Archive for November, 2008
by Rob Paterson
November 30, 2008 at 11:21 am · Filed under
Balckberry, Social Computing, Social Media, security
Commandos were not only surprised to find the devices in the terrorists’ rucksacks, but that they used the internet to look beyond local Indian media for information, watching the global reaction in real-time as well.
It’s somewhat striking that the terrorists’ use of BlackBerrys “caught the anti-terrorist forces by surprise.” While perhaps another step forward in the sophistication of their organization, in that it it makes communication more instant than ever, it’s long been reported that terrorist networks use the internet and cellphones for communication. Why wouldn’t they use the same tools that millions around the world use? They don’t all live in caves, you know. (Gizmodo)
Of course the people who don’t use social media much or well are the security forces!!!!!!!
by Rob Paterson
November 28, 2008 at 7:37 am · Filed under
Twitter
Twitter, Blogging and Wikpedia have offered the world the best - fastest updating, most human and most comprehensive account of how the Mumbai events unfolded.
If there was ever proof that this combination has taken its place in the forefront of breaking news - this is it.
Here is a link to JP’s excellent post on this topic - that shows you graphically what I mean.
Here is Dina’s summary of many of the online resources.
Now networks such as CNN go to people like Dina for insight
As Newspapers and the Networks slowly die, their replacement gets stronger.
Here is the Daily Telegraph’s acknowledgement of this.
Indeed, many mainstream media outlets, including CNN, used video footage and photos sent in from people on the ground in Mumbai to illustrate their reports, and many television stations, radio stations and newspapers were also keeping a close eye on Twitter and the blogosphere in the hope of finding out more information.
Despite the obvious value and immediacy of these eyewitness accounts, there are signs that the blogosphere is struggling to know what to do for the best when these sort of incidents occur.
While Twitter is a powerful social medium for spreading news and information, some government agencies fear it could also be used by terrorists as a tool for communication. Last month, the US military warned that terrorist groups could use free, internet-based services, such as Twitter, as a means of communicating covertly across a medium that is difficult for authorities to trace and track.
In fact, it is alleged that at the height of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the Indian government tried to shut down the Twitter stream people were using to spread news and information, amid fears that it could be used by the terrorists to help them evade capture.
While Twitter and other social media are not yet in a position to replace the mainstream media, there can be no doubt that they provide a powerful communication platform. Last night, the social web came of age.
Here is the New York Times adding their support to this idea of Twitter & Social Media coming of age:
From his terrace on Colaba Causeway in south Mumbai, Arun Shanbhag saw the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel burn. He saw ambulances leave the Nariman House. And he recorded every move on the Internet.
Mr. Shanbhag, who lives in Boston but happened to be in Mumbai when the attacks began on Wednesday, described the gunfire on his Twitter feed — the “thud, thud, thud” of shotguns and the short bursts of automatic weapons — and uploaded photos to his personal blog.
Mr. Shanbhag, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said he had not heard the term citizen journalism until Thursday, but now he knows that is exactly what he was doing. “I felt I had a responsibility to share my view with the outside world,” Mr. Shanbhag said in an e-mail message on Saturday morning.
The attacks in India served as another case study in how technology is transforming people into potential reporters, adding a new dimension to the news media.
At the peak of the violence, more than one message per second with the word “Mumbai” in it was being posted onto Twitter, a short-message service that has evolved from an oddity to a full-fledged news platform in just two years.
Those descriptions and others on Web sites and photo-sharing sites served as a chaotic but critically important link among people across the world — whether they be Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn tracking the fate of a rabbi held hostage at the Nariman House or students in Britain with loved ones back in India or people hanging on every twist and turn in the standoff while visiting relatives for Thanksgiving dinner.
by Bill Ives
November 24, 2008 at 5:44 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Kara Swisher reported today that Facebook offered to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, in her post, When Twitter Met Facebook: The Acquisition Deal That Fail-Whaled. One of the reasons was the perceived over valuation of Facebook stock as the deal was not cash but Facebook’s perceived value of $500 million in their stock. However, Kara wrote that, “more important, it seems, was a feeling among Twitter investors and execs that the start-up should still take a shot at building its revenues–there are none right now–as well as it had done at building its growth.” There have been six million registrations, as reported in October, up 600 percent over the last year, for the San Francisco-based Twitter. However, so far the effort has focused on growth over revenue and there is actually no revenue at the moment.
Kara reported that “some sources at Facebook said Zuckerberg was becoming frustrated by the buzz Twitter was getting.” I guess he wanted to take over that buzz. At the same time, Zuckerberg called Twitter an “elegant model” and said that he was “really impressed by what they’ve done.” So he offered stock with no liquid value for a company with no revenue. Perhaps the government should do this for bailouts and save the taxpayers real money. On the other hand, it does seem appropriate that the consumer web Facebook should go after the consumer web Twitter. Neither is designed for enterprise use but both have inspired a lot of enterprise tools such as the Twitter for business tools: Yammer, Present.ly, QikCom, and SocialCast that have been covered on The AppGap.
It is hard to walk away from $500 million or even the $150 million that Kara reported Twitter felt was a more realistic value of the Facebook offering. So I hope they made the right choice. Since no cash was offered, I can see some real concern by the Twitterites here. Kara closed with the comment that one Twitter source said: “The question is, is it really a good idea to sell on the first chance you get?” More times that not, my experience is that you regret not doing it but we will just have to see.
by Joe McKendrick
November 24, 2008 at 3:19 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Speaking as a certified member of the “Joe” population, I have to admit I’ve been basking in all the attention Joes have been getting lately.
This past US presidential election season, of course, we had “Joe the Plumber” as John McCain’s poster boy for overtaxation. (Even though it turned out Joe was only his middle name, but close enough…) And we had Sarah Palin, who kept insisting she was the candidate of “Joe Sixpack.” Of course, we also had a Joe on the winning ticket with Barack Obama, so we’ll soon have a Joe in Washington helping to look out for our interests.
That’s why I got a chuckle out of a mailer I just got for the upcoming User-Generated Content Conference (UGCX), sponsored by MediaBistro and scheduled for San Jose in February.
The promotional write-up states that “user-generated content is a rapidly developing revolution in the media. ‘Average Joe” users now wield power over online content, and businesses need to adapt to respond to this trend.”
Speaking for all the Joes in the world, it feels good to have power for a change. But we promise we won’t let it go to our heads.
UGCX is targeting the social media space, but there are plenty of implications for enterprises as well as they seek ways to better leverage all the data, knowledge, and resources within their domains. There’s no question that user-generated content is becoming a huge force on the business scene. David Weinberger actually gave a great talk on this very topic at the 2008 FastForward conference in Orlando. Not only is content being generated by users, but it is also being organized by users through mechanisms such as tagging.
by Bill Ives
November 20, 2008 at 2:53 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
The AppGap bloggers are excited to announce the launch of a new section of reviews - The AppGap: Appopedia. The section brings together the growing number of enterprise 2.0 reviews (nearly 150 to date) that my AppGap colleagues and I have written. It has been fun interviewing vendor spokespeople, seeing demonstrations, and learning about all the innovation within the enterprise 2.0 space. Now you can better access the entire collection.
And while other directories of 2.0 apps exist, we believe Appopedia serves a particular purpose, focusing specifically on work-related tools that help you manage and grow your business rather than every Web 2.0 app in the market. Hylton Jolliffe and others at Corante have been developing the new section over the past month or two. We all hope you’ll check it out and provide input on what admittedly is a work in progress (there are already got a few tweaks on the way).
As you’ll see we’ve organized the reviews by various criteria, e.g., product category, we hope you’ll find useful. If you’ve used any of the tools please feel free to weigh in with any feedback in the comments of the respective reviews.
For vendors: if you’re a company with a tool that’s already been reviewed, we encourage you to visit the review and provide any information on updates in the comments or contact us if you think your tool could be better classified by product category or function. For those that are interested in having your app reviewed, please visit our contact page where you’ll be prompted for information that’ll help us add you to the queue.
Again, we hope you find Appopedia a valuable resource. It builds on The AppGap’s mission - to help individuals, large organizations and small businesses better understand how work and our tools for working are changing - and aims to provide a practical destination for those looking to assess which apps can help them better manage and grow their businesses.
by Jevon MacDonald
November 20, 2008 at 10:18 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
I have been thinking a lot lately about Enterprise Data (I know, aren’t I the cool guy at the Christmas party!) and just how it is being percieved by IT and Management.
I get really uncomfortable when I log in to many enterprise systems for a whole host of reasons. Until now it has been easiest for met to blame the platforms themselves.
So the question I have is this: In light of a shift to mobile, the slow but constant inroads being made by social software and the coming net-generation (or whatever you call it) of employees, what is the future of Enterprise Data? What is the true culmination of SOA based enterprise applications? I am convinced that the end product of SOA based platforms IS NOT two applications sharing a little bit of data over their garden walls, I think something far bigger is at play, and I think we are seeing the result in consumer applications already.
My sense is that the future is going to look different than what we are used to today. I believe that data will become more accessible, be more end user directed and will be a fulcrum for collaboration.
I am still squnting my eyes and scratching my head here,. but I get the sense that there is a shift that is coming, and I am more and more convinced every day that the promise of Enterprise Social Software and Enterprise 2.0 will not be fulfilled by a facebook-clone inside the enterprise, but something much deeper and more action-focused.
A few years in, I feel like we (you, me, all of us) are just getting started on the second iteration of this big idea.
by Jim McGee
November 20, 2008 at 9:37 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Social Media
The Obama campaign was innovative on a number of dimensions, particularly with the use of social media and the effective leverage of committed volunteers. There’s been some good reporting that captures the ground truth of what the campaign actually did and some early efforts to make sense out of these facts in a way that offers lessons for those of us interested in their relevance to broader organizational and enterprise needs.
Use of social media
Effective use of engaged volunteers
Lessons for organizational design and strategy
by Bill Ives
November 19, 2008 at 2:54 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Many people have been writing about the explosion of information through web 2.0 for some time and the need to provide better ways to understand it. Let me start with a fable I have mentioned before in connection with the web. Here is a summary of Borges Library of Babel from the wikipedia:
“…his universe consists of an endless expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms, each of which contains the bare necessities for human survival—and four walls of bookshelves. Though the order and content of the books is random and apparently completely meaningless, the inhabitants believe that the books contain every possible ordering of just a few basic characters (letters, spaces and punctuation marks). Though the majority of the books in this universe are pure gibberish, the library also must contain, somewhere, every coherent book ever written, or that might ever be written, and every possible permutation or slightly erroneous version of every one of those books. The narrator notes that the library must contain all useful information, including predictions of the future, biographies of any person, and translations of every book in all languages. Conversely, for any given text some language could be devised that would make it readable with any of an infinite number of different contents. Despite — indeed, because of — this glut of information, all books are totally useless to the reader, leaving the librarians in a state of suicidal despair. However, Borges speculates on the existence of the “Crimson Hexagon”, containing a book that contains the log of all the other books; the librarian who reads it is akin to God.”
Well, the Crimson Hexagon has arrived and it came from Harvard. Now this one is a bit more focused than Borges version. Crimson Hexagon, the software service, provides brand monitoring that takes analytics beyond counting mentions or positive / negative / neutral ratings to focus on finding and understanding relevant opinion. It enables marketing professionals to measure and understand opinion according to their own business criteria. Crimson Hexagon is currently available via consulting services and will be available via Software as a Service (SaaS) in 2009. The technology within Crimson Hexagon was developed under the direction of Gary King, a Government professor at Harvard and director of its Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Crimson Hexagon has an exclusive licensing agreement with Harvard University’s Office of Technology Development.
I spoke with Perry Hewitt, their VP of Marketing. Perry said that in the old world, information was expensive to acquire. Now it is free or almost free but it is expensive to make sense of it. This is especially true for brand related information. Some companies have a person, often an intern or new hire, sit in a back room and go through Google Alerts or some other tool. However, the information glut will soon drown this strategy. Crimson Hexagon is designed to let the computer manage the analytics, after a person teaches it what to look for. This education occurs by providing the system with a sampling of 10 to 20 instances of specific types of opinion, either positive or negative, you would like the algorithm to be able to recognize. Then it can cover millions of new content examples looking for what is said and when the opinions reflected in this content.
For example, looking at comments about wait time at a help desk can help a consumer electronic firm understand if there is positive or negative climate and what are the causal factors. You can track these opinions over time to see the effects of new events or programs. Do you see lasting effects, positive or negative, or do the effects fade over time.
In another example, I saw the tracking on public web content about the iPhone and you could see the range of opinion on: Apple apps, web access, third party apps, app store, interface, and other positive. You can also see temporal events such as favorable reviews or announcements and see if there are correlated changes in opinions in any of the categories.
There used to be a saying that any publicity was good as long as they got the spelling correct. Perry said that Crimson Hexagon lets you go beyond the buzz to understand the nature of this buzz. They have a saying, stop counting and start learning. The Tower of Babel is built on numbers. Crimson Hexagon plans to go beyond this. I am going to learn more in the coming months about how this will work and will do a more detailed post on the AppGap. In the meanwhile, they have a Crimson Hexagon blog where you can follow the story.
by Jon Husband
November 16, 2008 at 12:50 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Artisanal Economy, Change, Community, Culture, Economics, Emergent, Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing, Trust, User Revolution, Web 2.0
The following notes are an opinion piece, not a rigorously researched and articulated article.
I have just had the opportunity to spend a week in Paris, meeting and talking with the team at blueKiwi, under the leadership of Carlos Diaz and Christophe Rouitheau, two dynamic and intelligent young French entrepreneurs. They and their team, thanks to live-wire Bertrand Duperrin, invited me and Stowe Boyd to speak at the launch of the 2009 version of blueKiwi collaborative platform.
I’ve also had the chance to connect with Headshift’s Dr. Olivier Amprimo, a young organizational sociologist, strategist and early-stage entrepreneur who is (I believe) helping to raise the bar regarding the mass customisation of work with his involvement with Personall, the brainchild of he and Jeremy Grinbaum (ex of IBM and Google Enterprise) and Jean-Patrice Glafkides, also an ex-IBMer.
Additionally, I’ve had the pleasure to meet and discuss with Dr. Miguel Membrado (co-founder of several leading search and collaboration related software applications), David Guillocheau and Patrice Malaurie of Talentys, and Philippe Colin of Itexium, an IT strategy and implementation consulting boutique. There’s even an Enterprise 2.0 Institute at the Grenoble Ecole de Management, headed by Richard Collin
France has a long history and reputation of hierarchical organizations headed by (generally) imperial and autocratic top management (at least, I believe that’s a reasonable way of phrasing their reputations seen from a North American point of view. I am certainly no expert in macro-economics but am aware of the general belief that France needs some economic revitalization (who doesn’t, these days ?) and that some of that has to do with its organizations and their structures and methods. However, France’s companies and economy still produce(s) some very interesting products and services, the country has healthy financial and medical care and educational systems
But .. and I believe this an important "but" … France also has a very well educated work force (compared to the North American workforce), a culture that enjoys examining and discussing issues (they cannot help themselves 
), and workplace cultural habits that encourage and reinforce teamwork. In addition, in no small part due to the maturing of the EU, there are young people from all over western and eastern Europe living and working, and contributing their brainpower and energy, to the workplace in France.
Additionally, the social culture in France is essentially based on discourse, examination of ideas, arguing in friendly (mostly) ways about almost any issue under the sun In my books, that makes for fertile ground for the enracination (taking root of) effective social computing.
We bloggers with a strong interest in Enterprise 2.0 and who carry out research and practice consulting, strategizing, theorizing, or coaching tend to believe that social computing in the workplace is inevitably tomorrow’s foundation for knowledge work. According to almost any theory, its use along with the inputs of factual information and decent brainpower should lead to increases in intellectual capital, organizational capability and thus enhanced productivity over time. If this is the case, then it’s my belief that France’s workplaces of the future should be interesting places should the stereotypical dependence on elite autocracy and its orientation towards hierarchy be reduced.
If the traditional reliance on top-down dynamics can be viewed with a critical eye, and if France’s leaders of tomorrow can bring themselves to adapt to th e new leadership style(s) born of listening, sensing and helping interdependent systems respond to the ongoing rapid changes we face today, then France has a lot of potential with which to work with regard to the promise(s) of Enterprise 2.0.
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by Bill Ives
November 13, 2008 at 12:58 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
RightNow Technologies 2008 recently released their Customer Experience Impact Report conducted by Harris Interactive. I have written about RightNow a number of times (see - RightNow Offers New Features with August 08 Release) for the most recent. The survey polled 2,112 US consumers* online about how they engage with companies both online and via phone, what they find frustrating and how negative and positive customer experiences affect them.
For the third year in a row, an increasing number of consumers indicate they will stop doing business with an organization or company because of a negative customer experience. This year it was 87%, up from 80% in 2007 and 68% in 2006.
The study was done recently but before the major economic down turn. However, the results indicate that the significance of customer experiences does not go down in bad financial times. More than half (58%) of consumers said they will always or often pay more for a better customer experience during a down economy. Consumers also said the most important thing companies could do to encourage them to spend more is to improve the overall customer experience. As a consumer I would agree with all of this.
In recent years, contact centers have faced mounting pressure to move from being a cost center to both supporting the customers and generating revenue. The study addressed this issue and found that more than half of consumers (58%) are at least somewhat likely to make a purchase during a service engagement, and 24% of them have already made a purchase based on an agent’s recommendation. This is consistent with my own experience. For one major telecom’s call centers, we found that call center agents who used the knowledge management system to improve the customer experience were three times more likely to successfully cross sell during the call.
This extends to referrals. They study found that 58% of consumers said outstanding service is the number one reason they would recommend a company to someone else; up from 51% in 2007. This beats service low prices (44%) and quality products/services (43%) in the recommendation-stakes. The flip side is that customers are almost twice as likely to tell others about poor treatment. The study found that 84% of US adults who had a negative experience with an organization or company said they would spread the word about a bad experience – up from 74% in 2007 and 67% in 2006. In addition, 26% of customers said they have sworn at bad service; 17% have shouted and 9% have felt sick. I stopped doing any of these things. I just do not go back.
These results are very similar to another Harris Study sponsored by Tealeaf – see Online Customer Experience – What is Going On? It found that early 9 out of 10 (87%) online adults who have conducted an online transaction in the past year have experienced problems. Those who experience problems conducting online transactions also reported feeling disappointed (55%), angry (41%), and confused (23%). As I said then, I usually feel all of the above even though I do not actively engage in the reactions found in RigthNow study. Tealeaf addresses the issue with web analytics (see Tealeaf Brings Visibility to Online Customer Experiences) and Rightnow provides technology to support online and call center customer support. (see Customer-centric CRM from RightNow). It seems these solutions can work together.
by Joe McKendrick
November 12, 2008 at 11:30 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
We all know the drill by now: in economic downturns, companies first cut costs, as part of a batten-down-the-hatches mentality. But what’s next once the blood is wiped up? This is a rare opportunity for companies to marshal its networks of employees and partners to reinvent the business. And with today’s generation of collaborative social networking technologies, the opportunities for collaboration have never been greater.
In a new report in Knowledge@Wharton, Paul J.H. Schoemaker, research director for UPenn Wharton School’s Mack Center for Technological Innovation, suggests that, for some companies, the economic crisis can actually provide an innovation platform:
“The crisis has multiple impacts. Loss of revenue and profit will at first instill a cost cutting mentality, which is not good for innovation. But if the patient is bleeding you need to stop that first. Then, however, a phase starts where leaders ask which parts of their business model are weak (and perhaps unsustainable) and that, in turn, can lead to restructuring and reinvention.”
How does a company foster radical innovation? Schoemaker’s associate, George Day recommends an “Open Innovation” approach, which is also known as “crowdsourcing.” In essence, partners collaborate to solve business problems. The article cites Waltham, Mass.-based InnoCentive, which matches corporate “seekers” who have science, engineering and business problems with amateur “solvers” worldwide. The “solvers” then compete — for bragging rights and often token rewards — to provide the best answers to the corporate problems.
With the rise and ubiquity of enterprise 2.0 approaches — from wikis to blogging to sites such as Twitter — makes such collaboration possible, at minimal to no cost.
by Jevon MacDonald
November 10, 2008 at 9:34 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
It will soon be a year since I started talking and thinking about Twitter inside the enterprise. In January I wrote about Twitter in the Enterprise as a trend to watch, and a few months ago I asked “Will you twitter in the Enterprise?“.
For those of you who want to dig in a little deeper on what your options are for enterprise micro sharing, Pistachio Consulting has released a report that examines the state of what is available and what your options are in terms of deployment. You can view or download the report here.
This report is an ideal tool for kickstarting discussions in your organization, and I know how much work Laura at Pistachio has put in to this.
Go get a copy.
