Portals and KM

Three Cloud Hosting Methods to Increase Profitability

Here is a guest post by by Charles Homes who is a consultant at Hosting.com. For more information on Charles and his firm check out their web site. I am pleased to have guest posts on occasion and thank Charles for this one. As a disclaimer, he provided me with nothing more than useful content. In turn I simply offered the space. 

The union of cloud computing and hosting technology has produced wonders for the business community. The main progeny of this marriage has been a dynamic, scalable system that allows business to allocated informational resources with an efficiency hitherto only dreamed of. The hosting packages paid for by your business can be modified as needed as website traffic grows, with no need of strict hosting plans or even laid-out rules. Flexibility like this saves businesses money because they only have to pay for the services they use while simultaneously avoiding server down-time, one of the banes of the information technology industry. 

When it comes to actual products that use cloud hosting, there are three types to choose from. Depending on their business plan, size and service needs, different businesses will be suited to different hosting plans. 

Cloud Shared Hosting
On the small end of the scale, shared cloud hosting is the first option. This hosting plan is expressly for those starting a new business or website. The rule is excellent reliability, performance and customer service for these plans. Some examples of businesses like these are those with only a blog, a small online community, or a simple e-commerce site. This low-cost plan offers a wonderful balance between expenses and uptime.

Cloud Servers
The next level up is cloud servers. Cloud servers offer clients all the benefits of dedicated virtual servers, but at a tiny fraction of the expense. A cloud server offers flexible access and upgraded data processing, as well as the convenience of being able to get at your websites whenever you like. The servers can be scaled whenever you wish to meet the needs of your business as it grows in real-time. Since you only pay for the server space and bandwidth you actually use, this represents a significant decrease in operating expenses.

Cloud Storage
The application of cloud computing to data storage and back-up yields cloud storage. This form of data storage offers businesses high-performing, scalable as well as future proofed data storage and retrieval methods. Media and files are stored in virtual memory banks and consequently can be accessed from anywhere at any time of the day or night. Cloud storage is often done by using storage area network disks. Cloud storage features faster data input and output and greatly enhanced reliability. Not only personal and business data can be stored, but you can even back up internal files and give your employees the ability to their work from anywhere on Earth.

Doing Business In The Cloud
If your company depends on your customers being able to access your services twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, cloud hosting is definitely for you. Since hosting is spread between multiple servers, there is less risk of down-time which means that your business does not take a hit from inability to access your websites. Think about Twitter for a minute: do you really want your website's equivalent of the fail whale to become the punch line to hundreds of techie jokes?

Clearwell Offers Comprehensive Process Aligned eDiscovery Solution

Before there was enterprise 2.0 I used to think that, except for utilities like email, most business information-based software such as knowledge management needed to be process aligned. I have softened that position somewhat but for certain tasks, process-aligned remains the key to effectiveness. This is the approach taken by the Clearwell E-Discovery Platform, a product targeted at information-related legal process such as discovery. I recently spoke to Kamal Shah, the Clearwell VP of Products and Marketing, on how this product provides end-to-end process support for – early case analysis, search, cull, review, redaction and production.

Clearwell was founded in 2004 and they are about to release version 5.5 of their eDiscovery product. They now have over 500 customers including Cisco, Constellation Energy, Microsoft, BP and NBC, and they work with 42 business partners. They offer the software directly to enterprises and also sell through business partners who provide Clearwell as a hosted service.  Clearwell provides an appliance based solution that allows for rapid deployment, often in about 30 minutes.

Kamal explained that the industry has adopted an Electronic Discovery Reference Model to promote a common vocabulary and other standards within the space.  Clearwell supports this model and provides a common platform for the various stakeholders in the eDiscovery process including legal, IT, HR, audit, security, and compliance.

Kamal went on to describe the eDiscovery process and how Clearwell supports it. First, there is the initial data collection. Once data is collected, then Clearwell provides pre-processing capabilities. At this stage you also want to understand the task at hand and effectively estimate the cost and duration. Clearwell is able to go after multiple data types and sources to ensure effective retrieval.

 Figure 1: Timeline Analytics Quickly Identify Gaps in Collection Across All Data Sources

Next comes the processing. Clearwell has ramped up their processing speed to help with this effort. With the new 5.5 Release, Clearwell can process data at speeds of over 1 terabyte per day and scales to 100 million documents on a single appliance. De-duplication also occurs in this step as you want to reduce the amount of information that your legal counsel, operating at high hourly rates, has to sift through. Part of this is eliminating copies of redundant content such as duplicate files and multiple copies of email forwarded around. At the same time you want to know who knew what and when in these email chains. Clearwell sets them up as a threaded discussion to easily uncover the answers to these questions.

 
Figure 2: Discussion Threads Identify All Participants and Who Knew What and When

Now comes search and cull down to further refine the content. Usually only 10 to 20% of the content is relevant so you want to get there as efficiently as possible.  You can set up auto-filters to eliminate known false positives such as an article on the topic that was forwarded around but not relevant to the case. Next step is search. A firm might get several hundred keywords  from a government agency such as the SEC or from an opposing litigator. The trick is to provide all of the relevant information and no more. If you provide too much you may be alerting the opposition to potentially damaging information not relevant to the inquiries. Providing too little may result in damaging later discoveries and penalties for failing to properly comply.  Clearwell provides robust keyword and concept search capabilities that help you fulfill the request quickly and easily.

Figure 3: Transparent Search Reduces False Positives of Keyword Search Results

After distilling down the content, Clearwell supports the legal review process with nested folders, decision tree tagging, and indicated related documents. There is a simplified review interface to speed the process. Finally, the post-review production phase is supported through such features as integrated production folders, image based production, custom labeling using headers, footers, and watermarks.

 
Figure 4: Review Capabilities Allow Users to Quickly Redact Privileged or Confidential Data

Kamal said that the cumulative effect of these process-aligned supports can result in significant costs savings.

Because of the ease of implementation, Clearwell lets potential clients set up test cases to determine their own ROI and this usually results in a new client. I can see why.  It certainly makes to sense to use a product like Clearwell in your enterprise legal processes. This is one situation where process aligned remains a requirement for success. 

My Conversation with Sid Probstein, Attivio CTO

I recently had the pleasure of doing a video conversation with Sid Probstein, Attivio CtO. Our discussion centered around the deluge of content created by social media on the web and what companies are doing to try to combine that public opinion and sentiment with their own internal, enterprise content and data.

We focused primarily on the impact within the enterprise. I started by asking Sid about the opportunity within enterprise 2.0 to take advantage of looking at the unstructured data to determine the pulse of the enterprise and what conversations are going on. In 2008 more content was produced on the Web that in the history of content production, largely because of the vast increase in social media use. Now that social media is entering the enterprise what will this deluge bring? Will we be able to harvest this content or be overwhelmed by it. This is an issue that Attivio addresses and Sid responded to this question and other related ones during our conversation

Included in this interview is a preview of a new demonstration that Attivio developed in conjuction with Accenture that shows how the Attivio Active Intelligence Engine™ can be used to power a SocialCRM application that pulls in content from the web (review sites) and seamlessly indexes that content along with structured data pulled from a SalesforceCRM system.

 

Should You Get an MBA in Social Media?

 The New York Times wrote that Business Schools Respond to Demand for Use of Social Media.  The story began with some major mistakes that large firms have made in social media marketing.  Now an increasing number of firms are asking for social media expertise in their candidates. These firms tend to feel that personal experience with social media is not enough, that business related experience is necessary. I would certainly agree here.

The NYT goes on to write, “To meet this demand for education in social media strategy, several top business schools are incorporating courses on social networks into their M.B.A. curriculums. These include Harvard Business School; London Business School; Insead, the international business school based in Fontainebleau, France; and the École des Hautes Études Commerciales, known as H.E.C., in Paris.”  These courses have proven to be very popular.

The Tines writes that, “because of the relative newness of social media and their rapid evolution, there is no assigned textbook for the course. Students are expected to follow industry-specific blogs like Mashable and Groundswell to keep up with developments.’ I wonder how many assign this blog? :)

The professors create content by studying what is happening and bringing in guest speakers.  This might create some awareness but I am not sure how many real skills are conveyed. When I worked for the City of New York in helping local community groups get more federal funding we would occasionally have to hire new people. If they had a Masters in Community Organization we generally subtracted two years experience from their credits. This was done as we felt they would need two years to unlearn what they were taught in school by experiencing the real world.

Some of the social media courses require actual work with real clients on their social media marketing. This is a good move and may avoid the need to do what we did in New York.  Professors do admit that business is driving innovation here and that schools are trying to catch up. I applaud the humility.  There is hope.  But I would still take someone with two years real experience in business social media before someone with the school work for now. 

Research on Tweeting Inside and Outside the Enterprise

We need more research like this. I recently read an interesting study by my friend Kate Ehrlich at IBM and her colleague Sadat Shami, It is titled, Microblogging Inside and Outside the Workplace and looks at how corporate employees use microblogging tools. This effort conducted a content analysis comparing over 5,000 posts between March and June 2009 from individuals who were using an internal IBM proprietary tool, Blue Twit, and Twitter simultaneously.  Within these 5,000 plus posts, 58% were done with twitter and 42% were done with the internal tool so there is a reasonable balance for the comparison.

The abstract reports that in “both settings, posts that provided information or were directed to others were more common than posts on status. Within these categories, it was more frequent to provide information externally than internally but more common to ask questions either through broadcast or directed posts internally than externally.”  In other words, questions were more likely asked of colleagues within the trusted environment of the enterprise. This makes sense and it is nice some empirical evidence to support this assumption.

The users reported that Twitter was a great source to learn about and share breaking news that other sources, However, they were more likely to ask a question with their work community and more likely to proactively look for questions to answer within this same community.  The study reported that “participants talked of using Twitter as an alternative to an RSS feed or feed reader, because the information was already filtered to match their interests and they knew enough about the people providing the information to be confident in the quality of the information they provided.” This resonates well as it is exactly one of my main uses is Twitter.  

On the other hand, people inside the enterprise used micro-blogging, in part, to enhance their reputation as someone who is knowledgeable and helps the community.  In contrast many of the external posts were done to enhance the reputation and awareness of the organization by providing company news. In keeping with the differences in usage, 15% of the internal posts had links and 26% of the external ones did.

I think this is very useful study and more systematic work needs to be done in this space to supplement our intuition and anecdotal observations. 

Images of New Orleans Neighborhoods 2010 Part Ten: Uptown Below Magazine Street

This is the tenth in a series of images of New Orleans neighborhoods taken in February 2010 the weekend before the Super Bowl victory and two weeks for Mardi Gras. I certainly did not have time to cover them all but this series will provide a glimpse of the city that I hope you will want to visit.

This post covers the Uptown area between Magazine Street and the river. It is roughly the same as the offical West Riverside neighborhood.   It includes the great music venue, Tipitina’s and some good eating places,  including Dick and Jenny’s, Franky and Johnny’s, and Domillise’s Po-Boys. I sampled the last two on this trip.  It was also the location for the recent movie Love Song for Bobby Long.  There are a lot of the long thin shotgun houses here. They are usually no more than 12 feet wide, with doors at each end. The term "shotgun house" came from the saying that one could fire a shotgun through the front door and the pellets would fly cleanly through the house and out the back door (since all the doors are on the same side of the house). The first picture is an example of a double shotgun and the second shows a single shot gun. You can click on any image to enlarge it. 

                                  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Painting of My Old Duffle Bag

Here is an 20" x 24" acrylic painting of the mid-size duffle bag I use to carry my paints and brushes.  It is sitting on brown roll paper like the shoes series. 

 
 

Nominations for Annual Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) Study Open Until April 30

It seems like this award has been around for some time. I was surprised to see that this is only the thirteenth award, taking it back to 1998. I was involved in the first several awards for my employer at the time and gave presentations in London at a very nice conference.

They are now accepting nominations for the 13th annual Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) study. The MAKE research program seeks to identify those organizations (for-profit, non-profit and public sector) which are using knowledge-driven strategies to out-perform their peers by above average growth in intellectual capital and wealth creation (in the case of the public sector, increased societal capital and stakeholder value).

You can also complete the nomination form by visiting the Teleos website and clicking on 'MAKE' in the left-hand navigation box and then clicking on 'MAKE Nominations'. 

A list of the organizations nominated to date is found on the following web page. Nominations close on April 30, 2010.

If you are part of an eligible organization I would recommend that you apply.  Unfortunately, my organization of one does not qualify. 

Creating a Sustainable Ecosystem for Community News Media

Today the traditional print news media has been impacted by the rise of the Web and social media, in particular. However, this emergence also represents an opportunity for more robust news gathering, increased community out reach, and better measurement of impact from both print and Web channels. 

At Darwin we have been talking with several news organizations on ways to expand their community connection.  These conversations inspired a recent three part series on creating a sustainable ecosystem for community news media. I will not repeat the content here but encourage see the complete series on our Darwin Awareness Engine blog.  Here are the three posts.

Creating a Sustainable Ecosystem for Community News Media - Part One: Providing Relevance and Creating Loyalty

Creating a Sustainable Ecosystem for Community News Media - Part Two: Finding Relevant Local Content from the Web

Creating a Sustainable Ecosystem for Community News Media - Part Three: Making Awareness and Discovery the pulse of Community News with Darwin 

In summary community news organizations can benefit from measuring and monitoring of the evolution of community themes over time or dimension by:

1. Tracking and measuring the impact of the Community News Media’s programs’ actions in the community and/or on the broader Web

2. Creating alerts based on significant variations within the designated themes of interest spikes

3. Advancing analytics for pattern recognition and prediction

With these benefits, the community news organization can achieve better awareness of emerging themes to improve its interaction within the community and provide highly targeted advertisement to support its financial targets.

Socialcast Adds Sharepoint and Outlook Integration, New Features, and Enhanced Metrics

Socialcast was one of the first enterprise microblogging providers (see 2008 post: Socialcast Brings Twitter Style Functionality into the Enterprise) and I have covered them several times since that first post (e.g., Socialcast Adds Broadcasting Capability to Enterprise Microsharing). Recently, I spoke with CEO Tim Young on the latest developments, which turned out to be quite a list.

We started at a high level. Tim sees a major shift in enterprise collaboration happening every twenty years: the business telephone exchange was introduced in the 1950s, the FAX in the1970s, email in the1990s and now activity streams – through tools like Socialcast – are starting to play a major role right on time, in 2010. I think there is certainly a movement beyond siloed email to the more transparent enterprise 2.0. Activity streams may be the tool that carries this transparency throughout the enterprise to reap the opportunity for increased awareness that enterprise 2.0 brings.

Socialcast is focusing its efforts on helping large enterprises, in particular those of 10,000 or more employees, increase their collaboration capabilities. I think this is a smart move given their capabilities and the market. To support this strategy they have made a number of moves, including enhanced features that we will look at: Outlook and SharePoint integration, and increased support for mobile devices. BlackBerry support has been added to their existing iPhone support, with an interface geared to align with BlackBerry features. All of these should appeal to the large enterprise user. They now refer to their role in the large enterprise as providing the enterprise activity stream engine or EASE. This capability can be deployed as a SaaS, a private cloud, or on-premises.

New features include the addition of automated updates to the stream based on user actions. Through their REST API they can mine these automated updates from almost any enterprise applications such as a CRM, data warehouse, or logistics system. Users operating within these systems can also submit manual updates in the traditional Twitter style without having to go into the Socliacast application itself. When someone replies to an update the reply is called a comment and it starts a threaded discussion on the topic.

In addition to the traditional microblogging follow/unfollow capability, there is the option for a universal update stream that users within a particular group can automatically follow using the enterprise’s LDAP. Socialcast can play in the foreground as the common interface to what is happening across many applications. Or it can operate in the background allowing users to stay within those applications. Email is one example of this. You can have Socialcast updates go into the email system, or you can use the email system to update Socialcast.

To further support this email integration, Socialcast has integrated with Outlook. Now Socialcast messages can be part of your Outlook folder and you never have to leave Outlook to use Socialcast. Currently, there is full support for Outlook 2003 and 2007, and 2010 will be supported soon. In the sample screenshot below, you can see Socialcast as part of the Outlook folder scheme and see Socialcast in operation with Outlook.

Tim said that the Outlook integration has proven to be a useful way to get late adopters within enterprise organizations participating in microblogging; people start within Outlook and many migrate to using Socialcast directly to access additional features. The SharePoint integration brings comprehensive microblogging capability to SharePoint and should provide a similar adoption path. There is support for SharePoint 2003, 2007, and 2010.

One of the major new areas is the addition of enhanced analytics that the company refers to as Socialcast Business Intelligence.  Some of its many features include organizational network analysis tools to identify the informal connections between individuals and groups. Socialcast reports on posting, commenting, and “liking” activity over time, offering insight into conversation initiation and response behaviors. There is also lurking and listening activity analysis. The interactivity patterns between users are identified, showing proactive and reactive relationships with others in their social graph.

Moments of transition from passive to active usage are also recognized, allowing you to find people and topics that start conversations. There is interactive visualization of all community discussions, surfacing the most active messages based on user interaction, popular posting times and dates. Here is an example of an activity analysis screen that shows a glimpse of overall network activity and top contributors, active teams and groups.

Here is an example of a deep dive into a user's activity, showing where he or she fits into the social graph.

Here is an example of the measurement of trending topics, important conversations, and influential members.

User roles are identified and defined as follows:  broker: spurs conversations that include input from a wide variety of users form different business units and departments, central connector: spurs diverse discussions from within their business unit or department, and peripheral player: engages infrequently and primarily with people from their business unit or department.  User activity levels are also reported on.

I was impressed with the depth and variety of analytics that Socialcast has conceived. I think it represents a strong step in the right direction of realizing the transparency that Enterprise 2.0 can provide. 

Are There Best Practices for Enterprise 2.0 Adoption?

I recently read a post, Why Best Practices Don’t Work for Knowledge Work, by my friend, Luis Suarez. It nicely articulated some ideas I have been thinking about for some time.  Luis was, in turn, inspired by a post from Oscar Berg, Forget about copying best practices. Luis noted that he has been blogging about knowledge management for seven years and has yet to write a post on KM best practices.  He writes, “"Best Practices" are the worst thing you can apply to any kind of knowledge work. Any kind. Social Computing is no different.”

Luis claries that he is objecting to the word “best” and that good practices are certainly possible. He finds best practices associated with the terms: static, fixed, inalterable, unmodified, unbeatable, perfect. In contrast, he finds knowledge work, and enterprise 2.0 certainly falls into this bucket, is: dynamic, flexible, malleable, modifiable, flowing, a continuous learning experience, imperfect.  Luis goes on to say that practices that are successful in knowledge work are very context dependent and this is why there cannot be a standard set of best practices. I could not agree more.

In the early nineties I was involved with a number of colleagues at a small consulting firm helping a large property casualty insurance developing a process approach to knowledge work and the technology to deliver it to their knowledge workers. We eventually learned of the term “knowledge management” and applied that to what we were doing but it was really more like a primitive version of enterprise 2.0.  Although the firm was small a number of the senior execs at the firm were from big consulting. They wanted to package what we did and sell it to others as a repeatable offering.

It never worked quite like that because what we had done was very context dependent. I raised these objections internally but this was seen as counter to effective sales.  No one wanted to hear the phrase “it depends” when asked about best practices. Sure we followed some common process steps in developing a strategy and an implementation plan during the creation of further projects.

However, the people on the ground who had done a prior project knew to not try to simply offer what was done before. They understood the concept of context and knew that the substance of the new work needed to reflect the needs of the current situation rather than universal best practices. The senior people trying to sell the work did not want to hear this.  After all, if we did not offer best practices how could we justify the high fees we were charging. Unfortunately, the senor people buying the work also wanted a best practice solution.

Later, I went to work for a large consulting firm and was part of a thought leadership group. The senior partners were always asking us to present our firm’s best practices in knowledge management to clients. We would groan and try to offer case examples of successes instead. Often we got away with this switch.

It was better to try to sell the fact that we had done the work successfully before, what happen and why, than to try to say that we had the secret recipe of best practices.  Of course, if you are trying to staff projects with new recruits who provide higher margins for the firm, it was better to say that you were arming them with the secret recipes.

Based on my experience, I agree with Luis that best practices can do more harm that good.  This does not mean that there cannot be lessons learned and some starting points to keep in mind as you move to new work.  There are great benefits to doing something the second time.  The German sociologist Georg Simmel wrote, “nothing more can be attempted that to establish the beginning and the direction of an infinitely long road. The pretension of any systematic and definitive completeness would be, at least, a self-illusion. Perfection can here be obtained by the student only in the subjective sense that he communicates everything he has been able to see.”

Post script: When I coached my daughter's soccer (aka football) team during her elementary school years, I created a guide book of plays for the girls (e.g., try to throw the inbound pass up field). However, i found what worked best was to hold practice games and frequently stop the action and call the girls' attention to what just happen, the results, and what to think about next time. Part of the guidance was to keep things moving in the right direction but look and think before you act. This was simply what worked for me and I am certainly not an expert in soccer. In hindsight it followed the approach offered above. 

 

Take the Prescient Digital Media 2010 Global Intranet Study

Prescient Digital Media is conducting another global intranet survey. The preliminary results (400 respondents) and data of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010 reveal that 49% of organizations have employee or executive blogs on their corporate intranet. However, the biggest blogging challenge for these organizations and is getting people to participate.

Prescient Digital Media is preparing a comprehensive report on the topic, based in part on the findings collected from the survey. The survey takes approximately 6-8 minutes to complete. The more people who take the survey, the better the results. Ensure you get a free copy of the full Intranet 2.0 Global Study Report and analysis by spending 6-8 minutes taking the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010. It is available to take until April 23.

Painting of Potatoes, on a Blue Cloth

Here is a 18" x 24" acrylic painting of a family of potatoes on a blue cloth. I was interested in the contrast of color and texture between the potatoes and the cloth. I was also thinking about Henry Moore's abstract sculptures of mother and child. Like many of my works, it is available for sale at Artsetter.com. 

  

Images of New Orleans Neighborhoods 2010 Part Nine: Magazine Street West of Jackson Avenue

This is the ninth in a series of images of New Orleans neighborhoods taken in February 2010 the weekend before the Super Bowl victory and two weeks for Mardi Gras. I certainly did not have time to cover them all but this series will provide a glimpse of the city that I hope you will want to visit.

Magazine Street is a great shopping street full of antique stores, funky boutiques, restaurants, clubs and many other things. You can see Tee-Eva's a wonderful Creole food stand at 5201 Magazine shown below. Magazine Street is very long so I divided the images into two sections. These photos were taken west of Jackson Avenue toward the New Orleans Audubon Park where I first played golf as a kid and Audubon Zoo featured in the next post. You can click on an image to enlarge it. 

                      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

My Favorite Tweets for April 1 - 15 2010

Here is the fourteenth in a new series of posts that provide access to my favorite tweets that contain links to useful information.  Some of these I did to link to things I found useful and others are RTs that I want to save for the same reason. Since Twitter archiving is an oxymoron, I am now going to post my favorite links for the month so they can be easily accessed later. I will repeat this once or twice a month depending on volume.

I spot tested the reduced shortened urls and they all should work. I hope this is also useful for you.  Let me know your favorite tweets for the month.

Also see the Darwineco favorite tweets.

Google unveils souped-up Google Docs for corporate use http://bit.ly/aY5hQv April 14

thx @LLiu: RT @BillIves: @dhinchcliffe: @elsua Best Practices Don’t Work for Knowledge Work http://url4.eu/2aIzM also cuz best is contextual April 13

via @perryhewitt: RT @bbcworld Imperial War Museum uses Twitter to mark 70th anniv of Battle of Britain. http://bit.ly/97WKz5 April 13

RT @socialmedia2day: 5 Social Search Stories You Need To Read This Week http://goo.gl/fb/heAM5 #sm Apr 12th

RT @dhinchcliffe: RT @franky_redant: Must Read Enterprise 2.0 Articles http://bit.ly/aoAC8X #e20 #enterprise20  Apr 9th

RT @amcafee: Forbes reprints interview with me on #E20 it originally appeared @MITSMR : http://bit.ly/dxh6vi April 8

RT @socialmedia2day: 10 Free Social Media Tools Every PR Pro Should Master http://goo.gl/fb/kAq8q #sm  Apr 7th

Malcolm Gladwell On Social Media http://bit.ly/a8Xe75  Apr 7th

RT @jackvinson: New post on KJolt: Is 'knowledge worker' no longer useful? http://bit.ly/ctL510 April 6

RT @socialmedia2day: The 5 C’s of Nurturing the Human Element in Social Media http://goo.gl/fb/4yrbG #sm April 6

RT @robpatrob: The New Org Design - It's Here Now - Convergence has occurred http://post.ly/YDa6 April 6, 2010

With Netflix Streaming, iPad Becomes TV Anywhere http://bit.ly/d3ji3Q via @psfk Apr 3rd

The State of Linked Data in 2010 http://bit.ly/d1aYCD  Apr 2nd

RT @raesmaa: Shoes and Software http://bit.ly/bB58gD reminded me of @BillIves's paintings http://tweetphoto.com/14521476 >thx  Apr 2nd

RT @mfauscette: It’s Official – Netflix Streaming on the iPad http://twurl.nl/x35zh5 #ipad #apple  Apr 1st  

Still Cleaning Out the Company’s Digital Dump?

The more things change, the more they stay the same is a worn out phrase, I cringe to repeat here but then I see posts like from BusienssWeek: Is Your Company's Intranet a Digital Landfill?  Now this is a fine post with some excellent points.  But it was well over a dozen years ago that we saw the same thing as intranets were introduced. The ease of use crated a proliferation of trash and treasure. The same suggestions for creating an intranet strategy were offered (see below).  Is anyone listening?

The article did point out that things are just getting worse and provided these stats: “In 2009, the world produced about 750 exabytes (EB) of information. To put this into context, one exabyte is the equivalent of one followed by 18 zeros of bytes. In 2010, by some estimates, the world will produce 1,250 EB of information.” I heard that in 2008, in part because of the advent of more user generated content through social media that more information was created that in the prior history of content.  This may become an annual event.

Social media is invading the enterprise so there will be even more to take to the dump.  Used right social media and its transparency provide huge benefits.  But without a strategy the deluge gets stronger.  Here is what the 5 step program Corporate Executive Board recommends to address the issue (in their words)

1. Clearly state the outcome your company needs to achieve through its intranet.

2. Select a short set of metrics that reflect that outcome.

3. Review the group of people and processes that govern your intranet. Make sure an information architect plays a leading role and that processes support an agreed-on information architecture.

4. Identify the most common employee information needs that are unmet in your organization and look for technologies you have available on your intranet that will meet these needs.

5. Look for commonalities across the user population that may serve as personas for different kinds of use.

It is a pay some attention now or a be sorry later situation.

 

 

 

Shopping Surge with Mobile Phone Users

I recently wrote about the Smartphone Surge in 2010 for business users. The main driver in the Forrester study that fueled this post was collaboration. Well there is another surge - shopping.  This will become an additional benefit for business users as they more efficiently handle regular tasks in their off work life and even do some simple business related shopping.

A study by Retrevo found that 59% of people said they found the shopping information they were looking for, when using a mobile phone while only 8% of people said they did not intend to shop from their mobile phone. There is a big generation factor to no surprise as 50% of shoppers under the age of 35 indicated they have done used their mobile phone for shopping and the number drop off in older groups.

People are also moving from research like store locations to actual purchasing The study found that 15% of the under 35 year old shoppers have made a purchase using their phones and the vast majority said it was a positive experience. However, there is still a strong resistance to ads on mobile phones. Of course, television is moving in the mobile phone direction and it will likely bring its ads.            

Have you bought anything on your mobile phone? I have not tried it yet but see no reason to avoid this.  

Clicker Gets You in Touch with Online TV

I have written a bit about the convergence of TV and the Web. Here is useful tool to monitor and take advantage of this trend. Clicker is a search service to find what is available in video on the Web. There motto is “What’s On Online.”  At the site you are greeted with a simple Google style search filed as well as links to what’s new, what’s hot, recommended and your playlist if you have signed up for the premium service. The basic features are free. You can search by show or by topic. Clicker indexes television shows, movies, music videos, and original web content. 

Clicker recently received $11 million in expanded venture capital funding. The series B round was led by Jafco Ventures. Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures also participated. The company has now raised approximately $19 million since its launch in January 2009. The site does not provide video itself. It links you to the growing amount of content that others are producing. The Clicker catalog now includes more than 600,000 episodes from 10,000 shows. It lists those titles in more than 14,000 categories.

Jeremy Scott provides a nice Clicker review at ReelSEO,  Clicker Wants To Be Your Web TV Search Engine – They’re Mine. He writes that Clicker solved his frustration in finding out what is on the Web after he dropped cable. Jeremy gives the example of searcing for his favorite show, Lost. It “reveals a host of options.  The first thing you’ll notice are some brief stats:  there are apparently 129 episodes of Lost available online for free, with another 86 available for purchase.”  Plus there was a lot of related content on the same theme.

This is a nice discovery and one that will make Web video content much more attractive to me. It will be interesting to see how Clicker evolve as the Web and broadcast TV continue to converge.

 

Twitter Moves Ahead of Blogs in Fortune 500

The team of Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson at the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth have been dong a number of studies on social media and business (see for example: Thinking Like A Blogger: Is Blogging An Attitude That Can Be Taught?). In 2009, they released one of the first studies of the Fortune 500's adoption and usage of one of the best-known forms of social media – blogging (see Fortune 500 Blogging Study). This new study, Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage, revisits that prior study and expands to look at the Fortune 500's usage of Twitter.

A Fortune 500 company was counted as having a blog if they had a public-facing corporate blog from the primary corporation with posts in the past 12 months. This is the same definition used in the prior 2008 study. The data was collected in October and November 2009. One hundred-eight (22%) of the primary corporations listed on the 2009 Fortune 500 have a public-facing corporate blog with a post in the past 12 months. This is an increase from 16% in the prior study. The top 100 companies on the list represent 39% of the 108 blogs in the 2009 F500.  In 2008, 38% of the total number of blogs came from the top 100. Consistent with the findings on the 2008 Fortune 500, 90% percent of the Fortune 500 blogs take comments, have RSS feeds and take subscriptions

A company was considered a user of Twitter if they had an official corporate account. Of the 108 blogs located, 93 (86%) are linked directly to a corporate Twitter account, that’s more than three times as many as members of the 2008 list. One hundred and seventy-three (35%) of the primary corporations listed on the 2009 Fortune 500 has a Twitter account with a post within the past thirty days. Of the top 100 companies on the list, 47 have a Twitter account.

One hundred and twenty companies (69%) consistently responded with @replies or retweets within the past thirty days. These Twitter accounts are kept up-to-date with current news and information. There is consistent interaction with other users and on-going discussions that are easy to follow.

The researchers concluded that, “the continued steady adoption of blogs and the explosive growth of Twitter among Fortune 500 companies demonstrate the growing importance of social media in the business world.” I certainly agree.  It is interesting, but not surprising, that the growth with Twitter exceeds that with blogs. Many marketing departments that missed the blog movement have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. 

Painting of My Old Winter Boots

Here is a 20" x 24" acrylic painting of my aging Sorel boots. They seem to be holding up well. It is part of my shoe series where I do a portrait of shoes against brown roll paper. 

 
 

Images of New Orleans Neighborhoods 2010 Part Eight: Magazine Street East of Jackson Avenue

This is the eighth in a series of images of New Orleans neighborhoods taken in February 2010 the weekend before the Super Bowl victory and two weeks for Mardi Gras. I certainly did not have time to cover them all but this series will provide a glimpse of the city that I hope you will want to visit. 

Magazine Street is a great shopping street full of antique stores, funky boutiques, restaurants, clubs and many other things. My mother used to like to browse the antique stores. It is very long so I divided the images into two sections. This one is closest to downtown. It includes the wonderful breakfast place, Surrey’s Juice Bar and such stores at the Trashy Diva shown below, 

                                    
 

Join Me at Enterprise Search Summit 2010 in NYC

Thierry Hubert and I will be presenting at the Enterprise Search Summit 2010. It will be at the Hilton in New York City on May 11-12. We are presenting on Deriving Order From Chaos Through Discovery and Awareness. Our session is on Wednesday May 12 at 1PM. The Enterprise Search Summit says that the “emphasis for Enterprise Search Summit is on how enterprise search enables Information Access. Search can no longer be viewed as a stand-alone application. It is increasingly part of everything we do and has become the de facto gateway to information in the enterprise.” I would certainly agree and we hope to see you there. Here is the summary of our session.

The presentation provides a practical application of chaos theory for creating useful content focal points from the chaotic mess of content resources distributed across the web. Several examples will be provided, both from the internet, where socially generated content is exploding, and from the enterprise, where social tools are contributing to content bloat. The examples will illustrate how activity can make information more discoverable and easier to explore through various visualization techniques. The approach can be targeted to specific types of content such as blogs or online news sites, as well as subsets of unstructured or structured content within the enterprise.

This is an especially good time of the year to be in New York. Go to MOMA while you are there. 

          
 
 
  
 
 
 

 

Are the Next Takeoff Technologies Evident Now?

Here is another of the Pew Research questions "future of the Internet" survey. I wrote about Andy Oram’s response to the question: Will Google Makes Us Stupid?  Andy responded to more questions including: Are the next takeoff technologies evident now?  Andy said yes. I would not be so bold to say that I can predict that all of them are evident but many are. I liked his list. Andy also qualified his thoughts by saying this was a starter list.

Andy's list includes, “more powerful mobile devices, ever-cheaper netbooks, virtualization and cloud computing, reputation systems for social networking and group collaboration, sensors and other small systems reporting limited amounts of information, do-it-yourself embedded systems, robots, sophisticated algorithms for slurping up data and performing statistical analysis, visualization tools to report the results of that analysis, affective technologies, personalized and location-aware services, excellent facial and voice recognition, electronic paper, anomaly-based security monitoring, self-healing systems--that's a reasonable list to get started with.”

Apple is certainly banking on the first two. At Darwin we are particularly pleased with another two of these: sophisticated algorithms for slurping up data and performing statistical analysis, visualization tools to report the results of that analysis. This is what we do. The Darwin Awareness Engine ™ helps to uncover relevant content to your interests and the themes associated with these topics.  Features such as our Buzz Tracker ™ and our Scan Cloud ™ help to visualize this emerging content and the relationships between correlated content. 

Will Facebook Make Us Sick?

This would be good for April 1 except that these results are true. People do say that Facebook has caused many social and health problems, forgetting that correlation is not causation.

Inspired by the post, The Things That Facebook Causes, According To Google, Yahoo & Bing, in SearchEngineLand, I wondered about the effects of other social media. Other people have been commenting on this including the Daily Telegram.

First, let’s look at Facebook. The post mentioned many dire things that Facebook is supposed to cause according to Google searches and the content that comes up. So I tried the experiment myself. You can see the results below as - Facebook causes - in the Google search field prompts these suggestions: Facebook causes divorce, application, depression, donations, internet explorer to crash, app, jealousy, problems, statistics, and cancer.

I am sure some feel the IE crash as the worst problem leading to the others. Now some of these results actually link to stories about the dire consequences of Facebook. Other show the shortcomings of the literal nature of Google search returns and link to stories about noble causes that Facebook supports as you can see in the two returns below for the search Facebook causes cancer, one of the associations above. This first story is about how Facebook can raise your risk of cancer but the second one is about: Causes on Facebook - the campaign for cancer prevention.

So what about other related topics? I have written about how social media can be addictive and some have major concerns about the troubles that enterprise 2.0 might cause.  I have asked if Twitter like going out for a smoke? So I looked.  Google did not suggest that social media causes anything.

I got same result for enterprise 2.0 and Twitter had innocent responses. I am sure it is just the popularity of Facebook that causes all these ills to be described to it while the others are getting less attention.  But there is hope. I looked at Google on - social networking causes - and found it linked to depression (and nothing else).

I ask on April 1 if Google will make us stupid? That post was based a real question Pew asked in its future of the internet survey.  I said no then and will also say the Facebook and social networking are not the culprits here, just the people who use them.  Google will only make us stupid if we simply accept what we find there. 

Pistachio Consulting is Updating their Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison

Pistachio Consulting published one of the first comprehensive surveys of the enterprise microsharing tools market in fall 2008 and I covered it here (see Pistachio Consulting’s Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison). This report is still available for free on their site. That report was based, in part, on a 15-question survey that they invited the tool providers to complete about their products. They verified the information and, in many cases, conducted follow-up interviews.

Much has happen since it first appeared and so Pistachio is developing an update now. For example, many of the enterprise collaboration application providers have integrated microsharing into their feature sets. In addition, many new features have been introduced to better adapt microsharing to the enterprise environment and to take advantage of the possibilities within the contained, secure, and trusted community that an enterprise offers. I am pleased to be involved with this new effort. We have expanded the questions to take these changes into consideration.

The new survey contains 31 questions to reflect the advances in current offerings. Pitaschio Consulting now invites interested enterprise microsharing vendors to participate in this new research effort. There is a brief explanation of each question. We look forward to sharing the results. The survey is now open and will be open for participation until Friday April 23, 2010 (see change to deadline below) . We will be again verifying the input and contacting many of the participating vendors for follow-up conversations.

I am helping conduct the research and write the report. Gina Minks, their intern, will offer additional enterprise perspective and assist in the process. Laura Fitton will provide her unique perspective on the microsharing space, and Marcia Conner will work closely on the report writing.

We look forward to producing something valuable for the enterprise 2.0 community. First, we need to input of enterprise microsharing tool providers. This includes those who provide a standalone microsharing application and those that include this capability in their application suite.  Here is the link to the survey again. 

Post Script: We have extended the deadline to complete the survey to May 3 and invite your participation. 

My AppGap Posts for March 2010

Here are my AppGap posts for March. I am also writing in another Corante blog, FastForward (see right side bar for links), The AppGap posts began toward the end of January 2008.  Here, I am primarily doing product commentaries with a few other things thrown in. Below are the ones for March. There will be more in April.

Acquia Grows with Drupal and Introduces Drupal Gardens

Brightidea Releases its Idea Management Apps for iPhone and Android Platforms

Zoho Joins Google Apps Marketplace

The Rise of Micro-blogging Capability in Enterprise Collaboration Platforms

Vocus Provides Social Media Monitoring and Public Relations Management

Viralheat Provides Comprehensive Social Media Monitoring and Analytics

Images of New Orleans Neighborhoods 2010 Part Seven: Uptown above St. Charles Avenue

This is the seventh in a series of images of New Orleans neighborhoods taken in February 2010 the weekend before the Super Bowl victory and two weeks for Mardi Gras. I certainly did not have time to cover them all but this series will provide a glimpse of the city that I hope you will want to visit.

This post covers the area above St. Charles Avenue north of the Garden District. It is not quite as elegant as the Garden District but there is a lot of interesting architecture as you can see below. With the proximity to the St. Charles Avenue street car and the uptown music clubs and restaurants, You can see Pascal's Manale below which features BBQ shrimp. I could be very happy here. You can see the area in the map below.

                            
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Painting of My Old Sneakers

These shoes have played a lot of hoop but they could not get me to dunk. They are vintage Air Jordans. This is a 18" x24" acrylic painting of them. 

 
 

My Favorite Tweets for March 15 - 31

Here is the thirteenth in a new series of posts that provide access to my favorite tweets that contain links to useful information.  Some of these I did to link to things I found useful and others are RTs that I want to save for the same reason. Since Twitter archiving is an oxymoron, I am now going to post my favorite links for the month so they can be easily accessed later. I will repeat this once or twice a month depending on volume.

I spot tested the reduced shortened urls and they all should work. I hope this is also useful for you.  Let me know your favorite tweets for the month.

Also see the Darwineco favorite tweets.

RT @rotkapchen: The Transition to Durable Relationships by @SameerPatel http://ow.ly/1tbKZ Mar 31

Adoption and Engagement for #KM http://bit.ly/brqBs6 from @simongoh Mar 31

Miso Gets Big Brand Love - Foursqaure for TV and movies http://tcrn.ch/cPZOgg via @SBoSM Mar 30th

RT @GautamGhosh: Personal Branding – You2.0 http://goo.gl/10OO  Mar 30th

Agencies Enter Into A "Great Race" For social media Relevance http://bit.ly/bOVONm 1:23 PM Mar 29th  

RT @socialmedia2day: 40 of the Most Useful Social Media and PR Blog Posts of Q1, 2010 (Jan - Mar) http://goo.gl/fb/otBf #sm March 28, 2010

RT @SmartDataCo: Definition of Social CRM – Explained! http://goo.gl/fb/Nqt0 #cloud Mar 28

RT @GeorgeDearing: Location, Location, Location - 10 Tech Trends for 2010 - TIME // http://bit.ly/9pTifF Mar 27th

If It Doesn’t Happen On Twitter It Probably Doesn’t Matter http://bit.ly/c5mODr - really?  Mar 27th

RT @dhinchcliffe: What’s Needed First? Culture Change or Enterprise 2.0 Adoption http://bit.ly/d21hAu Mar 26th

RT @SmartDataCo: LinkedIn Says Bye Bye to Market Researchers http://goo.gl/fb/z8de #cloud Mar 26th

RT @amcafee: Funny list of things Google thinks Facebook causes: http://selnd.com/9uUi0W Mar 26th

Social Media Can Work For Small Business Too http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/18290 Mar 25th

Twitter May Be Prepping Auto-Translate Option via @SBoSM http://bit.ly/c2fMND 2:03 PM Mar 25th

RT @GautamGhosh: Professional Services Firm and how they can leverage social media - Bearing Point example http://bit.ly/bhxXZF 9:51 AM Mar 25th

Twitter Starts Rolling Out Contributors Feature http://tcrn.ch/cnRMXb 2:56 PM Mar 24th

RT @GeorgeDearing: @NewYorker's James Surowiecki on how middle of consumer market is shrinking // http://bit.ly/aBK0M6 12:20 PM Mar 24th

RT @amcafee: PwC on 'The Maturing of Social Networking into a Business Discipline' - http://bit.ly/9X4ctD 4:28 PM Mar 23rd

RT @socialmedia2day: Who should "control" social media in a company? http://su.pr/72XKlv - control wrong word 2:33 PM Mar 23rd

How Much Celebrities And Sports Stars Make Per Tweet http://bit.ly/dmF7r9 2:10 PM Mar 23rd

10 Essential Design Tools for Social Media Pros http://mashable.com/2010/03/23/social-media-design-tools/ 12:59 PM Mar 23rd

via @digiphile: Discovery of day: SEC is on Twitter: @SEC_Investor_Ed. via @WSJ : http://j.mp/iW9FL #gov20 12:21 PM Mar 23rd

RT @carlfrappaolo: RT @KathleenLau: Open Text puts ECM on BlackBerry. iPhone to follow. http://bit.ly/dCEDxp 8:56 AM Mar 23rd

RT @skemsley: Interesting study: fairness is correlated with market integration http://j.mp/aDE2uX 8:38 AM Mar 23rd

RT @socialmedia2day: B2B Social Media: Are we really making a connection? http://goo.gl/fb/jy6V #sm 8:50 PM Mar 22nd

RT @tobyward: RT @cathymcknight: 10 Essential Rules for Brands In Social Media http://adage.com/u/b3aZOb 1:25 PM Mar 22nd

RT @michellemanafy: First 25 to RT entered to win Kindle 2 join FT DJ OReilly Google at Buying & Selling eContent conf www.bit.ly/bU2nXj 1:12 PM Mar 22nd

Audience Size Doesn't Prove Influence on Twitter http://bit.ly/9oRXUx 1:07 PM Mar 22nd

RT @socialmedia2day: 5 Ways Social Media Impacts Consideration http://goo.gl/fb/h3hq #sm 12:29 PM Mar 22nd

RT @DavidGurteen: PKM in a nutshell http://bit.ly/aZNWQ2 #km 9:42 AM Mar 22nd

RT @ITSinsider: Tweeting from the future. Look what's become of SharePoint. http://yfrog.com/3oujanj 9:55 PM Mar 19th

RT @tdebaillon: @BillIves @bduperrin @ceciiil My own view on @ceciledemailly's report http://bit.ly/cgpI4k > gd pts 2:03 PM Mar 19th

RT @SmartDataCo: Impact of Collaboration on Enterprise Business Performance http://bit.ly/b9LW9l by @jacobm 8:16 AM Mar 19th

10 Ideas to Help Business Navigate Social Media http://bit.ly/9Gi4kH 8:32 PM Mar 18th

Live Blogging Tips at SXSWi http://bit.ly/aRSobR 8:12 PM Mar 18th

RT @rossdawson: Microblogging Inside and Outside Workplace http://bit.ly/cyN7NH > will hear Kate on 5/24 8:19 PM Mar 17th

judging a company in the age of social media from @sympmarc http://ow.ly/1ncsZ 7:19 PM Mar 17th

intranet secrects site from @thoughtfarmer http://bit.ly/9i1h3z both funny and sad 7:10 PM Mar 17th

28% of iPhone users check/update Twitter before they get out of bed http://bit.ly/apbtEP > not me Mar 17th

RT @GeorgeDearing: another case brought against #Yelp // http://ping.fm/mPdjz 11:43 AM Mar 17th

RT @vdimauro: RT @AdvertisingLa Will B2B Embrace Social Media in 2010? http://bit.ly/dv2oGl (via RT @LA_George) 10:54 AM Mar 17th

RT @dhinchcliffe: Why the New Normal Could Kill IT: http://bit.ly/bFJhnI 10:00 AM Mar 17th

interesting E20 tweet site http://bit.ly/9F7YBX 8:45 PM Mar 16th

RT @darwineco: Twitter’s New “At Anywhere” Platform provides Deeper 3rd party Integration http://tcrn.ch/ceNSZq 3:05 PM Mar 16th

5 New Studies Show Facebook a Marketing Powerhouse http://bit.ly/aJ3nnk via @SBoSM  Mar 16th 

Join our Enterprise 2.0 Conference 2010 Session in June in Boston

 I was pleased to recently learn the session proposal, Using Chaos Theory Principals to Overcome Information Overload within the Enterprise and on the Web, that I submitted with the my Darwin colleague, Thierry Hubert, has been accepted for the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston on June 14-17. I have presented at this conference for the past three years and I am very pleased to do it again. I think this is one of the best conferences on enterprise 2.0 and I always get to see so many virtual colleagues in person  Here is a post on the panel session I participated in last year, Thoughts on Twitter and Business for Enterprise 2.0 Conference. Below is the description for our session. We hope to see you there.

With the addition of social media to the already increasing amount of Web content, companies are spending more resources trying to make sense of what is happening. In addition, the connections between formal, informal, structured and unstructured information are becoming more difficult to establish. It may only get worse with the advent of auto-generated content and other content "farms." In this session we will explore and discuss how the application of chaos theory to this issue can help break the silos of information and allow the emergence of meaningful awareness for better decision -making.  This new paradigm moves beyond Page Rank to reduce the impact of traditional SEO techniques that can elevate low quality content.  We will look at how the visualization of connections between content related to a particular theme can reveal new relationships and help with the discovery and awareness of trends, both anticipated and unanticipated. 

Thierry and I are also speaking the Enterprise Search Summit in New York May 11 on Deriving Order From Chaos Through Discovery and Awareness.