Archive for January, 2010
by Rob Paterson
January 14, 2010 at 4:59 pm · Filed under
Facebook, NPR, Twitter
Once again – social media such as Twitter are ahead of all other sources.
Here is how the man, Andy Carvin, behind NPR’s brilliant use of these tools is harvesting the last 3 years of work to build the system so that it can help so much.
NPR has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to using social media to do great reporting. So when we saw that they’d created a Twitter list of people tweeting from Haiti, we wanted to know: How’d you figure out those folks were legit?
In the following interview, NPR’s social media strategist Andy Carvin tells us not only how the network is using Twitter and Facebook to find compelling angles and new sources for stories (like this one and this one), but also why you can’t just jump on a social network after disaster strikes and expect it to pay dividends.
BayNewser: When did you decide to create this list and how did you figure out who to include on it?
Andy Carvin, Senior Strategist, NPR Social Media Desk: This isn’t the first time we’ve done this in response to a disaster. In the days and hours leading up to Hurricane Ida last fall, people were concerned it was going to be a bit of a mess, so I quickly put together a Twitter list of local bloggers, local news sources, local broadcasters and others, just as a way of monitoring what theywere talking about. None of us had a sense of where the storm was going to go and how bad it was going to be, but at least this was a handy list both for NPR staff as well as the public at large.
An hour or two after the earthquake in Haiti was reported, I decided to do exactly the same thing again. It wasn’t a big topic of debate. It was just a natural step in helping our reporters and producers do research on Twitter.
The full interview is here
by Bill Ives
January 14, 2010 at 3:25 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Search
In perhaps a parody of Socrates famous statement, the Forrester report, Text Analytics Takes Business Insight To New Depths, states that “unexamined content is a wasted opportunity.” They look at an array of tools that go beyond simple search. The Forrester team of Leslie Owens with Matthew Brown, Sara Burnes, and Peter Schmidt conclude through the report subtitle that “An Obscure Technology Has Found Its Killer App.” I would certainly agree and appreciate receiving a review copy of this report.
The authors note that customers, employees, and competitors comment on products, personalities, and companies in increasingly public places, like Twitter and discussion forums. Forrester that online ratings and reviews topped the list of trusted material. The abundance of news and commentary on the Internet could contain actionable knowledge for your business. This is not simply a Web issue as internal sources like emails and call center notes are full of product suggestions, feedback on competitors, and thoughts on the market. With the rise of enterprise 2.0 and related social media data, the opportunities for data mining and information overload are expanding. To make sense of all this content, businesses are turning to text analytics tools.
The team concludes that this “little-known technology has a compelling value proposition: extract meaning out of large quantities of text by mining, interpreting, and structuring information to reveal hidden patterns and relationships.” I am not so sure about the little known part but I agree with the rest of the statement. Perhaps I am biased because I have been talking with a lot of vendors in this space. One of the great opportunities of both Web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 is all the conversational content that it creates. You would be losing a good bit of the value it you do not look at this content but you need good tools to do it.
The team found that here is too much content to review by hand, It is hard to separate a signal from noise, and here is no way to know what questions to ask. They add that when you don’t know what’s significant about a set of content, you can’t investigate it with a search engine. The report reviews a number of the major text analytic players and should be useful for those making decisions in this space. Text analytics software typically includes four key components: entity extraction, categorization, relationship mapping, and sentiment analysis.
The authors caution that “until recently, text analytics software was obscure and academic, used primarily by early adopters in the life sciences field… Text analytics is a framework and a process. It is not always necessary or possible to deploy text analytics as a single, linear solution from a single vendor.” It does seem that many of the solutions are complex and are designed to be used by professionals, often with subject matter expertise in linguistics and statistics. Text analytics firms often partner with search firms to provide additional discovery features for the search tool. I think that the advent of enterprise 2.0 will allow text analytics to come out of the closet and become more mainstream, at least it should. There is much more and you can obtain the report at the Forrerster web site.
by Joe McKendrick
January 10, 2010 at 5:48 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Enterprise 2.0, Event Announcements, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0
My colleagues Jon Husband and Jevon MacDonald have been launching some great discussions on the organizational impacts of Enterprise 2.0 and social networking. Jevon talks about the organizational design questions that need to be asked in building a social business, and Jon provides insights into the importance of employee engagement within the enterprise.
Clearly, organizational culture plays a huge role in Enterprise 2.0 adoption and success. And in turn, Enterprise 2.0 helps to reshape that culture, introducing more information sharing. But does an organization need to have the right culture in the first place? Is it necessary, then, for an organization be ‘ready’ for social networking? Jeanne C Meister and Karie Willyerd, writing over at the Harvard Business Review blog say yes, this is a factor. The good news is that there are many ways to build a social networking strategy.
Consider these scenarios, they say:
- An executive blogs about a recent downsizing, with good intentions of boosting morale. However, laid-off employees are incensed that the blog appears insensitive.
- ” The company implements an internal-only social networking platform that allows rating, tagging, and comments on products and services. A new service, offered by HR, receives very low ratings and negative, but not mean-spirited, comments. The head of HR requests that all the comments and the ratings be taken down. Would your company approve this request?”
Meister and Willyerd, authors of an upcoming book titled The 2020 Workplace (forthcoming in spring), say events like these will make or break social networking efforts. Attempting to introduce open and frank communications and interaction into a fairly rigid command-and-control corporate environment may result in dashed expectations and a frustrating, counter-productive experience.
Key questions to ask include the following:
- “Do we really want to have a two-way conversation with our employees, partners, and suppliers?”
- “If you have already implemented social media to connect to your customers, how are your organization’s executives responding to the wealth of information they already have?”
- Are executives open and responsive to social media information, no matter how bad the feedback, “or do they demand the feedback be filtered in order to create a sanitized, more palatable version?”
As a result of this self-examination, they say, is it possible an organization may see that it’s simply “not ready” for social networking strategies, to be open and transparent to employees, customers and partners? Meister and Willyerd say a shift in strategy is required, versus a head-first plunge into social networking. A good way to start is through pilot projects addressing specific business needs, such as employee communications and document sharing. They even recommend a one-day “Innovation Jam” involving the entire workforce.
The takeaway here is that many organizations may feel that the openness and transparency offered by social networking runs against the grain of their corporate culture. As a result, they may quash efforts at Enterprise 2.0 before they even start, with the excuse of “that’s not for us.” But Enterprise 2.0 can help deliver the transformative effects that open up the flow of of energy and information. As we recover from the recent recession, we are entering a stage when businesses need to be global, with a great deal of flexibility and innovation to maintain a competitive edge.
by Rob Paterson
January 8, 2010 at 11:07 am · Filed under
Apple
It’s nearly here – the future of magazines – all about the Tablet.
My bet is that 2010 will be the year of both the tablet and of mobile.
The desktop and even the laptop will start to recede in importance.
Any time and any place and hand held will grow.
Any one in media that does not respond will suffer – fatally.
Unlike the music, radio and TV sectors who all hoped this would go away, the magazine industry seems to be going for this here is Sports Illustrated plan
Apple appears poised to introduce a much-anticipated product: the once seemingly-mythical “iSlate” or “iTablet,” its first tablet-style touch-screen computer.
Though the potential of an Apple tablet thrills many fans of the company, it’s also piqued the interest of magazine publishers, who — long before the device’s rumored introduction — foresaw its possibilities for their industry. The announcement in early December of a so-called “iTunes for magazines” digital storefront that would be well-suited to this new device, among others, seemed a bit hasty, given that the device’s development hasn’t even been publicly confirmed by Apple.
The coverage of the “iTunes for magazines” concept, and its connection to new tablet computers under development, has been a little confusing. Here, we’ll sort through some of the highlights, and explore what it might mean for the beleaguered print magazine industry.
by Jevon MacDonald
January 7, 2010 at 10:31 am · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking
The effectiveness of an Organizational Design exercise depends on the fit of process, structure and behaviour that make up the organization and how they are aligned with both existing and desired future capabilities.
A few days ago I wrote about The Personal Enterprise and what that means for IT. Taking a broader view of The Personal Enterprise, we need to think about how the entire organization looks, feels and acts.
Social Business Design adds a new type of complexity to an organizational design exercise. In traditional organizational design exercises, it was paramount to identify both the current state and the future state of the organization, and then design a path to that final outcome. In Social Business Design we must identify not only the bounds but also the flexibility of the organization to adapt to new factors and to develop emergent outcomes.
When thinking about organizational design for Social Business, consider these factors
- Integration of External and Internal ecosystems. What is the current and desired future level of interaction of the organization’s ecosystems? An understanding of the current and desired future sociality of the organization is critical.
- How do you enable employees to interact and engage with customers and partners?
- What tools do they need to do this, and what compliance issues do these connections surface?
- Are there current reporting structures that inhibit this interaction?
- How do you ensure that future reporting and management systems are enablers, rather than simply enforcement mechanisms?
- How do employees currently utilize their social networks to accomplish their own goals?
- What is the organization’s desire and “stomach” for ad-hoc processes and interactions? Is formalization and authority a core value or simply a necessary tool?
- The ability to manage change. Change can be painful if it is mismatched to the organization in terms of scale, structure or intent. The organization and its partners must have the ability to design, manage and measure the changes being made to itself. This is often achieved through the use of both internal and external (consultant) resources. Before beginning a change exercise, it is important to understand what has come before. Take inventory of:
- past organizational designs that went unimplemented. Is failure perceived as inevitable?
- past change exercises and their perceived success or failure. What are the facts about change in this organization?
- current IT capability. Can IT be an enabler of new processes and interactions?
- current formal organization. How is the organization supposed to be structured?
- existing and past influencers and decision makers. Who makes the organization tick today?
- informal organization. How does the organization really get work done?
- effectiveness of current management models. Are they being followed or enforced?
- A strategic approach. Changing an organization in the absence of a strategic goal is not generally a sound path. Before re-designing an organization and implementing a change program, a strategy and set of clear goals are paramount to a successful organizational design.
Organizational Design and Change Management programs are tools leveraged by Social Business Design to help your organization be both more effective in your current market and to find new markets for your products and services. They are not however, ends in and of themselves. They must be used in concert with other Social Business Initiatives, such as strategy development, in order to be successful.
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