Yesterday, I did something that suggested to me that we are at an important tipping point in the psychology of Web 2.0 adoption. Within an hour of hearing the news of Facebook acquiring Friendfeed, I signed up for the latter, using my Facebook login info. I’d known for a year that Friendfeed is a great dashboard service that integrates your social media presence, but I had not joined. Apparently I wasn’t alone. Friendfeed was at one point described by TechCrunch (I think) as ‘a great service nobody will ever use.’ So how do you interpret actions like mine?
So here we are just a couple weeks away from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. We have been working for eight-plus months on the agenda and we are ready for a great event. Personally, I’m just ready to get to Boston and hear from all the great speakers we have lined up! Like Stowe, I recently had the opportunity to speak with Ulrike Reinhold about Enterprise 2.0 and cover some of our highlights and goals for the upcoming conference. There are a lot of great programs at this year’s event that didn’t get a chance to cover in the interview. So here are some of the important links to check out our program:
Hiya all! A quick blog post to let everyone know that we’re putting more fuel into our Twitter account - @e2conf
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The truly unique characteristics of Twitter are its simplicity and lack of specific purpose or application. Twitter is merely a digital conversation; albeit one that’s constrained to short statements of 140 characters or less. Like any conversation, you choose to talk to one other person at a time or broadcast out to many. You can make your conversations private or public. You can choose to blather, or to comment on everything from walking your dog to world affairs. You can follow and share your thoughts with thousands of people or you can offer your attention to a select few. As with any live conversation, contribute something particularly witty, funny or unique and your comment could be repeated to millions of users by Twitter’s digital word of mouth, also known as a re-tweet. At its core, Twitter is just a platform for simple conversation and that’s what makes it unique.
Drip some ink on a piece of fabric and watch what happens. Depending on the type of fabric, the blot spreads at different speeds along the warp and woof. The pattern that appears reveals as much about the fabric as it does about the ink. What does this have to do with social media? Here is a picture of a chain email diffusing through the social fabric, created by Cornell researcher Jon Kleinberg (picture taken from a Cornell University news article).
As I write, a Presidential news conference is going on, a broadcast event that I, like many of you, would have treated as ‘unmissable’ 10 years ago. Yet, today, I am happy to keep twhirl in my peripheral vision, trusting that if anything truly important is said, tweets or emails will come my way. I have let a vast, trusted crowdsourced filter descend over my eyes. My changed behavior is just one symptom of the waning of broadcasting and the waxing of diffusecasting (I hereby claim credit for the term) as the central process in mass communications. Virality and word-of-mouth are just surface characteristics. Here is a deeper X-Ray view. Mass persuaders, read this if you value your future in your profession. Continue Reading »
Two quotes immediately flashed across my mind as I started reading Listening to the Future by Dan Rasmus, a key soothsayer at Microsoft, and Rob Salkowitz, a free ranger in the Microsoft ecosystem who occasionally wanders further afield. The first is a Kant quote: we see not what is, but who we are. The second is due to Alan Kay, a big name in the hoary past of my employer, Xerox: the easiest way to predict the future is to invent it. Looking out and ahead at the future is as much a synthetic and introspective act as it is a predictive act, even if you don’t explicitly set out to introspect or synthesize. Microsoft’s visions of the future merit some belief simply because the vast energies of that 600 lb gorilla, channeled by those visions, might be sufficient to bring them about. Goliaths win more often than we suspect, because Goliath beating David doesn’t make the news. For you and me, this book is vastly more interesting for what it reveals about the strategic culture at Microsoft than for what it reveals about the future (which is interesting enough in its own right though). If Rasmus’ views are representative, and I believe they are, here’s the radar with which Microsoft is operating (this is a rough copy of a figure in the book):
I posted last month about the prospect of new phone companies seeking to leverage the Android platform, and it looks like we won’t have to wait much longer, as the Open Handset Alliance just announced 14 new members, including major vendors like Sony Ericsson and Vodafone.
Each new member must contribute significantly towards the advancement of the Android platform. This can manifest itself in different ways. Per the recent press release:
New members will either deploy compatible Android devices, contribute significant code to the Android Open Source Project, or support the ecosystem through products and services that will accelerate the availability of Android-based devices. With these commitments, the Open Handset Alliance will continue to drive greater and faster innovation for the benefit of mobile users and everyone in the industry.
… I’ve been pleasantly surprised and equally disappointed. Here’s a list of some of the things I love, and some of things I really don’t love about the first phone to utilize the Android OS .
Google today announced voice and video chat capabilities as part of its chat service embedded into Gmail. This is clearly a shot across the bow at Skype, SightSpeed (recently acquired by Logitech) and Oovoo. It’s also a competitive move against Microsoft Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, as Google continues to evolve it’s mail application into a full blown UC dashboard.
Google’s move is also indicative of what we’re seeing in the enterprise space, as telephony vendors and messaging vendors converge while basing their UC offerings on their relative strengths. Google’s voice/video chat nicely integrates into Gmail, enabling customers to use their Gmail contact list for chat, rather than having to maintain separate buddy lists in different applications. Now, how long before Google repositions Orkut as an alternative to Facebook that is fully integrated into Gmail & chat?
The Enterprise 2.0 Blog is affiliated with the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, an event focusing on social tools and technologies that help make companies more creative, agile and productive.
Aug 11th, 2009 |
