Archive for June, 2011
by Bill Ives
June 15, 2011 at 3:38 am · Filed under
Social Media, TV, tablets
A recent article by Clayton Morris, Study Reveals Changing Role of iPads, Tablet PCs found that 70 percent of tablet owners and 68 percent of smart phone owners use their devices while watching television. It also reported that 61 percent of eReader owners use their device in bed, while 57 percent of tablet owners and 51 percent of smart phone owners do the same. Now bed is one of the places I watch TV, the other is in my office next to my laptop.
Tablet owners spend more time on their tablets while watching TV than owners of eReaders and smart phones. This makes some sense as tablets will more likely have complementary activities to TV that reading a book and talking on the phone. Many traditional news organizations and magazines are noticing this trend and providing iPad-optimized versions of their print offering. I think you are also are more likely to reads news and magazines while watching TV than books because of their short segments that can be covered during commercials. At least that is my view. I find I get very restless during ads and need an alternative such as Twitter to occupy me until the TV show, usually sports, returns.
Clayton writes that TV is the new radio. “When there is no breaking news, people keep it on for background noise, information and entertainment. Gone are the days when a family sits around the tube, collectively focused like a laser on their screens.” Now here is what Don Tapscott calls stacking, “one screen plays something for the whole household, while another sits in the lap, surfing at the individual’s whim.” He concludes that people are still watching TV, they are just watching it more individually.
I think there is another point here since this complementary channel is digital and connected to the Web. It is not simply another channel for individual use in the midst of collective consumption. It brings in interactivity. So we often have old and new media working together. I think that the old media organizations that recognize this will be winners and many already have such the PBS St. Louis affiliate, KETC, where my colleague Rob Paterson did some interesting work as they looked to integrate TV with social media.
Business should take advantage of this to use mobile communications for short messages to their employees providing alerts, reinforcing key strategic or tactical issues, and supplementing learning activities. Because of the interactivity these digital devices bring organizations can also tap into employee viewpoints. There is an emerging communication channel that can be creatively mobilized.
by Bill Ives
June 9, 2011 at 3:07 am · Filed under
Social Media, social media policy
Pam Sahota recently provided a useful post, Examples of Corporate Social Media Policies, that actually contained links to 14 examples. While it is always good to look at what others are doing, Pam started with the proper caution that there’s no right policy. Your company needs to find what is right for your culture and needs. Here are a few.
Best Buy has received a lot of press using Twitter for customer service. It has a social media policy in place in order to avoid issues regarding privacy and other topics. Their policy begins with the statement: “If you are an hourly (non-exempt) employee, you may participate in Twelpforce, with your manager’s approval, during your regular work hours. This includes time spent reading the Twelpforce Twitter feed and composing messages sent using the ‘#twelpforce’ hashtag, and all other work related to Twelpforce.” Anything done outside work hours does not count.
Content is broadly defined as “as anything you have placed on your website, blog, microblog, or video sharing account.” By doing this you grant Best Buy “an irrevocable and unrestricted worldwide license to use, modify, reproduce, transmit, display, and distribute the Content (defined below) on Your Site for any purpose whatsoever to the extent permitted by law.” So they can modify as they want which is interesting. You are expected to follow the social media policy that is extensive and has the tagline: “Be smart. Be respectful. Be human.” Those are all good ideas.
You are expected to disclose your affiliation and, at the same time, state this your writing is your opinion. There is a lot more in Best Buy policies and they seem both useful and appropriate.
Pam finds Ford’s policy to be subtle, “human”, and sensible. They feel that that social media follows the same rules (as other communication channels), just in a new playground. You need to use your common sense, beware of privacy issues, play nice and be honest. They seem similar to Best Buy from a quick look. You need to be respectful and aware that what you say is permanent.
General Motors policy states that it likes Charlene Li’s blogger code of ethics and have adapted it for gmblogs.com. They ask bloggers to tell the truth and acknowledge and correct any mistakes promptly. They will not delete comments unless they are spam, off-topic, or defamatory and reply to comments when appropriate as promptly as possible. They will link to online references and original source materials directly. They will disagree with other opinions respectfully. I like the ongoing reference to respect in these policies.
Blog and social media policies have come a long way since I wrote these posts in 2005, Blog-Linked Firings Prompt Calls for Better Policies – CNN and What’s On and Off the Record for Bloggers? This is a good thing.
by Joe McKendrick
June 5, 2011 at 4:59 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, User Revolution, Web 2.0
Just a few years ago, engagement with social communities was an experiment that some bold individuals in bold organizations were conducting to boldly go where no one has gone before. Now, social or virtual communities are the fabric of day-to-day business. It is transforming the way information is disseminated outside and inside organizations as they connect with customers, partners, and industry players. But for some industries, it is disrupting or destroying — or if you look at it another way — enriching information gathering. Nowhere is this more evident than in the news business.
The question is then: Is the news business a victim or a beneficiary of the social media explosion?
That’s the question I and co-author Dr. Bill Gibbs of Duquesne University recently took up in a chapter in a new book on the implications of social networking, titled Handbook of Research on Methods and Techniques for Studying Virtual Communities: Paradigms and Phenomena.
The book, compiled and edited by Ben Kei Daniel of University of Saskatchewan, explores how over the last decade, virtual communities have evolved from massive experimental, educational, technological, business, and social environments to normal, day-to-day operations for a variety of organizations.
Chapters cover studies on various types of virtual communities, and in our chapter, we explore how global online communities now include hundreds of millions of members, able to communicate almost instantaneously.
Increasingly, traditional news organizations are finding they are being outpaced in coverage of world events by cadres of “citizen journalists” reporting in real time via social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. While there are valid concerns about the credibility of information being posted on social networking sites, there’s no question that contextual reports are being delivered much faster to global audiences than traditional outlets. In addition, recipients have a wide array of choices from which they can acquire this information.
The news providers that are on top of the game now offer interactive sources that engage people, enable them to build community, and to participate in the news. At the same time, the digital interfaces through which people access the news are continuously evolving, diverse, and oftentimes visually complex.
In the chapter, Bill and I explore trends and developments in news-oriented virtual communities. We review several data collection and analysis techniques such as content analysis, usability testing and eye-tracking and propose that these techniques and associated tools can aid the study of news communities. We examine the implications these techniques have for better understanding human behavior in virtual communities as well as for improving the design of these environments.
The book has an additional 43 chapters as well, intended as a guidebook for executives and corporate leaders concerned with the management of expertise, social capital, competence knowledge, and information and organizational development in different types of virtual communities and environments.
by Bill Ives
June 3, 2011 at 3:31 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Search
There is a new report on 2011 enterprise search trends from Forrester, Enterprise Search: Six Key Trends to Watch by Leslie Owens with Stephen Powers and Anjali Yakkundi. The report indicates that despite the fact that only 10% of IT leaders will upgrade or expand their information access implementations this year, search experts are optimistic about their ability to deliver search solutions that are both usable and useful.
What is the source of optimism? Search technology is now well established, and the standards set by Consumer Web search simplifies design decision and training. As Leslie and her colleagues write, “First-generation enterprise search was not easy to use and produced unsatisfactory results from a usability and relevance standpoint. Today’s knowledge workers demand role-specific, contextual search everywhere they work.”
As the industry standards for search evolve, the report predicts that vendors will change their products to adapt to new customer investment trends with changes in semantics capabilities and increased usage of search-based applications (SBA). Cloud and mobile are certain to have an impact on search programs as well, but plans for standalone enterprise search services in the cloud lag far behind cloud-based email or collaboration.
Here are the six trends:
Search managers will initiate business conversations, not gather requirements. This is a position that all parts of IT should take.
IT will apply search to reveal aggregate workplace patterns. It will be become increasingly recognized that the knowledge and insight revealed on social platforms and enterprise 2.0 via technologies like idea management and micro-blogging tools is strategically important. So access to this great content will be necessary.
Business leaders will dictate the scope of search. Business should have a role in all IT issues as search becomes a more pervasive part f enterprise technology.
Quality content will be the focus, not additional metadata. You want to search technology to narrow results as content explodes.
Knowledge workers will demand transparency and democratization of the search experience. This is part of the general enterprise 2.0 movement.
The enterprise search UI will no longer resemble the consumer Web. Enterprise search will be embedded in business processes rather than in a standalone white box. This is an excellent move. Embedding other functionality such as activity streams in work processes will also help productivity.
There is more on each trend and you can find the report on their web site.
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