by Rob Paterson
December 31, 2008 at 8:15 am · Filed under
Twitter, User Revolution, Video, Videos, War, YouTube
Increasingly war today is a matter of winning the “people’s war” Organizations such as Al Qaeda have become masters at using social media to both train people and also to tell their story. Often actions are in effect stage managed such as the Fallujah killing of Blackwater men that was filmed throughout and broadcast immediately.
Until now conventional forces have kept away from learning how to tell their side of the story. Maybe – as with business – their essential bureaucratic nature and need for control – inhibited the use of social media.
But the IDF have decided that they have to get their story out there and are agressively using YouTube and now Twitter. Here is a neat summary with links from Global Dashboard.
Two of my favourite blogs, MountainRunner and Danger Room highlight the IDF’s attempt to win over the blogosphere using Twitter and You Tube. Why? Because according to the head of the IDF’s press team: “The blogosphere and new media are another war zone, we have to be relevant there.”
The YouTube channel was created with the aim of distributing footage of precision airstrikes. Interestingly YouTube took down some of the ‘exclusive footage’ showing the IDF’s operational success in operation Cast Lead against Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip, but appears to have returned some of the footage due to popular demand.
Elsewhere the Israeli consulate in New York hosted a press conference on Twitter in order to answer the public’s questions regarding the situation in Gaza. How one measures the success of the twitterference is difficult but, as both Matt and Nathan point out, reducing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to tweets of 140 characters or less makes for interesting reading:
‘We hav 2 prtct R ctzens 2, only way fwd through neogtiations, & left Gaza in 05. y Hamas launch missiles not peace?’,
‘we’re not at war with the PAL people. we’re at war with a group declared by the EU& US a terrorist org’.
I think that this is just the beginning
by Rob Paterson
December 24, 2008 at 4:07 pm · Filed under
Hubspot, Twitter
In 2008 Twitter came of age and has become a mainstream tool that is going to be very important in news, marketing and simply keeping friends attached. The Presidential Election, Mumbai and even fun things such as #snowmageddon have shown many the value.
Hubspot have released a very useful set of stats for where the users are with Twitter now. The full report is here on PDF and here is their web summary in full.
You can also read the TechCrunch article – State of the Twittershpere for more info.
Stowe Boyd thinks that you have to look more deeply into the numbers than this.
I have suggested for a longtime that to ‘get’ Twitter you need to follow 100 people at least, for several weeks. This cursory recitation of stats suggests that there are thousands of users out there happily communing with a handful of friends. I don’t buy it. I bet most of those accounts with small use, small links, and small time online represent a fringe of uninvolved people who aren’t getting much value from the service, if they login in at all. The sweet spot is far north of the center of some bell curve, I believe.
The real analysis of meaningful trands will have to wait, but here’s some cross tabs that would be interesting:
- What’s the distribution of perceived value? Does more use translate into higher perception of utility? My bet is yes.
- What’s the distribution of use? Do people with few connections use the service less? My bet is yes.
- Do people gain more followers based on hours online, and numbers of Tweets? I bet yes.
- Where is the magic dropout number? A lot of users abandon services like Twitter, but I bet that once you have a network of size N, the likelihood of dropping out decreased dramatically. What is N?
by Jon Husband
December 22, 2008 at 2:57 am · Filed under
Change, Emergent, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Search, Social Computing, User Revolution
William Halal of George Washington University wrote this book in 1998, well before the advent of Web 2.0 and even longer before the term Enterprise 2.0 was coined. I remember speaking to Dr. Halal about the concept of wirearchy back in late 2000 … he was most encouraging, and it’s not hard to imagine why.
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Despite attempts at organizational change during the ‘90’s, the decade was notable for down sizing, top-down control, extravagant CEO pay, and other hallmarks of the Old Management. But a New Management is emerging that harnesses the knowledge lying unused among employees at the bottom of the firm and scattered outside its walls among customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
Drawing on hundreds of examples, a survey of 426 managers, technology forecasts, and economic trends, Bill concludes that the New Management is extending markets and democracy to create a self-organizing corporate community operating from the bottom-up and the outside in.
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For those of you who are more deeply interested in the principles of KM (knowledge management), innovation and ways to "break down" silos of information, enhance idea flow and benefit from employees’ creativity and purpose, I can recommend one of Dr. Halal’s earlier books: Internal Markets – Bringing the Power of Free Enterprise Inside Your Organization.
I presume there’s a decent fit with these concepts and the ongoing evolution of enterprise search (actually, I don’t presume .. having read the book about a decade ago, and having paid attention to the evolution of enterprise search, I know there’s a lot of value in this book).
Interestingly, in the blurb on his web site about this 1993 book, he highlights the paradox that North American and western European corporations worship free enterprise principles excepting when it comes to running any given organization.
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One of the great ironies of capitalism is that while founded on the liberating principles of free enterprise, most corporations themselves are centrally-controlled, hierarchical systems, not too different from the centrally-planned economies that failed in the communist bloc.
This book brings together case studies describing the creative transformation of progressive corporations into the only feasible alternative to hierarchy – self-managed internal enterprise units forming an internal market economy.
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This (centralised control) is in some cases changing, more and more rapidly. But it remains an interesting issue … just look at the title of the most recent Fast Company cover article … provocative title, n’est ce pas ?
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How Cisco’s CEO John Chambers is Turning the Tech Giant Socialist
Power to the people — and profits to the company — is a bold tech promise we’ve heard before. If Chambers can pull it off, if he can prove that his model drives innovation at a market-beating pace, he will replace his pal Jack Welch as the most influential leadership guru of the modern era.
[ Snip ... ]
Trust and openness are words you hear a lot in the endlessly optimistic world of Web 2.0, but at Cisco, it seems to be more than a PowerPoint mantra, even to my jaundiced eye. As Mitchell and I settle down to our conversation in an open space not 25 feet from Chambers’s office, I can hear the CEO chatting on the phone with customers.
Mitchell, who is charged with encouraging the company’s rank and file to adopt new technology, is undistracted. "We want a culture where it is unacceptable not to share what you know," he says. So he promotes all kinds of social networking at Cisco: You can write a blog, upload a video, and tag your myriad strengths in the Facebook-style internal directory. "Everybody is an author now," he laughs. Blog posts are voted up based on their helpfulness. There are blogs about blogging and classes about holding classes — all gauged to make it easy for less-engaged employees to get with the program
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If I am not mistaken, the issue of centralised control remains one of the core issues in play (remember, the book above was published in 1993 !) when it comes to considering whether and how to engage with or commit to a path towards Enterprise 2.0 architecture, applications and dynamics.
I can only assume that Dr. Halal has watched the growth of the field called Enterprise 2.0 with enthusiasm, interest and perhaps some bemusement.
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Tags: hierarchy, wirearchy, internal markets for knowledge, innovation, new management
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by Bill Ives
December 21, 2008 at 9:41 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
The Economist Intelligence Unit reported that Web 2.0 has moved from buzzword to reality in many of the world’s largest corporations. They conducted a survey of 406 senior executives worldwide and found that 79% of respondents see the collaborative web as a way to boost revenues and cut costs. They said that, ╥perhaps the most interesting finding is that a full 85% of C-suite executives see the sharing and collaboration aspects of Web 2.0 as an opportunity to increase revenue and/or margins, versus 75% of middle management. Nothing like having top down sponsorship delivered to a largely already convinced group of middle managers. This top down effect also extend to the view that Web 2.0 is transformative, affecting all parts of the business (35% versus 28%) and is making a significant impact on the company╒s business model (41% versus 22%). They asked good questions.
The top perceived potential for Web 2.0 was to transform the way that companies interact with their customers. Many of these study participants were part of large companies already using Web 2.0 tools and methods. The most cited use was the creation of online communities to help with product marketing or product development. Next was the use of blogs or wikis to initiate conversations and share knowledge inside or outside the company.
It seems that so far executives are more convinced of external uses of Web 2.0 than internal enterprise 2.0 efforts. The study found that 68% of executives expect Web 2.0 methods and tools to be the single biggest factor changing the ways their company interacts with customers. While 49% said these tools will change how employees interact with each other and the company. This is not surprising given the current usage patterns within the sample reported above and the broader awareness of Web 2.0 marketing efforts than enterprise 2.0 collaboration efforts.
Building on this nearly 60% of those surveyed said that their companies are asking customers to contribute their product development and/or enhancement, or that they plan to do so within the coming two years. In addition, about half of companies say they are, or are planning to, treat customers as co-developers of products that are in a constant state of improvement. The wisdom of crowds has caught on.
It is appropriate that I learned about this work through social media, Jacob Morgan’s blog post, Companies Believe Social Media Can Increase Revenue!. It was one of the three most popular for the week on Social Media Today.
