Phweet is a very interesting service on two (or maybe three) levels.
First, if you are a heavy Twitter user, with a little bit of practice you can work it into your Twitter workflow, thereby offering you and followers a means to "escalate" from connecting via a tweet to a more intimate voice conversation.
Second, the same basic technology can be enabled anywhere … for example, on Craigslist or eBay or other community driven sites. In effect, the Phweet capabilities can become part of the Web’s voice communications infrastructure.
And third, although I do not understand well the technical aspects, I think Phweet can become a central part of telephony on the web, doing away with the big telcos stranglehold on the dial tone.
This is an edited version of a post I recently put up on the KMWorld 2008 blog (in blockquotes, below). The KMWorld 2008 conference was interesting (FAST had an exhibitor’s booth) and the contrast with last year in terms of the tangible interest in and take-up of social computing tools was evident.
People everywhere are beginning to understand, and practice with, the utility of "watching" snippets and fragments of peoples’ thoughts (see Dave Snowden’s KMWorld article titled "Everything Is Fragmented") and being able to instantiate and jump into a possible conversation when something interesting to them flows by.
It works … for example, late last night I twittered a response to one of Jeremiah Owyang’s tweets pointing to his recent blog post about "What’s After The Social Web?", and shortly thereafter I had a Twitter direct message from Jeremiah in my email inbox saying "sounds interesting, I think you’re on to something .. tell me more". A professional, potentially knowledge-building, conversation is brewing.
Here’s a summary of Stuart Henshall’s reflections on working with and in knowledge flows with the nascent micro-blogging
From the keyboard of Stuart Henshall, one of the most advanced thinkers about the “flows” of information combined with usability and innovation.
Stuart helped out with the blogging at the just-ended KMWorld and also gave a presentation on the last day about how people are beginning to use Twitter to connect, stimulate, catalyze and coordinate flows of information.
I thought he did a great job of outlining interesting possibilities .. but it seems he made some people nervous and some people stretch their minds. That may be because he has been immersed in the world of constant micro-flows of information and mobility for the last half-year while many of those at KMWorld are just now beginning to come to terms with blogging, using wikis and social computing. There may be one of those classic mismatches, the kind that lead to phrases like “You can always recognize the pioneers, they’re the ones walking around with arrows sticking out of their backs“.
I sat in earlier on a session on the Future of KM. There are three very different people on the panel. I’ve been listening with half an ear. This means what I write may have nothing to do with the context of the session. However, part of the reason we come to events like this is to spark other thoughts and tangents.
So far today I’ve not heard the word “flows”, I don’t hear “lifestreaming” I still feel what I am hearing is that knowledge is to be managed, moved, manipulated. Plus I just heard Dave Pollard say that SARS, 9/11, Katrina etc were all failures of classic knowledge management. I can’t quite put my finger on why KM isn’t learning and moving forward more quickly. It suggests to me that there remains a bigger problem.
Individuals are increasingly using personal tools, blogs, wikis, social networks, mobile phone, etc. As they move into this realm publicly they create more information about themselves. I’m increasingly seeing these tools being put to use by marketing / PR. KM seems to be missing these social media implications. Thus adoption of these tools is not being driven by the need to manage knowledge. Rather it’s driven by responding faster, being more adaptive, building on what others do, opening up systems so they can find that they need just in time. It’s a learning centric approach. I see it when I go to blogging sessions and talk to people there. The difference is they are believers.
[ Snip ... ]
I’m thinking more and more that the social media experts are likely to usurp or overturn many KM practices in time. The fact that SAP, Oracle and IBM are today all working with Twitter like updates is at least encouraging.
Maybe they can still sell a knowledge platform?
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It’s interesting that Stuart pointed out the directions large collaboration platforms are taking; Hylton Jolliffe, who manages this blog, just sent me an email a few days ago pointing out that Oracle’s developments with BeeHive may be signalling a new phase, while this ZDNet article (Did Oracle Burst The Enterprise 2.0 Startup Bubble?) suggest something similar.
At this very same conference one year ago (KMWorld 2007) Stuart wrote a post with which I agree 100% (link in the paragraph below) … while people in companies and business everywhere are looking for business case or ROI justification for using social media tools (while understanding semi-consciously that of course useful knowledge gets built in social interaction) they have to work (and experiment) at overcoming a lifetime of working in environments that divide and separate problems, responsibilities and challenges into discrete and divided bundles of tasks that are supposed to fit together like an orderly paint-by-numbers-like template (by which I mean an organizational chart).
To understand how using social media to increase effectiveness, responsiveness and innovation in an environment characterized by constant flows of information, you have to Use the Tools First; Then Talk To Me.
Thanks largely to Rob Patterson’s previous posts on the issues and opportunities, regular readers of the FASTForward blog will know by now that Twitter (and other similar services like Pownce, Jaiku, Friendfeed, Identi.ca and Kwippy) have strong potential for practical use by project teams and connected networks of knowledge workers.
These services can be used to keep people aware of fast-moving issues, events and changes, and bring the strengths of IM and online presence together in useful ways.
Here comes another dimension to group instant messaging … one which promises to further close the gap regarding utility and the ability to reach into a network and connect with someone to whom you want to discuss whatever it may be that interests you or what you may need to know or find out.
A friend who is well-known to many in the Web 2.0 arena, Stuart Henshall, and his colleague David Beckemeyer (TelEvolution / PhoneGnome, Earthlink), have just launched Phweet, a service whereby a user with one click can ask someone who has just twittered (or pownced, or jaiku’d, or fed a friend or kwipped) whether or not they will accept a VoIP call. Once accepted, voila ! Connection is established and the voice conversation begins.
In terms of how it operates technically, this service effectively eliminates the need for dial-tones (arguably the last remaining communications bottleneck the telcoms "own") in order to talk to someone else via voice. Powerful stuff !
Please note that this service is alpha, and applies only to twitter at the moment, though I believe there plans to enable it for the other similar service I have mentioned.
Of course group IM users can already connect with someone they "know" and ask about / initiate a VoIP call in any number of ways, but this service makes the functionality available during the course of using the group IM service, thereby enhancing existing online presence and creating what some are calling ambient intimacy.
Go ahead, sign up and try it out. I have … it’s easy, fun and potentially very useful, especially for project teams or private networks of people who are connected together on some issue or other.
How often is there a conference that you want to attend but can’t? Wouldn’t it be great if the organizer set up the conference so that it could be blogged. People are blogging them anyway – usually under challenging conditions.
What would be an ideal approach?
Stuart Henshall has given this a lot of thought
“I’ve been meaning to write a post about conferences, conference organizers and how they prepare for a social media world. I attended two conferences in the last week KMWorld and FutureVision. Both were inadequately prepared for social media. I use them only as an example, both were excellent events in their way and yet they were missed opportunities. Still rather than address the organizers I thought I’d address the presenters. There are lessons listed for Organizers and PR firms too.
Presenters generally came unprepared for a social media world. Unless we are talking an O’Reilly conference, Supernova, Barcamp or a Blogging convention you as a presenter may not have been confronted with the “problem” … or is that “opportunity” before. Each time I’ve gone to a non-tech / non geeky conference in the last few years outside of communications I’ve felt lost and unsupported. I’ve also learned “bloggers” just aren’t understood. So take a moment and just consider, if you are a presenter and your presentation is being live blogged… What do you do?
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RECENT EVENT
Christian Finn Keynotes 2011 Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston
Microsoft's Director of SharePoint Product Management Christian Finn, an Enterprise 2.0 keynote speaker, talks about SharePoint, the future of enterprise collaboration and the value of community.
To read more, visit, CMS Wire
Or view the video of the keynote below:
SharePoint 2010 SocialFest
A group of seven startups recently joined us at SharePoint 2010 SocialFest, an event hosted by the Emerging Business Team at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus.
The format: a week-long session focused on extending the SharePoint platform using their unique and innovative applications in the emerging social business space. In addition to intensive development time, the teams heard from various developer experts, SharePoint engineering, SharePoint product management and a panel of nventure investors.
The FASTforward blog periodically hosts webcasts - to hear a recent conversation with Denise Warren, general manager of NYTimes.com, and Alan Webber, author of "Rules of Thumb" and co-founder of Fast Company. The topic: how today's newspaper and magazine publishing companies are innovating to stay relevant (and profitable) click here.For the latest interview with Marty St.George, the CMO at jetBlue, click here
FASTforward 09: Video Interviews
Be sure not to miss our interview series with several dozen attendees of FASTforward'09, including all the contributors to this blog, as well as Clay Shirky, Charlene Li, and many other notable thinkers and doers. The interviews are tagged and can be accessed by topic.
Check out the first of a series of guides to the 2.0 world from the contributors of the FASTforward Blog. This and future FASTforward Blog guides aim to deepen understanding about topics we think critical to the future of the enterprise and how people and organizations communicate, collaborate, innovate, and more.
In this guide, Robert Paterson weaves together the many posts that have been written on the FASTforward blog about Twitter, the groundbreaking application that has attracted millions of users and is changing the way they provide, gather, and share information and insights.
This site is a companion blog to the FASTforward conference and summit series and is sponsored by FAST, A Microsoft Subsidiary. The blog, like the conference series, aims to drive and deepen conversation about how today’s companies can use technology to place users in control of information, and is home to ongoing discussion about the user revolution and Enterprise 2.0 opportunities and challenges. More info here...
