What is Social Media?

For many folks, corporations, the question to answer was “What is a BloB”. Blogging was the primary tool that we saw in the marketplace, for some, it wasn’t taken seriously, for the savvy, they quickly adopted. We saw scare tactics from the threatened mainstream media, such as “Attack of the Blogs” and light of amateurisms, angry customers and crazies were painted. For many, we wanted to know what are these tools, how to they work, and what’s the impact. Early on, this impacted corporate communications, PR, and mainstream media.

Why does it matter?

As we’ve evolved, many were realizing the impact of exploding batteries, brand hijacking, and blog evangelism. Savvy companies were starting to adopt these tools, a few provided integrated communities that were scrapped together or built from existing platforms. For the majority, trying to understand why these tools matter to a business. In addition to corporate communications, PR, we started to see other marketing and business units being impacted by these tools, as well as adoption.

What does it mean to my business?

We’re here now. This is the year of ROI, measurement, and experimentation. Many corporations have deployed resources, headcounts and budgets. Corporations are afraid to make mistakes, so plans are created, and measurement is critical to help manage and prove the worth of new programs. ROI was proven, new social media measurement attributes were defined, and many new tools were deployed, I did what I could to further this industry (see all posts). In addition to Corporate Communications and PR, business units are starting to experiment with these tools, often out of the PR budget. A new role started to appear more frequently, the digital marketing manager, the community manager, the social media strategist.

How do I do it right?

Now that experimentation is done, and business units are starting to apply these tools, like advertising, PR, field marketing, and customer references, companies will want to do it right. Frameworks will be developed, consultants will offer packages, and a loosely developed process will be used. For companies that don’t have enough internal resources to listen, manage, and deploy, consultants will be a very sought after service. Nearly every brand will start to have an ongoing budget for social media, the new role to manage these tools will appear. IT departments will start to deploy enterprise 2.0 tools.

How do I integrate across the Enterprise

Normalization is happening, A checkbox for ’social media’ on every announcement, product launch, product development and support will be using these tools. Social media tools to listen, converse, collect knowledge, and build new products will integrate across the customer cycle. It’s not just external, intranets will start to deploy suites for collaboration, such as blog accounts issued to many internal and external employees. Product Teams, IT departments, HR, Finance, Executives, and of course Marketing will be using these tools.

orders should populate in notespages automatically.

also i should be able to reply via email directly from the metanote.

in operations, you “flag” an order at various stages of its completion. like you’d flag an order “shipped” after you shipped it, “packed” after you packed it.

that’s how this should work.

i want everything on metanotes.

it seems to be the best designed payment system, with the most robust tools.

maybe i can redesign unamerican today.

hm.

that’s how we’d print orders.

we could just launch a word-processor in a wizard that had a print capability.

this is part of the email feature set too but it’s vital for this application of metanotes

Today interactive marketing is a fragmented discipline in which marketers work with many different vendors to develop and execute marketing programs. But as the number of channels and programs grow, this situation becomes untenable. Today’s interactive marketers have few options as neither enterprise marketing suites nor interactive specialists address their needs. Forrester believes that the time is right for the online marketing suite to emerge. This suite, underpinned by a central hub, is the eventual destiny for all online marketing technology and will enable a single view of the customer across channels, provide process tools to support collaboration, centralize optimization, and support a partner ecosystem.

maybe each week’s orders could be in a different space

or i could set a rule that would populate a space (or a layer) with 50 notes before auto-spawning a new one

• the placement of a product or service on the Web.
• the enablement of a payment mechanism to capture the buy transaction.

• before the buying/selling.
• during the buying/selling.
• after the buying/selling.

each of these steps is an opportunity to use the web to improve upon today’s process.

Support the entire buying/selling cycle through the ‘net.

The relationship between buyers and sellers changes every time value is generated along the value chain.

i’d earn more money.

i’d also learn paypal’s tools really well.

i’d improve amanda’s job flow.

this might get us more sales via her marketing.

it would DEFINITELY improve her morale !

i could integrate metanotes and promote it thereby.

we need to add all of the new t-shirts.

so i should get some new shirts going.

why is jeremy so gone all the freaking time?

i mean how can i regroup without the printer online? jeez.

an open, global marketplace.

• exchange of information.
• exchange of services.
• exchange of products.
• spontaneous interaction along a value chain.
• empowered customers.
• a platform for managing relationships.

internal business efficiencies.

• better coordination among units.
• increased collaboration inside units.
• streamlined transaction processing.
• more shared information.

Converting digital inputs into value-added outputs.

• input. You start with raw information.
• process. You process it via information intermediaries.
• output. You end with information-based services.

You can do this one of two ways:

1. Adding digital value on top of old value.
2. Turning old value (or products) into new digital value replacements.

Electronic markets are complete new virtual marketplaces that mimic certain characteristics of physical marketplaces but also exhibit very different behaviors.

A constellation of electronic buyers and sellers that _come together within the confines of trusted virtual environments and conduct business spontaneously.

• Gathering/processing information
• Communicating
• Sharing Data
• Publishing
• Collaborating On Data Generation
  • Analysis
  • Conferencing
• Virtual Marketplaces
• Distance Learning
• Education

PRESENCE is going to be the foundation of KILLER E-BUSINESS APPS.

it’s a whole new ball game.

when people are PRESENT on social networks, bosses can have loose control over them while preserving their autonomy and cutting fixed costs (letting them telecommute).

from a conference

Enterprise 2.0 Presence and Identity: The Rise of Living Social Networks will examine rapidly expanding, hyper-connected social network services, programmable webs and socially-mediated, knowledge-based business activities. New device-based social networks, an IPv6 address space of 3.4×1038, geocoding, pervasive computing, collective intelligence networks and, above all, the importance of collaboration to everything, has fundamentally and permanently altered they way we learn, work, play and thrive. Living social networks are making an enormous impact to the environment, wealth and well-being. Specifically, living social networks are becoming critical to all business. They are the critical value paths essential to corporate performance, business excellence and civil societies. For example, live communications such as IM, VoIP and mobile are becoming far more emergent and social. Simultaneously, asynchronous social networks applications like blogs, wikis and email are becoming far more real time.

Few developments have such incredible advantages yet are so poorly understood as presence. It is critical to develop a mastery of these new environments. Rather than drowning information saturated, over-connected environment, it is essential to understand how the new presence tools, technologies, applications, and above all, behaviors, allow you to achieve fundamental advancements and highly favorable outcomes in all activities. Enterprise 2.0 Presence and Identity: The Rise of Living Social Networks will equip you with the know-how, tools, frameworks, architectures and methods to prosper in our always-on world. The social Web and living social networks achieve mastery of the Reach/Richness Curve, critical to customers interactions and competitiveness.

Enterprise 2.0 Presence and Identity The Reach/Richness Curve

Presence is a living social network property enabling people to feel connected and interactive with the world outside their current physical location. The aim of presence is to understand, describe and recreate the experience of being productively situated in a particular spatial and social space. Presence is an active arena of scientific and technological research. The focus is on understanding and optimizing the experience of being within the living social network and optimizing value flow while acting in a physical place.

Presence Information is a status indicator that conveys ability and willingness of a potential communication partner to communicate. A presence information client provides presence information. The presence state information is a service via a network connection. It is stored as a personal availability record, sometimes called presentity. It can be made available for distribution to other users. Presence information has wide application in many communication services. It is a popular business innovation found in instant messaging and voice over IP clients.

Enterprise 2.0 Presence and Identity is a fast growing Web trend towards far more effective and efficient living social networks in business settings. Enterprise 2.0 Presence and Identity allows you to instantly see who is available in your corporate network, giving more flexibility to set up short-term meetings and conference calls. The result is precise communication that eliminates the inefficiency of phone tag or email messaging.

Aided by new technologies presence empowers people to achieve realistic feelings and experiences when immersed in mixed media environments, independent of physical location. The feeling of presence in the living social network is the result of a complex interaction of many technological, non-technological and personal factors. Presence encompasses a wide range of disciplines including networks, collective intelligence, neuroscience, psychology, knowledge management and software engineering.

A fundamental understanding of Enterprise 2.0 Presence and Identity will allow you to lead virtual and augmented environments for far greater business effectiveness. A deep understanding of Enterprise 2.0 Presence and Identity tools, practices, frameworks and case studies will provide your presence roadmap. Enterprise 2.0 Presence and Identity will have an enormous impact on business productivity, information flow, knowledge creation, enterprise collaboration and value networks. Dozens of new Enterprise 2.0 Presence and Identity technologies, mobile multimedia and powerful presence-enabled applications are coming on stream. They are affordable and usable in the workplace, at home and especially on the move. The Enterprise 2.0 Presence and Identity Summit will allow you to lead this revolution with confidence while increasing usability and effectiveness of Enterprise 2.0 Presence and Identity.

Ahem. That’s the point of disclosure.

Presence: Dimensions of Disclosure Influence

1. Recipient
2. Data
3. Social Context
4. Time Value
5. Licensing

And presence.

Presence is the approved radiation of your latest information.

Presence authorization is not a binary disclosure to Everyone or Nobody.

Authorization can be, must be, tailored to the recipient.

Four dimensions of influence:

1. You might base disclosure on attributes of the recipient.

• Groups they belong to (family, co-workers, people I hate),
• age (adults-only data),
• location,
• citizenship,
• security clearance,
• social proximity,
• relationship history (people you’ve talked/chatted/met with in the last year).

Jaiku and facebook share presence based on group affiliation and social connection.

2. Perhaps authorization is more closely tied to which data you share. Some people share their calendar. Do you share just your availability? Your location at a given time? What you’ll be doing? With whom?

3. Social context frames the authorizing decision. Perhaps you don’t share your political life at work. Or your fantasy blog with your family.

4. Time and your Sense of Now change the value of information. Do seconds matter? Minutes? Hours? Some information is better shared late. Perhaps you enjoy sharing the restaurants you visit, but not while you are there. Other information loses value quickly: minute-to-minute election day results, for example.

5. Licensing sets terms of use. Perhaps you agree not to share this data. Or to only share it under certain conditions.

The blend informs disclosure. Of what you share with whom, in each context and precisely when must inform disclosure. You should be able to share your latest blonde jokes only with your blonde friends (data and hair color of the recipient).

Presence is subscribed to, actively requested, not only available for public scraping.

Presence subscription calls for subscribers to disclose too.

So Authorization looks like Negotiation…

“I want to subscribe to information about you.”

“Are you representing a human?”

“Yes, here are my credentials.”

“Ah, looks like you are on my client’s friend list. Here’s a list of feeds you’re eligible for.”

“Jokes! Cool. Yes, I would like to see your joke stream.”

“I need more information. Have you ever tripped over a wireless phone?”

“Yes, I am a blonde.”

“Great. You agree to only share these with other blondes?

“On my blonde honor.”

“You should be able to see the blonde jokes stream now.”

Since Dave Winer and Netscape first promoted RSS in 1997, syndication meant being public, sharing your content with Google.

Skype, Jaiku, and all presence providers must rethink their

tags: <!– –>skype

Comments on “Collaboration 2.0” by David Coleman & Stewart Levine. Foreword by Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps

You Should Read This Book If you use any type of collaboration technology from IM/Chat to a virtual team space. The book is most beneficial for teams, groups, departments, cross-organizational teams and distributed organizations that are looking at some of the Web 2.0 technologies focused on communication, collaboration and interaction.

The Authors' Goals are to help you grasp the full array of tools available. This is to allow for effective choices tp be made based on the best vehicles for the context, capacity, physical organization, desired outcomes and purposes of the collaboration. We want our readers to develop competence and capacity as conscious communicators and collaborative process designers.

"Information technology is ushering in a new era of human interactivity, one in which people around the world will be able to communicate in unprecedented ways. However, humans are just as complicated on both sides of a fiber optic cable as they are sitting together at a negotiating table. This book is an invaluable guide to this new era, marrying the technological savvy of David Coleman with the human insights of Stewart Levine. I recommend it to anyone curious about the new capabilities Web 2.0 is opening for human interaction and the ways we can use them to help us collaborate more effectively." 
Colin Rule, Director of Trust and On Line Dispute Resolution, ebay

"'Collaboration 2.0' is your secret weapon for successfully bringing people together in ways that maximize learning, communication and results. The critical tools and insights will transform your organization and unleash innovation. Change it anyway you want!" 
Dr. Vicki Halsey, VP Ken Blanchard Companies and Author of 'The Hamster Revolution'

"Collaboration 2.0 raises some important issues and challenges us to rethink human communication at the intersection of people, process, and technology. Increasingly people are using technology to connect up our best thinking, encourage new relationships, and stimulate innovative problem-solving that transcends culture and global boundaries, indeed making the world increasingly flat . I particularly like the introduction at the end to the role collaboration will play in helping us take on the challenges of envisioning a sustainable world that serves the needs of all people and ensures stewardship for the planet. It's time to have meaningful, courageous conversations on a scale not yet imagined that will help us create and live in the dream of a sustainable world." 
G. Lee Salmon, Federal Consulting Group, Department of Treasury

“This is the book we have all been expecting – and it is no disappointment. Amidst the hype of Web 2.0, David and Stewart have taken the vision into a stellar practical pathway for implementation - each chapter gem of insight. There is no question: this well-grounded book sets the standard for 21st century collaboration in compelling, consistent and congruent terms. A management book page turner not to be missed…”
Debra M. Amidon, Founder and CEO, ENTOVATION International Ltd.

"As the world gets 'flatter' and national boundaries become increasingly meaningless, legal and business professionals need new tools and techniques for global collaboration. Coleman and Levine have been working these fields for decades and offer real solutions for these virtual problems. If you are a legal or business professional who needs to work with an extended team spread across multiple time zones, this book is essential reading." 
John C. Tredennick, CEO and Founder of Catalyst Repository Systems, Inc.

"'Collaboration2.0' provides very timely guidance to all business leaders who must help their employees learn to communicate well and negotiate projects effectively, and provide team members with the right collaboration tools and technologies." 
Eilif Trondsen, Ph.D., Director, SRI Consulting Business Intelligence

"Finally, a book on collaboration technology by people who actually understand collaboration! It's about time. Thank you David Coleman and Stewart Levine!" 
Christopher Avery PhD (www.ChristopherAvery.com), Author of 'Teamwork Is An Individual Skill'

"David's had his finger on the collaboration pulse for a long time, helping people make sense of what's going on and how to take advantage of the new developments. It's great to see his new book doing the same with the 2.0 wave of collaboration." 
Michael Sampson, Industry Analyst, www.michaelsampson.net

"The web is interactive. The world is flat. And now David and Stewart explain why and how collaboration is the next chapter in this evolution of networks." 
Jay Cross, Chief Scientist, Internet Time Group

"This is a 'must have' bible for those of us faced with the difficulty of creating effective virtual teams that bring products and services to market faster, even though everyone is separated by time and distance. It balances bringing everyone’s knowledge of the available technology to the same level while providing insight and prescriptions for solving people and process issues that are critical to successful teamwork. In today’s global economy, where project teams everywhere are joining meetings virtually, this book contains the new recipe for creating an effective distributed workforce." 
David Martin, the CEO of Smart Technologies

"The wealth of technologies and working methods available for teams and organizations can be overwhelming for those who are charged with leading collaborative strategies. But help is at hand. Authors Coleman and Levine guide us through the black hole (or portal) of our familiar business universe into the alternate world of virtual collaboration, 24/7 availability, information flows, and creative partnering." 
Verna Allee, Founder ValueNet Works

"To me, 'Collaboration 2.0' is a holistic book that should be read by anyone interested in productivity, efficiency, social networking, virtual teams, and dispersed knowledge workers. Your book has application in all fields. This is a book about making teams be more successful. I will refer to it often." 
Henry E. Liebling, Consultant and Author of 'The Web Conferencing Imperative for Collaboration, Productivity, and Training'

About the Authors

David Coleman

David Coleman, Founder and Managing Director of Collaborative Strategies (CS) www.collaborate.com, has been involved with groupware, collaborative technologies, knowledge management (KM), online communities and social networks since 1989. He is a thought leader, frequent public speaker, industry analyst, and author of books and magazine articles on these topics. His comments and analysis are most frequently found in the “Collaboration Blog.” He has worked with a wide range of collaboration vendors including IBM/Lotus, Microsoft, Macromedia, Adobe, Intuit, EMC and Oracle, and helped them with strategy, positioning, or demand generation projects. He also works with end-user organizations to help them select collaboration technologies, and most recently working with them on “collaborative consolidation” within the enterprise, building online communities and creating a variety of social networks. David also works with distributed teams (across organizational boundaries) to make them high-performance teams. He can be reached at: davidc@collaborate.com or at (415) 282-9197.

Stewart Levine

Stewart Levine is a “Resolutionary.” His innovative work with “Agreements for Results” and his “Cycle of Resolution” are unique. “Getting to Resolution: Turning Conflict into Collaboration” was an Executive Book Club Selection; Featured by Executive Book Summaries; named one of the 30 Best Business Books of1998; and called “a marvelous book” by Dr. Stephen Covey. It has been translated into Russian, Hebrew and Portuguese. “The Book of Agreement” has been endorsed by many thought leaders; called “more practical” than the classic “Getting to Yes;” and named one of the best books of 2003 by CEO Refresher (www.Refresher.com) He consults to many government agencies, fortune 500 company’s, professional associations and organizations of all sizes. He teaches communication and collaboration skills for the American Management Association. You can find more in formation about him at www.ResolutionWorks.com. You can reach him at ResolutionWorks@msn.com or 510-777-1166.

May 27, 2008 Mobaganda: A Dead-Simple Invite Site Built On Google’s App Engine

Erick Schonfeld 23 comments »

If you like your invite apps dead-simple, check out Mobaganda. You don’t even have to log in. Just click on start, add the name, date & time, and location, and create an event. The site, which is built on the Google App Engine, generates a Webpage that you can e-mail out to all of your friends.

Once the recipients go to the URL they can RSVP, and you can keep track via RSS or by checking back at the unique URL, which lasts for 30 days. (One downside is that no two events can share the same name during that time period).

Here’s an invite page I made in about a minute for a fake TechCrunch party:

The site generates an e-mail address that can be used to contact everyone on the RSVP list. You can also keep track of the RSVPs through Google Reader:

Or as a widget on iGoogle:

Not that we need more ways to invite friends to parties (see Pingg, Socializr,MyPunchbowl, etc.). But Mobaganda does reduce the process to its bare essentials. (The UI sensibility reminds me of Presdo). It got started as a conversation between Web developer Jason Stirman and Twitter founder Evan Williams. the question they were pondering: Would it be possible to create a better Evite, without even requiring a signup or login?”

Stirman is the creator of OhDon’tForget, a Ruby-on-Rails app that lets you send yourself pre-set reminders via text message (Time picked it as one of its 50 Best Websites last year). Stirman plans on adding text reminders to Mogabanda using OhDon’tForget (when you RSVP, you will be able to add a cell number to get a reminder the day before the event). he is also thinking of ways to add notes, maps, and other features. But he wants to keep it as simple as possible. After all, it is supposed to be the anti-Evite.

As I was marveling at the velocity in the iPhone ecosystem a couple of weeks ago I was looking at a client’s list of aging software contracts. Most of the vendors want “uplift” fees for the older releases, not lowered ones reflecting software which hardly gets any enhancement and for which the client support calls have been minimal. It was quite a stark contrast.

Then I have a conversation with Dennis Howlett about SAP’s Business ByDesign. He is excited about how the mid-market has never before seen such an integrated enterprise piece of software. And I shrug my shoulders and go SAP delivered that integration 25 years ago in R/2. For me, reading BusinessSolutions magazine, the excitement in the mid-market is around RFID, Wi-Fi, scanners,VoIP not another piece of enterprise software.

Then I see Sam Lawrence’s elegant post about the “enterprise octopus” and why the next generation of social, collaborative applications will be better. And I drool over his graphics, but ask the same question as above. How does it make the life of folks in the warehouse, field, trading, hospital or plant floor better?

Then I see Oracle try its “makeup” at E2.0 and ask – why is Oracle just talking about light applications when it has charged its customers billions to deliver the next-gen, Fusion enterprise class applications. Why is there still not much news about that years after they were announced?

Then I see my EI colleagues and others argue about multi-tenancy in SaaS. Ok, important architectural discussion but does the person in the warehouse, field, trading, hospital or plant floor really give two hoots? Where is SaaS functionality for those workers?

And the answer, unfortunately is, sensors, and scanners and mobile devices have been helping them a lot more than in recent years than enterprise software has. While enterprise software continues to increase its part of the IT budget faster than other tech categories.

Steve Jobs: know you are busy, but in your remaining waking hours, can you please come in and shake up the enterprise software industry?

Bob, thanks…I am impatient as you c all ti…SaaS to me is taking way too long to penetrate vertical and other niches.

To me it is taking the same long trajectory client server apps did in early 90s.

I would argue SaaS has 3 tigers driving it …

a) opportunity from the amazingly high TCO of incumbents…even on the mainframe the incumbents in early 1990s (McCormack and Dodge, CA, MSA etc) were nothing compared to today’s enterprise apps TCO – if they cannot sell against that they should pack up and leave b) the ERP vendors mostly failed in penetrating non-mfg industries (healthcare, utilities, retail etc) and those have been wide open for a decade c) sizable new global markets which were for the most part unattractive economic markets in 1990s

Posted by: vinnie mirchandani | June 22, 2008 at 02:19 PM

Vinnie, you’re right. The world will not wait! Software has slowed down more than it should, and you’re right to point that out.

I hope these 3 tigers drive SaaS quickly forward. It’s time the world saw some new things.

Cheers,

BW

Posted by: Bob Warfield | June 22, 2008 at 06:10 PM

Vinnie, it’s a good post, but I think you’ve sold SaaS too short. Despite whatever discussions may be going on about multi-tenancy, that world has already done more in the short time it has been in existence than the Old School has accomplished in the 25 years you chide them about.

There is actually some pretty deep penetration of the kind you’re wondering about already happening. The vertical SaaS world is seldom talked about (just like any vertical, it matters most to those in the vertical), but it is quite interesting.

There are already multiple large (for SaaS) vertical SaaS companies out there. Athena Health, mentioned in my post, is just one. Out of 17 public SaaS companies I track, 6 are verticals. We’re already ahead of the Client-Server trajectory. We’re also enabling businesses to do things with less that they never dreamed of. The latter is a powerful economic force that ensures faster adoption.

Lastly, the client server gang had the luxury of not one, but two tigers by the tail. First they got the gift of Y2K to accelerate adoption. Then they got the dot com bubble to ensure they kept going. The SaaS world has largely been built on the ashes of that and there have been no natural growth accelerators to facilitate. Yet they’ve still made huge progress.

Is there a lot of activity around core? Sure. It’s easy to just get some folks that used to do whatever and have them do the SaaS version. Most SaaS companies came about that way. But we’re near the end of that phase. There aren’t many core enterprise categories left that have no SaaS entrants (EI folks care to name some?). For most categories, from here on out, new SaaS companies have to innovate over and above what’s already been seen. That’s a very exciting opportunity and it’s why I took the job I did. It’ll be fun to see whether the SaaS “2.0” (yuck, not another 2.0!) crowd can gain ground on the “basic old school + SaaS” crowd.

Frankly, Vin, I think the problem today are not the sellers (vendors) but the the buyers. Bureaucracy is pervasive. Risk does not exist with today’s buyer. Decision-makers are buying software designed for their generation, not the next one, creating a huge gap in the enterprise and among user expectations.

Posted by: Jason Corsello | June 22, 2008 at 08:19 PM

@ Jason C. Of course buyers are part of the problem. But show them a good thing and the resistance is lower. Do you know how short the Cisco telepresence sales cycle is? It is a good looking product, the ROI in cutting travel is a no-brainer, ergo short sales cycle even with curmudgeon CIOs

Buyers make up only 15% of IT spend. if the 85% in the vendor community does not significantly move ball forward buyers cannot be swayed too much forward. Too much in sw goes in sales and marketing, not creating compelling solutions

As far as Jive – good stuff, but what part of the non-HQ enterprise you think they can replace stuff in?

@ Dennis. With SAP I feel a little like its version of “weapons of mass destruction”. For years they have denied it can be done cheaper, and now they claim they can deliver at /10 the on-premise cost? And yet they are whispering to their larger customers SaaS is insecure, not scalable etc. In good faith I would have a hard time recommending them to a mid market CIO because they are still in denial mode.