How important are the terms we use in world of, er, oh dear, I've got to pick one: Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, social networking, social media, social business, social intranets, social computing? I've had a couple of interesting conversations this week with some folks from an Intranet company, and in their experience the word 'social' doesn't always go down well with customers. The connotation is often of "not businesslike", "time-wasting". But of the seven terms I've quoted, five use the word 'social'. Of the other two, Enterprise 2.0 is obscure in lay circles, and Web 2.0 is both too broad and too techie-sounding. And in any case all these terms have subtly different meanings.
Can anyone help with a way of dealing with this?
Showing posts with label social_networking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social_networking. Show all posts
Friday, 15 June 2012
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Social Computing in Business
The talk seemed to go down well. It turned into more of a workshop, really, which is what I really wanted. I tried to cover a very broad field in one hour, which was a challenge. I began by checking knowledge levels, and by asking who was more interested in the tools and who in the business-related issues. I got a strong vote for the latter. Nevertheless I did a run-through of the tools, and dwelt a bit on the concept of 'small pieces loosely joined', and the 'glue' of tagging, folksonomy, RSS and so on. There were some ah-ha moments with Delicious, when I explained how the social tags provided an alternative way into the web to Googling.
I covered adoption barriers such as security, 'fear of The Cloud', Chinese Walls and corporate politics, and emphasised that these were important issues but that they aren't insuperable. Towards the end we looked at the idea of companies becoming perhaps more human places as a result of the adoption of social computing / Enterpise 2.0'. That struck a chord with quite a few people. Given that many of them were in jobseeking mode, this did not surprise me. We also talked about the potential value of loose ties when it come to networking in general.
One of the most interesting things for me was to be reminded how broad this topic is, and how it touches on some quite deep issues such as personal identity, organisational behaviour, the role of management and the nature of work.
Here's a link to my talk outline on Mind42.
I covered adoption barriers such as security, 'fear of The Cloud', Chinese Walls and corporate politics, and emphasised that these were important issues but that they aren't insuperable. Towards the end we looked at the idea of companies becoming perhaps more human places as a result of the adoption of social computing / Enterpise 2.0'. That struck a chord with quite a few people. Given that many of them were in jobseeking mode, this did not surprise me. We also talked about the potential value of loose ties when it come to networking in general.
One of the most interesting things for me was to be reminded how broad this topic is, and how it touches on some quite deep issues such as personal identity, organisational behaviour, the role of management and the nature of work.
Here's a link to my talk outline on Mind42.
Sunday, 18 January 2009
Clever old Twitter
When I first came across Twitter, I thought, "What the heck is the point of that?". Later, I came to see the value of it for at least one specific purpose: following the movements of my preferred candidate for mayor of London. Recently, I've found myself using it more and more. Why is this?
I think there are are a number of reasons why Twitter hits the spot in a way that no other social software tool does. Firstly, it is simple. You post, you follow people, and people follow you. Not difficult, that. Secondly, despite this simplicity, it succeeds in blending together the features of a number of other types of tool. This makes it either the best of a number of worlds or a decent compromise, depending on your point of view. The first of these features is the 'friends' concept of Facebook and LinkedIn, but with a twist. Whereas in the former social networks a relationship cannot exist unless it is reciprocated, on Twitter it can be one way. This, for me, 'lowers the bar' when it comes to deciding whom to follow, whom (if anyone) to block, and if/when to de-follow somebody. None of this feels as personal and therefore possibly hurtful as it would on Facebook or LinkedIn. And the consequence is better 'liquidity' of contacts. There need be no stale ones.
The way contacts work on Twitter also makes it easy to select the people you want to follow - by seeing who the people that you follow, or might wish to follow, follow. This is possible on Facebook and LinkedIn, at least to some extent, too. But that reciprocation thing gets in the way.
The second feature is the threads concept of forums. However, whereas in forums, threads are very central to the way a forum works, in Twitter they are very weak. The only way a thread manifests itself is as an @ reply, which links a response to an original comment. At least I think this is the case - any Twitterers reading this who know otherwise, please correct me. De-emphasising threads is arguably no bad thing. At least it prevents the sort of rambles/flames/rants that can spoil the debate on forums.
The third feature is the blogging concept. Or, in Twitter's case microblogging. It's blogging because it's relatively standalone - the blogger on his or her soapbox. But it's different because of the limitation in length of post - 140 characters or 15-20 words. Despite the fact that it's possible to cheat by breaking up a long post into 140 character chunks, this length limitation in practice works to make authors be concise and be interesting - particularly as they would not wish their adoring followers to desert them.
And now for Twitter's pièce de résistance: intimacy with celebrities (as it were). I do not know if this is merely a function of Twitter's newness, or if it will endure. But at the moment it really does feel that if you follow a celebrity Twitterer you are getting a more intimate view of their life than you ever would through other media. Personally, at the moment I'm following Lance Armstrong, John Cleese and Stephen Fry. There are many aspects of celebrity, and the way the broadcast media handle it, that I usually hate. Somehow Twitter turns celebrities back into normal people again. The posts I've seen seem totally authentic, you know they aren't getting paid to do it, and there's always the tantalising thought that you might get an @ reply to one of your comments.
Finally, I think Twitter would be a very good tool for the enterprise. It could either be within the firewall (I think Yammer is an enterprise Twitter-like product for this) or Twitter itself could be used, probably with certain precautions. It could be used to let colleagues know where each other is and what they are doing, but also to create the 'loose ties' of people in different departments or locations that have so much potential for mutual help.
I have converted from Twitter sceptic to Twitter fan. How about you?
I think there are are a number of reasons why Twitter hits the spot in a way that no other social software tool does. Firstly, it is simple. You post, you follow people, and people follow you. Not difficult, that. Secondly, despite this simplicity, it succeeds in blending together the features of a number of other types of tool. This makes it either the best of a number of worlds or a decent compromise, depending on your point of view. The first of these features is the 'friends' concept of Facebook and LinkedIn, but with a twist. Whereas in the former social networks a relationship cannot exist unless it is reciprocated, on Twitter it can be one way. This, for me, 'lowers the bar' when it comes to deciding whom to follow, whom (if anyone) to block, and if/when to de-follow somebody. None of this feels as personal and therefore possibly hurtful as it would on Facebook or LinkedIn. And the consequence is better 'liquidity' of contacts. There need be no stale ones.
The way contacts work on Twitter also makes it easy to select the people you want to follow - by seeing who the people that you follow, or might wish to follow, follow. This is possible on Facebook and LinkedIn, at least to some extent, too. But that reciprocation thing gets in the way.
The second feature is the threads concept of forums. However, whereas in forums, threads are very central to the way a forum works, in Twitter they are very weak. The only way a thread manifests itself is as an @ reply, which links a response to an original comment. At least I think this is the case - any Twitterers reading this who know otherwise, please correct me. De-emphasising threads is arguably no bad thing. At least it prevents the sort of rambles/flames/rants that can spoil the debate on forums.
The third feature is the blogging concept. Or, in Twitter's case microblogging. It's blogging because it's relatively standalone - the blogger on his or her soapbox. But it's different because of the limitation in length of post - 140 characters or 15-20 words. Despite the fact that it's possible to cheat by breaking up a long post into 140 character chunks, this length limitation in practice works to make authors be concise and be interesting - particularly as they would not wish their adoring followers to desert them.
And now for Twitter's pièce de résistance: intimacy with celebrities (as it were). I do not know if this is merely a function of Twitter's newness, or if it will endure. But at the moment it really does feel that if you follow a celebrity Twitterer you are getting a more intimate view of their life than you ever would through other media. Personally, at the moment I'm following Lance Armstrong, John Cleese and Stephen Fry. There are many aspects of celebrity, and the way the broadcast media handle it, that I usually hate. Somehow Twitter turns celebrities back into normal people again. The posts I've seen seem totally authentic, you know they aren't getting paid to do it, and there's always the tantalising thought that you might get an @ reply to one of your comments.
Finally, I think Twitter would be a very good tool for the enterprise. It could either be within the firewall (I think Yammer is an enterprise Twitter-like product for this) or Twitter itself could be used, probably with certain precautions. It could be used to let colleagues know where each other is and what they are doing, but also to create the 'loose ties' of people in different departments or locations that have so much potential for mutual help.
I have converted from Twitter sceptic to Twitter fan. How about you?
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Systemic risk and social media
Presumably there's nobody who hasn't heard of the recent, er, problems in the finance industry. Whilst the wailing and gnashing of teeth are going on, presumably the FSA, SEC and other regulators are pondering how to ensure it 'never happens again'. Targets in the firing line seem to include bonuses and shorting, plus that rather vague term 'transparency' (or rather, opacity, since that's the bogey).
But is there anything much that regulators can do, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater (ie over-regulating and thus stifling enterprise)? And if so is there any connection with social software in the enterprise, thus justifying this post?
I think there might be, but it's not a nice thought. Let me step back a moment. The credit crunch and recent investment bank failures stem from the fact that a duff security - sub-prime mortgages - was wrapped up into opaque financial instruments such as CDOs (collateralised debt obligations). If I understand it correctly, this opacity made these instruments easier to sell than the underlying assets alone would have been, and it became harder for banks to know the true systemic risk they were running. When the sh*t hit the fan, ie the mortgages became worthless because of falling property prices and consequent defaults, not only were the CDOs etc devalued but putting a price on the devaluation became very hard, as did knowing which bank was exposed to what. So the problem was a combination of devaluation and ignorance. It was the ignorance as much as the loss of value that led to the credit crunch and the failures of Bear Stearns, Lehmans and (nearly) Merrill Lynch.
So where am I going with this? The regulators need to get a better, and earlier, hold on systemic risk in future, no matter what gives rise to it. This is not easy to do. Theoretically it can be done by external observation of economic indicators. It might have been possible to deduce that property prices were about to crash and that mortgage-related securities would go with them. But it's always hard to guess when a market has reached its peak, otherwise we'd all be rich. And probability is only one element of risk, the other being consequences or impact. The latter was probably very hard to measure, again because of opacity of the instruments. It all reminds me a bit of the problems at Lloyd's of London in the 1980s with the so-called LMX Spiral: risk accumulated through a chain of reinsurance contracts and no-one knew (until the s*it hit the fan) that it had ended up with a small number of syndicates, who were left holding the parcel when the music stopped.
But is it really true that no-one knows? I emphatically think not. The people who know are those doing the business. You can bet that there were people who knew how potentially toxic those CDOs and what-have-you were. I'm not talking about fraud here, although that did happen also. I mean people doing a relatively honest (by investment banking standards) job, who could see the risk, but had no incentive to do anything about it. In fact they had a big incentive not to - their bonus.
So how does a regulator find out about these risks? S/he needs to tap into what the traders are saying. Once upon a time they just said it in pubs and on street corners. Then, when email came along, some indiscreetly wrote things down, thinking it would remain private. But the regulators could order discovery of it as evidence when something went wrong and it appeared that rules had been broken.
Finally I'm getting to the point. Just as young people often blab about everything they are doing and thinking on social networking sites, then get embarrassed (and maybe risk their employment prospects) when they realise who might be reading it, we can perhaps expect such indiscretion inevitably to occur on social media within the enterprise, when its use becomes widespread. It might come to include traders talking about the latest securitisation wheeze, and how it's gonna be a great little earner for a couple of years until the sh*t hits the fan when x happens. Regulators would be very interested in seeing this material. We may even come to see it as their duty to obtain it. And perhaps to obtain it not just after the horse has bolted, but on an ongoing basis. Not a nice thought, but perhaps inevitable?
But is there anything much that regulators can do, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater (ie over-regulating and thus stifling enterprise)? And if so is there any connection with social software in the enterprise, thus justifying this post?
I think there might be, but it's not a nice thought. Let me step back a moment. The credit crunch and recent investment bank failures stem from the fact that a duff security - sub-prime mortgages - was wrapped up into opaque financial instruments such as CDOs (collateralised debt obligations). If I understand it correctly, this opacity made these instruments easier to sell than the underlying assets alone would have been, and it became harder for banks to know the true systemic risk they were running. When the sh*t hit the fan, ie the mortgages became worthless because of falling property prices and consequent defaults, not only were the CDOs etc devalued but putting a price on the devaluation became very hard, as did knowing which bank was exposed to what. So the problem was a combination of devaluation and ignorance. It was the ignorance as much as the loss of value that led to the credit crunch and the failures of Bear Stearns, Lehmans and (nearly) Merrill Lynch.
So where am I going with this? The regulators need to get a better, and earlier, hold on systemic risk in future, no matter what gives rise to it. This is not easy to do. Theoretically it can be done by external observation of economic indicators. It might have been possible to deduce that property prices were about to crash and that mortgage-related securities would go with them. But it's always hard to guess when a market has reached its peak, otherwise we'd all be rich. And probability is only one element of risk, the other being consequences or impact. The latter was probably very hard to measure, again because of opacity of the instruments. It all reminds me a bit of the problems at Lloyd's of London in the 1980s with the so-called LMX Spiral: risk accumulated through a chain of reinsurance contracts and no-one knew (until the s*it hit the fan) that it had ended up with a small number of syndicates, who were left holding the parcel when the music stopped.
But is it really true that no-one knows? I emphatically think not. The people who know are those doing the business. You can bet that there were people who knew how potentially toxic those CDOs and what-have-you were. I'm not talking about fraud here, although that did happen also. I mean people doing a relatively honest (by investment banking standards) job, who could see the risk, but had no incentive to do anything about it. In fact they had a big incentive not to - their bonus.
So how does a regulator find out about these risks? S/he needs to tap into what the traders are saying. Once upon a time they just said it in pubs and on street corners. Then, when email came along, some indiscreetly wrote things down, thinking it would remain private. But the regulators could order discovery of it as evidence when something went wrong and it appeared that rules had been broken.
Finally I'm getting to the point. Just as young people often blab about everything they are doing and thinking on social networking sites, then get embarrassed (and maybe risk their employment prospects) when they realise who might be reading it, we can perhaps expect such indiscretion inevitably to occur on social media within the enterprise, when its use becomes widespread. It might come to include traders talking about the latest securitisation wheeze, and how it's gonna be a great little earner for a couple of years until the sh*t hits the fan when x happens. Regulators would be very interested in seeing this material. We may even come to see it as their duty to obtain it. And perhaps to obtain it not just after the horse has bolted, but on an ongoing basis. Not a nice thought, but perhaps inevitable?
Thursday, 12 June 2008
Students don't expect their tutor to see Facebook
During a drink last night with a friend who is a noted academic at London University, we talked a bit about social networking. I was interested in the extent to which university students were using Web 2.0 facilities in general as part of their studies. My friend did not seem to have deeply integrated these tools into her teaching methods, but she did remark that she had run a quick search of Facebook and found twelve of her students on there. The interesting thing was the reaction of these twelve on being told that she had done so - deep shock. She emphasised to me that her motives were strictly honorable - no dirt-digging was involved. In fact, she had been thinking of using Facebook as an internal forum for her student group, and that was the reason for checking who was on there. Despite this the reaction of the twelve could not have been stronger if she'd just told them they had all flunked their course.
This came as a surprise to me. I'd assumed that young Facebook users simply didn't care who saw what they were posting. Apparently not. If this group is representative of the whole - and, although it's a small sample, I see no real reason why not - it seems more as if they assume anyone over, say 40, either hasn't heard of Facebook or can't do a search.
Projecting this situation into a corporate context, I'm again having to revise an assumption. This was that young joiners, social networking users to a man (or woman), and of the 'let-it-all-hang-out' style to boot, would pressurise companies to change their culture, and that this in turn might accelerate the adoption of Enterprise 2.0. I now wonder if it isn't more likely that social networking will be a leisure-related medium only, as that's the way 20-somethings want it.
What do you think?
This came as a surprise to me. I'd assumed that young Facebook users simply didn't care who saw what they were posting. Apparently not. If this group is representative of the whole - and, although it's a small sample, I see no real reason why not - it seems more as if they assume anyone over, say 40, either hasn't heard of Facebook or can't do a search.
Projecting this situation into a corporate context, I'm again having to revise an assumption. This was that young joiners, social networking users to a man (or woman), and of the 'let-it-all-hang-out' style to boot, would pressurise companies to change their culture, and that this in turn might accelerate the adoption of Enterprise 2.0. I now wonder if it isn't more likely that social networking will be a leisure-related medium only, as that's the way 20-somethings want it.
What do you think?
Sunday, 16 September 2007
Social networking bandwagon is rolling
I've spent the last few weeks working very intensively to help get a website launched. It's a women's fashion site, and all of us who have been involved are pretty pleased with ourselves at how much we've achieved in such a short time. A few years ago such a site would have been simply an online magazine, perhaps with eCommerce included. From now on, social networking is de rigueur.
I'm not going to go into detail about the project, or even name the site, as the work's ongoing and there might be perceived to be commercial confidentiality issues. (Sorry!) The point I want to raise, I guess, is that I get the impression that just about everyone building a website these days is going to want it to have a social networking component. What does this mean? I think it means that there are soon going to be a heck of a lot of places one can go to on the web to interact with others. I'm not sure how many social networking sites we want or need. Is the latent demand so great that they'll all thrive (at one extreme), or will the whole 'market' consolidate down to 2 or 3 biggies, like Facebook and MySpace?
Any thoughts?
I'm not going to go into detail about the project, or even name the site, as the work's ongoing and there might be perceived to be commercial confidentiality issues. (Sorry!) The point I want to raise, I guess, is that I get the impression that just about everyone building a website these days is going to want it to have a social networking component. What does this mean? I think it means that there are soon going to be a heck of a lot of places one can go to on the web to interact with others. I'm not sure how many social networking sites we want or need. Is the latent demand so great that they'll all thrive (at one extreme), or will the whole 'market' consolidate down to 2 or 3 biggies, like Facebook and MySpace?
Any thoughts?
Tuesday, 24 July 2007
Mixed feelings about social networking sites
Many, many people seem to be signing up with social networking sites - LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Ning, etc at the moment. I've done so myself. For some reason, though, I can't really get excited about them in the way that some people seem to. All this 'poking' and sending virtual presents just seems, well, childish. Not that I'm above being childish, as some of my posts on my motorcyclists forum of choice will testify. So I'm actually struggling to put my finger on what it is exactly that annoys me about these sites.
Perhaps I shouldn't lump them together. LinkedIn is focused on professional networking and attracts more serious behaviour than Facebook or MySpace. If it irritates me it's only in the way that 360 degree feedback used to at work: the sense that all that praise is of diminished value because everyone can find someone to say something nice about them, especially if the favour is to be returned. No, my target is really Facebook. I'm not criticising the creators of Facebook, I just don't somehow feel inclined to join the big party that they are hosting.
I think it has something to do with my personal history of Web 2.0 behaviour. I've used discussion forums, mainly in connection with my passion for motorcycling, for about seven years. I was very addicted to one in particular for some time. Back in the autumn (fall) of 2006 I realised how blogging had taken off, how wikis were coming to prominence, how tagging was taking off, and how combining these three things and using RSS also could revolutionise knowledge-sharing within organisations. This of course had been spotted earlier by others and dubbed Enterprise 2.0. I started blogging on the subject and discovered a community of people doing the same. I was, and continue to be, very impressed at the quality of the material that was posted on these blogs. I came to feel that what Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 really meant was not only an increase in interaction and 'emergence' on the Internet and inside the forewall but an increase in maturity of use also. Facebook has dashed that hope. By comparison with the profession-related blogs the content is dross. If a good blog is the Web 2.0 eqivalent of the Financial Times, Facebook is The Sun (and MySpace is the Daily Sport).
Or maybe I'm just becoming a member of the crew of the TV programme, "Grumpy Old Men".
What do you think?
Thursday, 3 May 2007
'Social Computing' versus Enterprise 2.0
A couple of recent experiences have prompted me to think about definitions, or, more interestingly, what someone might have in mind when they use one of the many terms for Web 2.0 etc.
The first was my getting involved in a tender for a contract with a public sector archive organisation. Perhaps not the stuff of Web 2.0, you might think. But this organisation is keen to investigate applying 'social computing' to its archives website. In their case their definition of social computing is broad, which is fine, because what they want done is a survey of the field. But if they had simply decided to award a contract to build a 'social computing' facility, the wise contractor would have taken quite a lot of trouble to pin down the definition. Otherwise, how long is a piece or string?
The second was an interesting chat with an information manager in a firm of headhunters. She wasn't hunting my head, just kicking a few ideas around with me. My knee-jerk assumption when talking about Enterprise 2.0 is that it'll be about internal knowledge-sharing via blogs and wikis, loosely structured and 'socialised' via tagging and RSS. She was skeptical about the chances of this taking off in her organisation. People don't have time, incentives don't support sharing, culturally information is something that has to be 'pushed'. On the other hand, there is great interest in social networks of the LinkedIn kind, because a headhunter's business is people and the relationships between them. Nirvana would be to be able to integrate information from external sources and the internal contacts database to give an overview of connections, LinkedIn-style.
I have learnt that when I start talking about "Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 / Social Computing etc etc" I need to make sure we're both on the same wavelength. And probably each organisation will have a subtly different need.
The first was my getting involved in a tender for a contract with a public sector archive organisation. Perhaps not the stuff of Web 2.0, you might think. But this organisation is keen to investigate applying 'social computing' to its archives website. In their case their definition of social computing is broad, which is fine, because what they want done is a survey of the field. But if they had simply decided to award a contract to build a 'social computing' facility, the wise contractor would have taken quite a lot of trouble to pin down the definition. Otherwise, how long is a piece or string?
The second was an interesting chat with an information manager in a firm of headhunters. She wasn't hunting my head, just kicking a few ideas around with me. My knee-jerk assumption when talking about Enterprise 2.0 is that it'll be about internal knowledge-sharing via blogs and wikis, loosely structured and 'socialised' via tagging and RSS. She was skeptical about the chances of this taking off in her organisation. People don't have time, incentives don't support sharing, culturally information is something that has to be 'pushed'. On the other hand, there is great interest in social networks of the LinkedIn kind, because a headhunter's business is people and the relationships between them. Nirvana would be to be able to integrate information from external sources and the internal contacts database to give an overview of connections, LinkedIn-style.
I have learnt that when I start talking about "Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 / Social Computing etc etc" I need to make sure we're both on the same wavelength. And probably each organisation will have a subtly different need.
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