I thought that statement in-and-of-itself worthy of a blog post…I played quite a lot with Facebook today (adding friends, trying out apps, joining groups, etc).  I have to say, I’m impressed.  Opening up FB to developers has created a wealth of apps (a few quality issues not withstanding) that are interesting from a social connections and commerce standpoint.  My favorite of the day:  iLike.  There also seems to be a huge # of what look like pretty useless apps, but the long tail is emerging and it’s fairly easy to let democracy (and your friends) before you help you find the better apps.

Get with it…if you aren’t using it already, now’s a good time to give it a try.

sean

Popularity: 9% [?]

Over the last several weeks, average daily page views to this blog have increased about 30%…along with it, a number of new subscribers to my RSS Feed.  So, to my new readers…WELCOME and thanks for checking out this site.  I sincerely hope you find valuable things here to read.  For those who have stuck with me the last few months since I launched, a hearty thank you to you as well.  There’s no compliment like a bit of readership:)

As this site has grown, I’ve come to the conclusion it will soon need a re-design with a focus on findability of the "best" content.  But, that is still work for another day.  Given the arrival of more recent readers, I decided to post here a quick guide to the most frequently read content from the first ~120 days of this blog…as well as a few calls to action.

Quick links:

Why this blog started in the first place:  A Logical Beginning.

Convincing the unconverted on Communities:  The 5 part (to date) series!

Part 1: The Analogy

Part 2: Fear by Example

Part 3: The Data/Evidence Approach

Part 4: The Assumptive Close

Part 5: Is your baby ugly?

Business Case for Community topics:

• Where for Art Thou Community ROI
• Your Community Already Exists
• Online Discussions:  Insights you can use!
• Enhancing Online and Community Support Models: Speech abstract

Community Management topics:

• Community Segmentation model
• The Trouble with Trolls
• Does your company support Employee Blogging?
• A little Discussion on corporate transparency
• Time to Consider the Pareto Principle

Technology:

• Are you "Tag Drafting"
• Visualization of Tag Drafting

Podcasts on communities I’ve done:

#1:  Mobile Tech in TAFE

#2:  Buzz Marketing for Technology

#3:  Solshare interview

Calls to action:

• Grab my RSS feed if you enjoyed reading anything here.
• Are you Twittering??  Get with it and add me here.
• Facebook?  Add me here.
• Delicious?  "Draft" me here.
• Check out my day job here. 
• Add me in Linkedin here.
• REALLY like this page?  Favorite me in Technorati  (shameless promotion…)
• And Finally:  If you find things here you like and you blog…have you linked to me?  Thanks!!

Sean

Popularity: 12% [?]

On memorial day I hosted a BBQ at my house (nothing new - it was my 2nd BBQ party that weekend).  My neighbors (J & S I’ll call them) were over and all the kids were at play.  The 4 of us sat on the deck, wine in hand and visiting as usual.  "J" works for HP and "S" recently became the managing director of a very cool non-profit called Explorations in Math here in Seattle.  There is no question that I’m a web2.0 addict, but that said, it rarely is part of my daily dialog with family, friends, neighbors, etc.  There are plenty of other important and or entertaining topics to discuss at any given dinner party.

Both my wife and I are regular bloggers, so "S" asked us how our blogging was going.  She doesn’t read blogs and was curious what we blog about.  Her impression of blogging was people just talking about their daily lives and that frankly she couldn’t be less interested in reading random people’s daily update blogs or taking the time to author her own.  In fairness, it seems to me this is the majority of blogs…99.9% of which I find completely worthy of ignoring.

At this moment I asked them if they had heard of Twitter.  I think I was reveling in the fact that if they felt this way about Blogs, they’d really think Twitter was non-sense.  Describing Twitter, "S" reacted as expected - this is even less interesting.  To my surprise, "J’s" interest perked up.  He made the quick leap, which I liked, to the fact that there are a lot of people he’d be interesting in keeping tabs on, but really doesn’t want to talk to on the phone very often.   Our wives (probably very accurately) both thought this was very male of us.  It astounds my wife that I can have 1-2 conversations a year with some friends and that is enough and totally normal, whereas she talks with some of her friends nearly every day (a fact that I’m equally astounded by)!!

This lead to an discussion about MySpace.  My wife told the story of another group of friends who have recently come to parental battle with their 13 year old daughter who has a MySpace page.  The classic parent story - you CAN’T have one, she figured out how to do it anyway…they found out…explosion occurs.  This scenario has played out as long as there have been parents and kids.

Date:  54 BC

Og’s mother:  "Og, you will NOT hunt wooly mammoths until you are at least 14!!"

Og’s father (a few hours later):  "Hey, where’s my good spear?  Where is Og?"

"S" reflected on her solidarity with our friends stance on the MySpace page for their 13 year old.  I then told them about a speech I recently gave to a group of 40+ year old business leaders where I asked the following questions:

• How many of you have a MySpace page? (maybe 3 of 40+ hands went up)
• How many of you have kids with a MySpace page?  (maybe 12-15 hands went up)
• How many of the rest of you really don’t know if your kids have a MySpace page? (nervous chuckles and lots of hands)

There is no question that social networking offers some serious dangers for children.  (I tagged some online resources here).  You are never as anonymous as you think you are.  Check your online photos:  Do they include photos of your children?  Does your house # and or street appear in the background of a photo?  Even those of us who are inherently cautious are likely not cautious enough.

It’s a serious issue, but you won’t stop your kids from utilizing social networking online - and in fact, you’d likely be doing them a disservice long term to not enable them to be a part of this important new medium.  But, you need to do so like most things, by clearly helping your children understand your concerns, what the risks are and how to do so safely.  Oversight is definitely important, but don’t push their online actions into the underground - keep them out and discussed at the dinner table.

Good luck.

Sean

Footnote:  This conversation with "S" led to an exciting conversation about how her non-profit might be able to integrate social networking features into their non-profit mission!!  What a natural connection!  Damn that was a fun BBQ!

Popularity: 5% [?]

3 people helped each day, "paid forward" by each person helps 4.7M people in two weeks.

Sean

Popularity: 19% [?]

Well, if I didn’t already think I was working in the vortex of a huge shift, my own employer (Microsoft) put a exclamation point on it yesterday with the $6B acquisition of aQuantive. You can read more about the purchase and public statements here.

aQuantive is pretty interesting, bringing to Microsoft some very cool players in Razorfish/Avenue A - leaders in online/web presence.  Take the work done with Carnival Cruise lines here.  This site, Carnival Connections, is essentially a travel, e-commerce and social media site with cruise reviews (destinations and ships) as well as a section called "cruise talk" with user to user conversation forums.  I think I said once here: "there’s little point in visiting a vendor web site that doesn’t host user to user conversations."

Another interesting example is Daimler Chrysler’s Mobile Kids site. Think Secondlife on a small scale for immersive play for kids where they can accumulate points in "Mokitown" as they learn and demonstrate safe behaviors.   Choose your character, pick their clothes, decide how they travel… as a parent with small kids, I like this site - teaching your kids through games like this is often more effective than the more typical parent/child "lecture series" of daily life. (note:  it is no substitute for good parenting, but a little help is certainly welcome).

So, I don’t know what happens next, but to be sure, this is another clear sign of the monumental shift toward participative media - where your users and you share space and conversations with one another - you’re job, as I’ve said all along…is to figure out your role in that conversation.  The destination is the death of the "corporate voice" and the arrival/acceptance of the "blended voice" - you and your users have open, unfiltered conversations for the world to see.  And, let’s face it, as both a supplier and a user - this new destination is far more unpredictable and therefore a lot more interesting!

Sean

Popularity: 6% [?]

Well, since I abandoned MS live spaces quickly after launching this blog there first, I thought I owed a little plug to some enhancements just rolled out.  Some friends at Liveside did a good job pulling the list together here.  I thought some of the facts highlighted upfront interesting:

• 93M spaces created since spaces launched (51 countries/25 languages)
• 111M users/month
• 18M photos per day uploaded (4B since launch)

I’d qualify that as a pretty active set of communities.  Note…Spaces itself is not a community by my way of think…but a collection of communities, some active and likely many that are largely static.

Sean

Popularity: 5% [?]

Let me know if I might see you there! 

May 3rd and 4th I’ll be attending and speaking at the Online Community Business Forum, put on by Forum One Communications.  Over the last few months I’ve met Jim Cashel and Bill Johnston of Forum One - a couple of very committed guys on the influence of virtual communities.  I’m really looking forward to this event and my opportunity to co-present with my counterpart from Apple.  I haven’t met him yet, but I can’t resist suggesting to him that we start our session with him saying “I’m a Mac” and me responding “…and I’m a PC.” 
On May 7th and 8th I’ll be attending and speaking at SSPA, Service and Support Professionals association.  Kurt Samuelson, responsible for Support.Microsoft.com and I will co-present on Enhancing Online Community and Support Models. 

And finally, on June 6th, I’m planning to attend Forum One’s Online Community Unconference. 

Do let me know if you’ll be at any of these and I’ll certainly plan to blog the best bits from each.

Sean

Popularity: 5% [?]

Really curious what others think about this…and I guess even more curious if anyone would share their experiences using it!!

If you are "Tag Drafting" me, you already found this article in The Seattle Times from about a week ago.  It talks about a local company, Visible Technologies as a company to watch.  I’ve quoted a big chunk of the article by Brier Dudley here as I think it’s a good intro…

"Visible is monitoring every place that people can submit comments online and copying the conversations into a massive database.

Discussions are mapped, influential people are identified and Visible’s software then helps clients engage in the conversations or directly contact the influencers.

…Its other major product is a search-optimization tool that companies and several local billionaires use to influence how they appear in search engines’ top results.

…If a blogger badmouths the Hummer, for instance, the system could notify GM. Within the console, a PR person can draft a response, inserting key points, then get approval to post or e-mail the nettlesome blogger.

Clients pick an "author" or opt for anonymity. Visible also has a virtual army — thousands of personas registered with online forums.

Graziano said the idea is to make it easier for companies to respond and participate, but it’s up to clients to decide how the tools are used.

"This is a communication tool," he said. "It’s not a pull-the-wool-over-anybody’s-eyes tool."

It makes you think twice about the authenticity of conversations in the Web community. It’s also a reminder that you have to think critically about all media, new and old, online and off.

The technology can also backfire, if the users go too far and come across as inauthentic participants online, said Forrester Research analyst Peter Kim.

"In the end," he said, "the authentic voices win out: the human voices."

In an earlier post, I asked if "Google is stealing equity from your brand?"  In that post I questioned what affiliations (and therefore risks) your brand takes based on what comes up with it when users search for you.  And what you might do about these risks.  Then today, from the Visible Technologies web site I quote:

With more than 90 percent of consumers now relying on Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, and AOL for information, what people see when results are returned for your brand and employees can have a major impact on your reputation and business.

Let’s think a little about the services Visible is offering (TruView and TruCast) and let’s assume they work brilliantly (this is an assumption, I have no idea:  I guess if they use their own products, they could make a point by demonstrating that they found my little post about them here.)

• TruView:  Reputation management service for organizations, brands, companies and/or people designed to "ensure that fair and accurate information is correctly ranked among the top 20 results on each site when people search for your company, products and services, or executive management team."

hmmm.  Well, I can’t help but think that "fair and accurate" is often NOT aligned with what an org, brand, company or people want discovered first.  Who decides what is "fair and accurate?" - the users or the company?  And what steps does the service take to deliver on this product promise?  Dangerous but interesting ground.  I could sure see politicians and celebrities using a service like this and potentially with fair intent.  I could also see this used to the extreme in ways that really damage the utility of independent user communities - critical voices marginalized.

• TruCast: Online Conversation Marketing solution.  Harvests all the user generated conversations about "you."  Identifies and categorizes the conversations, identifies Influencers and directs/orchestrates your participation/response process.

To be sure, I don’t think there is any real shortcut to engaging in "your" communities.  However, I would be really interested to see how this worked.  The concept here I think fits very well with insight capture discussed in an earlier post.  And of course I am a huge proponent of influencer detection and engagement as a cornerstone of community strategy development.  I’m not sure I like the examples used to describe this service as they feel very marketing centric and I fear that if your community engagement is about marketing response to online conversations about "you" then you are in trouble.  Those responses generally only benefit YOU and not your users, so the balance is not right - and therefore your community strategy is defensive or controlling vs truly participative.  But, this comes down to how you use the tool, not the tool itself.

I guess in debating if this is good, bad or it depends, I almost see this like a weapons manufacturer.  The weapons themselves are neither good nor bad - it depends on who ultimately is using them and for what purposes.  I really hope to learn more about this to share later.

A few other companies with related products or services:  Buzz Metrics, Neboweb, Digital Vigilance, icrossing.

Sean

del.icio.us tags: web2.0, online, social, community, o’driscoll, drafting, visible, buzz, reputation

Popularity: 22% [?]

Useful nuggets to be shared…Thanks Dion Hinchcliffe at zdnet:  Does every organization need a Web 2.0 strategy?  Dion is essentially reacting to Gartner’s 2006 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle.  Overall, I think this is a worthwhile review, though in my opinion it talks a lot more about the what and the how from a technology perspective, than the business, organizational or social reasons that address the questions of why web 2.0 matters to business.

The key element to me is the discussion of the notion of "collective Intelligence" which has been a core topic here at Community Group Therapy.

Coach Wie at Web2.0 Journal has another good contribution worth reading:  Every Organization Should Have a Web 2.0 Strategy.

sean

Popularity: 5% [?]

Not new, but new to me, so maybe new to you too.

First off, I like this site in terms of lecture/educational content:  http://videolectures.net/.

More specifically, I’d point you at the Interview on the Semantic web of Tom Gruber (of Realtravel), but it looks like many worthwhile listens on this site. 

His message to the community:  "Be relevant" - A nice, simple bumper sticker for Web 2.0.

Note: Most useless interviewer question:  "Will the semantic web still be the same thing in 100 years?" - in the pace of change in this industry?  Waste of a question…let’s think out 5/10/20 years…but 100??

There’s also a Tom keynote:  Where the Social Web meets the Semantic Web

This is a great listen in terms of fundamental principles on the social web and the power of collective intelligence.  He identifies 5 roles for technologies in the semantic web:

• Capturing everything
• Storing everything
• Distributing everything
• Enabling many-to-many communications
• Creating value from the data

It’s this 5th dimension, creating value, where the real work remains, but the above would provide a nice frame for developing a plan for moving your current approach from Web 1.0 to 2.0 and beyond.

Hope you find this valuable if you didn’t discover already.

Sean

Popularity: 5% [?]