by Joe McKendrick
February 27, 2009 at 12:40 pm · Filed under
FASTforward'09
Are we losing our innovative edge? Many commentators continue to fret over this question. But at least one industry visionary tells us to look past the headlines, as the forces are now in place for the next great wave of innovation — much of which has not even been imagined yet.
Steve Gillmor saw Web entrepreneur/visionary Marc Andreessen on a recent episode of The Charlie Rose Show, and relates how Andreessen is bullish on the power of the new networking reality that is now taking shape:
“At a time when many people are saying innovation is dead along with the economy as we knew it, I can’t help but feel the hot breath of a surge in the power of the network. As Marc Andreessen reminds in his fascinating conversation with Charlie Rose, the Internet didn’t take off until the browser. The infrastructure was in place for some time already, but when the browser appeared, the TV generation sat up and took notice.
“Now we’re at the threshold of the realtime moment, and history seems to be repeating itself. For some of us, the advent of a reasonably realtime message bus over public networks has changed something about the existing infrastructure in ways that are not yet important to a broad section of Internet dwellers. The numbers are adding up — 175 million Facebook users, tens of thousands of instant Twitter followers, constant texting and video chats among the teenage crowd — a semi-secret economy of interactive media that is sucking the chewy chocolate center out of the one-way broadcast sector.”
The message is clear: the individuals and companies that let themselves get cowed by economic doom-and-gloom talk are being distracted from hopping on the next great wave. Those that are embracing social media and Web Oriented Architecture will probably be in a winning position as the new networked economy starts to roar.
The networked economy emerging before us is based on real-time interaction between various open communities, Steve relates. And the challenge is to be able to first recognize the opportunity, then learn to harness it:
“Real- time has to be managed. The first tools in any transformative period are hard coded to the sensibilities of the radicals, the pioneers on the front lines. Scoble may appear ridiculous in his zeal for the extremes of the social media envelope, but his calculation is much more conservative than you might think at first glance. By opening himself to the tyranny of the crowd, he connects with that reality we each face.”
Andreessen even identified the starting point for this new transformation: He urges print media to give up the ghost, and completely transition to online formats. “Stop the presses tomorrow…. The stocks would go up.”
He observed that even his eight-year-old daughter is well connected to friends online — a portend of what the next generation (Genertaion Z?) will bring. “I rarely see or talk with friends from high school or earlier, but what’s to prevent these virtual friendships from continuing to flourish for a lifetime? What are the consequences of the lowering of the barriers of space and time? We’re finding out, in real time.”
by Hylton Jolliffe
February 26, 2009 at 11:54 am · Filed under
FASTforward'09
Please indulge this final plug for the three dozen interviews conducted by Josh-Michéle Ross at FASTforward’09.
We’ve created a new section for the interviews that hopefully makes it easier for readers to scan and quickly get a sense of those interviewed as well as key topics discussed. As you’ll see, each interview is tagged and all interviews are sortable by topic. Click here or on the image below.
by Rob Paterson
February 23, 2009 at 3:15 pm · Filed under
Search
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it fall – does it make a noise? If you have a site with a huge archive and people cant find what is in it – does it have any value?
There are likely millions of blogs out there that over time have become deep repositories of knowledge about all subjects. Cooking, Defense, Mechanics, Learning, Technology, Organizational Development – whatever. All this in aggregate makes Wikipedia look like thin paperback. In a decade these stores of knowledge will represent the most important reservoir of knowledge that mankind has ever assembled.
Just think of this site. More than 2 years of writing on all aspects of social media is locked up in the archive – just as everyone now wants to learn about how social media works. But all this knowledge is in reality locked up because it is too hard to find it.
But what about Google? Google just scratches the surface of this immense ocean of knowledge. You have to know what you are searching for and it does not easily let you follow a thread of similar thoughts or to find others in the field who can add more. If this blog or even my own personal blog had a search tool that could enable you to find the many “Books” in them it would change the value of the site.
The current value reality of many blogs is this:
- Their content is most valuable when it is current
- The writer is on treadmill
- The archive is largely hidden because you have to know what to search for and because it is hard to find associated content
- So older content loses value and the internal connections are rarely made
- So the blog never builds in value over time but the latent value does build
The same is true for conventional content providers such as iTunes or NPR or PBS. Their real value lies dormant in their archive.
I as a blogger want you to find this value on my site. PBS want you to find the value in its archive too. We have these huge investments that offer us a minimal return. You as a seeker want to find the gold out there. Everything is there if only you can find it easily.
So here is the opportunity – an approach to search that allows a contextual search, that aggregates supporting material, that truly allows exploration will take the value of the web up to a new level.
Because real value is involved, there will be an economic incentive to be able to do this. The scale of the opportunity will be many times the size of any alternative inside the firewall.
Hint to the Fast Guys!
by Joe McKendrick
February 20, 2009 at 5:00 pm · Filed under
FASTforward'09
My colleagues here at the FastForward site have been doing a great job of opening up the possibilities of social networking sites such as Twitter to business possibilities.
The mainstream IT media is also seeing the possibilities. Jason Meserve, writing in Network World, discusses how companies can leverage social networking sites to sell (your company or yourself), get answers, and keep up with trends.
Jason reports on the results of a Network World survey of 583 IT executives, and found adoption of the following three sites:
LinkedIn: 63%
Facebook 44%
Twitter 14%
While the numbers engaging in Twitter are still in the minority, Jason describes various ways it is being used. It makes sense — Twitter is fast and furious communication, no mincing of words. Say it fast and quick, no life stories — how businesslike is that?
The article describes how Comcast is active on Twitter, responding quickly to customer service or technical issues.
I recently had my own illuminating experience with customer service via Twitter. My email provider, iPower, had gone down for a couple of days because of a software bug. iPower did a good job of posting updates on their Website, but I felt like I was cut off from the universe (I could reach people through alternate accounts, but had no idea if someone was trying to reach me).
So I griped about it on Twitter.
Lo and behold, within the hour, someone from iPower had posted a response to me on Twitter, promising to look into my domain and help out. And it wasn’t long after that my email account came back online.
Very impressive. And a good use of a powerful emerging channel.
