. Others, however, will move into new business models and begin leveraging both technology and their brand equity to become something entirely new.

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Luis Suarez’s E-Mail Liberation – An Inspiration to the Rest of Us

July 20, 2008 at 8:59 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

I briefly talked about this issue on my own blog and am expanding on it here. I finally met my long time virtual friend, Luis Suarez at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston in June. He talked to me about getting rid of much of his email. A few days later I found out that he had an article on his adventures in the New York Times, I Freed Myself From E-Mail’s Grip. Here is more about it on his blog, Giving up on Work e-mail – Status Report on Weeks 15 to 20. Kudos to Luis. Here is Luis and myself at the Enterprise 2.0 conference when he told about his email liberation.

Luis wrote in the NYT article, “Instead of responding individually to messages that arrived in my in-box, I started to use more social networking tools, like instant messaging, blogs and wikis, among many others.” He added however, “I never gave up my work e-mail address, because I still need it for some work-related activities — for example, for one-on-one discussions that are too private and confidential to discuss publicly.” Luis uses a lot of the IBM Connections tools that I recently covered in the App Gap (see Comprehensive Tour of Lotus Connections).

He said on his own blog that it was ironic for a good number of hours that his anti-email he published in the NYT was on the list of the Top 10 Most Popular e-mailed items. More importantly he added that he was not saying that email should be abolished. He is “just saying that it needs to be re-purposed and used for what it was meant to be in the first place: A communication tool for one on one conversations of a sensitive, private or confidential nature. The rest should be going out there, in the open, in the public space(s), transparent and with an opportunity for everyone to contribute! Notice that I am differentiating quite clearly between communication and collaboration, because they are not the same, no matter what people say about it!”

I could not agree more. Well done.

I have not been able to cut into email as much as Luis but I am offloading a lot of email around a small startup I am involved with by using GroupSwim, an online collaboration tool. It has taken out a lot of inefficient email threads as we discuss issues around our launch. However, I found myself at first needing to prod my partners to keep going back to the collaboration tool, instead of using the more familiar communication tool, email. Sometimes, I took their emails and posted them in the collaboration tool so we could more easily move beyond communication to collaboration and have an accessible record of this collaboration. Now they are getting more into using the tool and posting things themselves.  I think that everyone is starting to see the benefit. It will increase as we get more information and have to refer back to prior discussions.

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Content in a world where it is infinite – Dr Horrible

July 19, 2008 at 7:08 am · Filed under 2.0 Business Model, Dr Horrible, Hulu.com, Movie Making, iTunes

We are all struggling to find a way of making content valuable again. When it was scarce and you could only see it on a big screen or on your TV on a certain channel in a certain place at a certain time – the content had the value of scarcity. But now….? With as much content being posted on the web in a week that was on the air in a year back on the TV times of the 1970’s, where is the value?

Dr Horrible may be showing us one way.

This amazing film was launched this week for free in the 3 installments on the web. Come next week it will no longer be available – at least for free.

In the few days it has been available, it has caused a firestorm. First of all – it is very well done indeed. So there is the essential quality.

The makers are using all the rules of the 2.0 world.

• The have not negotiated with the 1.0 world for distribution
• They are using Hulu to show the web version
• They will be using iTunes to distribute the paid version
• And marketing? Of course they are using me and you – the early adopters who have some influence – I had to see this because of Laura at BPP – you might see it because of me – a friend of your might see it because of you and so on.
• They have used another form of scarcity – a very limited time of “free”
• They have used another form of scarcity – 3 installments built expectations and hope for the resolution.

And how does it end – Does Dr Horrible get the Girl? Does he deal with his Nemisis, Captain Hammer? Is he accepted into the A List of Evil Doers? Does it end happily? – Well you will have to watch it to find out.

Is it well made? Yes – very tight, great cast, great plotting and ideas, the music is exceptional – it kept me rapt all along and the end….. brilliant.

Will Dr Horrible do well? What do you think? Is this a model – yes

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KETC – The emerging role for Pub Media – The Social Convener

July 18, 2008 at 7:35 am · Filed under KETC, Politics, Public Media, Public Radio, Public TV, Relationships, Social Media, TV, Trust, Trusted Space

Social Media for what? As the shadows lengthen, I am seeing that the new role for public media is not simply to bring you Jane Austen on Sundays – though that is worthy – but to use the trust evoked in a generation public TV and radio to help us as citizens help each other face terrible times.

The mortgage crisis is now clearly not just about a few people who should have known better, as many like to see it, but is a crisis so deep and wide that it has the power to doom not only individuals but cities. As houses fall, so do streets, the blocks then neighborhoods and then entire cities. Loss of taxes will shutter schools, loss of taxes will neuter governments, loss of mobility and loss of value will shut down people. So the financial cancer spreads until maybe America comes to a halt.

So what to do? This is where social media will I think play it’s most important role – that of empowering people to come together and to help each other. This is I think where the history books will tell the story – not that Facebook or My Space were cool, not that business finally got it. No I think the story will be that Social Media enabled the rise of Community Power and that it was Community Power that helped America through these times. That it was Community Power that replaced machine Democracy and restored the Republic.

Big claim! So here are some early signs – you can see this great power stir before your eyes

KETC, a client of mine, the Public TV Channel in St Louis, has been chosen by CPB to test how well a public TV station can be in Convening the wider community of its city to come together and help each other cope with a giant crisis. Here is a link to the background.

I am writing today to offer up an early report. This week we held the first on air/web town hall meeting.

For the first time St Louisans could see that they were not alone. The room was full of all sorts of people. St Louisans could see the enormous amount of help that was there for them. They could hear stories of all the things that could happen for bad or good. They could feel hope.

The show (links part 1 - part 2 - part 3 – part 4) was masterful. First of all it set the context – it gave the whole story. Then the full range of risks and remedies were explored.

As I watched this show, I felt as I had after Robin’s cancer diagnosis when we met the wonderful team of people who saved her life. I felt that while the situation was dire, that I might lose not my home but my wife, that we had the benefit of a great team and of the best that medicine could offer – we knew what we were up against. We knew that we had a chance. We had hope whereas before we had only fear.

I thought that I knew it all before the show. But I didn’t. In an hour, Ruth had covered the full story. No sound bites here. The full story!

The last segment was for me the most gripping. Here the show is opened up to the audience, to callers and those on the web. Here the voice of the community spoke. The dignity of the people and the panel was something to behold. The barriers between the helpers and the helped were eliminated. Something important happened.

The full impact was also revealed.

This is much more than a person losing their home. This is about the ripple effect that kills blocks, kills communities and in the end can doom the city. The ripple effect affects us all.

Next week we have a second show. This time we will focus on the the ripple effect – how can St Louisans work together to protect their communities? How can the people save their city?

Of course what you see on TV is merely the surface. If you look at the video, you will see The Swan – You will see the show but behind the scenes the feet are paddling hard under the surface.

The guys at KETC are paddling like fury all over the city and the state connecting people to help and more important connecting the help to the help. Have a look at the credits at the end of part 4.

This is the hard graft – many organizations, I call them Nodes of Trust, are meeting each other for the first time and seeing how much they can do to help each other do a better job.

Many are also seeing that the mortgage crisis itself is only part of a much more dangerous threat, the Ripple, that has the power to take the entire city down.

This is why I make the claim I do. I can think of only one way to dig our way out of this mess – to connect the people so that they can take charge themselves. Social Media and stations like KETC are the way to make these connections.

Many are starting to see that many who got caught were not foolish but unfortunate or worse exploited.

St Louisan are starting to feel that they might have a chance of beating this – a chance not because of false hope or exhortation but hope drawn from meeting other good men and women and seeing that together they can make an impact. Seeing that they are not helpless.

I think that KETC is on its way to prove out the hopes of CPB – that Public Media can be seen as a powerful force for good in their community. For who else can do this work? Who else can act as the convenor in these tough times?

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