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 Alternatively, if you had responded to the event ASAP, and convened a strategy session with your partners, you could have avoided the cost and time involved in the two day detour. And of course, the impact of this propagates through the networks of those five project members, outward through the company and other partners. And if other network members likewise respond in real-time, similar productivity savings can be accomplished. This is the idea of synchronization amplification: paradoxically, increasing synchronous communication early in event response leads to an overall increase in asynchronous performance as the communication streams through the greater network. And continuous partial attention is a necessary precondition: without moving to that mode of time and communication management we will never get that ability to steal a march on events. The trick may be to filter events so that only those that are material intrude on our reflections and heads-down work. We shouldn't jump up and run in circles every time the wind shakes the leaves, but we cannot afford to become so engrossed in what we are doing that we miss the leopard about to pounce. There is no absolute here. Those that simply refuse to carry cell phones, or never log in to IM are dangerous to their organizations. If you are a solitary journalist, or a very senior executive, such behavior may be workable: in the former case, no one is harmed by your opting out, and in the latter case you are likely to have staffers who filter the outside world for you. But for the average person, linked in a dense, cascading social network of collaborators who depend on your timely response to critical events, it will prove increasingly difficult -- if not impossible -- to veer away from continuous partial attention. We will have to learn a new balancing act, and it will be strongly canted toward spending more cycles scanning the horizon and fewer looking down at the piecework in our laps. Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Social Search: Trying To Find A Connection
A recent series of newstories on the explosion of interest in social search in the large search players, likeGoogle and Microsoft, is underscoring the hope that a new approach will lead to better search results. Getting back 161,997 hits when you search for "blues" can be reduced by social cues: if you are an active member of a music circle, the request likely means blues music, whereas if you are a practicing psychologist you are more than likely to be interested in depression, and an artist might be searching for the perfect color. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology tunA: A Handheld Ad-hoc Radio Device For Local Music Sharing
I read about tunA recently. It looks like a cool application for wireless-enabled PDAs with music capabilities (like my Fujitsu Lifebook).
Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Tracking The Buzz Around Social Networking Applications
"TrendIQ has been measuring changes in the "internet presence" of the Social Networking Sites on the internet since February 8, 2004. Social Networking sites are an emerging human networking technology utilizing the internet to build personal networks." LinkedIn seems to be getting a lot of buzz. I think the list will need to be extended: doesn't include Visible Path or Orkut, for example. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Weinberger on the Microsoft Social Computing Symposium
Almost as good as being there is reading David's comments on the Microsoft Social Computing conference. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Handicapping Social Networking Business Models
This column elaborates on some of the ideas that I explored in the recent KM Cluster presentation in NYC (see the presentation, in PDF or as a recorded webcast).
Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Social Tools: Ready for the Enterprise?
Due to several requests, I am posting the PDF of my recent presentation:Social Tools: Ready for the Enterprise?. Click here to download the file.
Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Events March 30, 2004Snam
Ouch. Scott Kirsner at Fast Company reports on the appearance of a new term: "Snam." Got it. I've written several times about social network spam, although I wasn't Czechoslovakian enough to call it snam. And I don't limit it to the unwanted email generated by such systems. I include other stuff that gums up the works:
At any rate, perhaps any effective use of social networking for business will have to generate some sort of pellet-sized business proposition that will smell like snam. And it isn't restrincted to the email path, but all the mechanisms of communication that become channels for social networking systems. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology March 29, 2004Social Tools: Ready For The Enterprise?
My first monthly webcast, entitled Social Tools: Ready For The Enterprise? is available for viewing.
Let me know what you think. Future webcast are likely to be considerably shorter (like 25 mins) plus a few minutes of sponsor information. [Note: I really have to get a new headshot -- seeing my 50-year-old white goatee side by side with the 40-year-old brown goatee makes it really obvious!] [Also note: This is my first foray into the use of Macromedia Breeze. I hope to write up some notes on that later in the week, but so far it has been very, very easy to use.] Comments (2) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Events | Technology Fractal Blogspace
I am in there -- small, but noticeable if you click to enlarge the image. The graphic was generated using technology developed by Levitated. Go check it out. Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology David Teten's Notes On 3/26/04 Social Networks Symposium
David Teten made copious blog notes on the symposium thrown by KM Cluster in NYC last week, including notes on my presentation. It weird to see yourself through other people's eyes in general, but I sound pretty much like myself in David's treatment: That's me, alright. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Cost of Inflight Access: Skyhigh
Boeing announced pricing last week for its Connexion inflight wireless internet service. Its going to cost you more than those Wolfgang Puck sandwiches that airlines are selling these days. Connexion will be offered at both flat-rate and metered pricing:
Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Telecommunications New Osterman Survey Shows Enterprise IM Use Growing
A recent survey by Osterman Research shows continued acceptance of instant messaging inthe enterprise, according to Demir Barlas at Line56.com. "With a sample space of 195 employees, the survey found that 44 percent are currently using IM "for business applications," with another 12.8 percent indicating plans to do so. Nearly a quarter of respondents are in the "undecided" category, with the remaining 19 percent claiming that they have no plans to use IM."While the sample size seems awfully small, I think it is indicative of what I have been seeing and hearing in discussions with vendors: enterprise acceptance for instant messaging continues to grow. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Spim on the Rise
A recent piece in New Scientist digs into the drivers and headaches around spim -- instant messaging spam: "The volume of so-called "spim" is set [to] triple in 2004, according to a new report from the Radicati Group, a technology market research firm in Palo Alto, California.Yikes. A great reason to tighten the controls that IM already offers us. This is also a great argument for enterprises to bring on instant messaging management offerings from firms like IMlogic, Facetime, Akonix, and ZoneLabs, that will block spim before it gets to your IM client. This does not necessarily block pornbots encountered in public chat rooms, however: "Another spimming tool is even more stealthy. Spimmers deploy bots in chatrooms that pose as people and persuade other chatters to invite them on to their buddy lists. In a crowded chatroom, an invitation can be solicited with a fairly rudimentary impersonation, says Stowe Boyd of the technology consulting firm A Working Model in Virginia." Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology March 24, 2004Oracle Collaboration Suite Upgrade: Later Than Planned
ITworld.com reports that Oracle has announced that the planned release of a significantly enhanced version of Collaboration Suite will come late in the year, instead of June or July, as earlier announced. The company is remaining mum on the core question about its instant messaging technology. I asked Ramu Sunkara about the purchase of Jabber licences (reported here last year), and he stated that Oracle would be rolling out integrated instant messaging that will support both XMPP (the Jabber protocol) and SIP/SIMPLE (adopted by Microsoft and IBM). The question of whether Oracle will be using Jabber technology is still unanswered. In related news, Oracle announced that Terry Olkin, the cofounder and former chief technology officer of secure messaging vendor Secure Data in Motion Inc., (also known as Sigaba), has joined Oracle as Chief Architect for Collaboration Suite: "Olkin will set the future direction for the product. I still maintain that Oracle is doing the right thing for its customers by jumping past an initial release of an unintegrated IM product directly into a second generation, integrated real-time collaboration environment (as I wrote last summer). But if the users have to wait too long, it will be increasingly difficult to transition them from competitors' products. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology March 23, 2004IDEA OASIS: Dating/Social Networking Industry Association Forming
A few weeks ago, I received two press releases in one email, and then a few minutes later, a request from the PR person who sent them to ignore one of the two. It highlighted the formation of a new industry association for dating/social networking. It appears that the group has decided to go public, now that a few weeks have passed. The group, the Internet Dating Executive Alliance/Online Association for Social Industry Standards (IDEA OASIS) will be holding an inaugural meeting July 15 in Nice France, at the upcoming Internet Dating Conference. The group seems to be rallying around technology and privacy standards that will provide users with more options and less concerns: "The mission of the organization will be to set ethical standards for social networking sites that are members. Examples include standards such as protection of account privacy and verification of membership. The association will focus on providing value to its membership by facilitating information exchange between members, enabling members access to its extensive information repository, assisting members in understanding emerging technologies and its impact, creating relationships for members with various third party vendors which will include services and products at discounted prices. We intend to change the economics of the social networking business in a manner beneficial to our members. We also intend to fully insure that our members will have representation with lawmakers. IDEA OASIS will also promote ethical social networking and online dating management for both our members as well as to the general community at large."All noble aims, but the fact that many of the largest and most well known players in the dating/social networking space are not members suggests that we may be seeing an explosion of competing industry associations forming. In fact, I know of several other activities (unannounced) underway. I note that Michael Jones is a member of IDEA OASIS. Michael is the president of UserPlane, a developer of Flash-based web applications that provide streaming video and audio, like the company's Instant Communicator product that I reviewed last year. [Disclosure: Userplane is a Get Real sponsor.] Userplane does not have products in this market, per se, although its technology has been licensed by others in support of dating/social networking services. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: March 22, 2004Shinkuro Beta v2.0
I had a chance to explore the collaboration technology of Shinkuro over the past two weeks, which I mentioned in my recent review of Groove (see Groove v3.0: A Tool For Our Times).
It appears that the folks at Groove and Shinkuro have been converging on an amazingly similar approach to file-based collaboration, based on leveraging shared folders. However, Shinkuro supports Mac OS X and plans to support Linux in the future, while Groove has chosen to support only Windows at this time. Both have an integrated chat and instant messaging style of communication. Clearly, these are directly competitive solutions. Shinkuro has built its technology based on funding through a DARPA research contract, but is investigating commercial application of the technology, obviously. [By the way, the folks at Shinkuro tell me the name is the Japanese word for "synchro" in case you were wondering.] Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Microsoft's ISV Show - 8 March 2004
Gurdeep Pall, who I interviewed in a recent issue of Message (see Evolution and Revolution: Real-Time Changes Everything), discusses real-time opportunities for ISVs, and Sim Simeonov of Polaris Venture Partners talks about a number of venture angles in collaboration, including social networking, instant messaging, and other collaboration plays. Note: Polaris has not yet invested in any social networking company, but Sim's observations about trust and proximity services "buried in the core infrastructure of a major player" are way ahead of the market curve and worth hearing. I also agree wholeheartedly with his comments re: "failing quickly" as an indicator of smart investing: find out as quickly as possible that a business model doesn't work. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Friendzy Upgrade
I don't think I ever wrote anything in detail about Friendzy, which at first glance some months ago looked like yet-another-dating-service-disguised-as-SNA. They recently announced an upgrade to the service that includes something absolutely necessary: blocking. You need to be able to block requests from specific individuals. I need this at any social networking solution: I desperately need it at LinkedIn, where, somehow, organically, I have amassed a network of 100+ people, and wher I am getting requests every few days. But since I went back to Friendzy to check out the blocking feature, I though I would at least highlight some things I thought were interesting there.
I had not explored (or noticed?) the extended profile capability for Friendzy, which includes a lightweight blogging capability (as shown above). As I have repeatedly stated, like the recent post about Small Planet, this area will be the epicenter of the convergence of implicit SN (a la blogging) and the explicit SN that goes on in SNAs.
It still looks like a socializing for fun and dating sort of site, rather than being geared toward business, but the inclusion of classified ads shows that they are trending toward a fee-for-services model, anyway, like Tribe.net and others. The dating side of the world is still strong there. Check out the Friendzicons that you can send to people. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Popup Sales Chat
I saw a recent piece by Lisa DiCarlo in Forbes.com about the use of web chat capabilities at web sites that emulate the annoying or helpful (depending on your persepctive) sales person in a retail store who asks "Can I help you find anything?" "Rackspace Managed Hosting, of San Antonio, Tex., has embedded a proactive live chat into its Web site. The scenario works like this: After roaming the Web site for about 30 seconds, a user is greeted with a live, pop-up chat window that includes a thumbnail picture of a salesperson and a header announcing a "Live Conversation with Jay." "Hello," Jay might type next. "Can I help you with some managed hosting solutions today?" Rackspace seems to be a bit ahead of the curve, but I expect that most companies will enable such popup chat services in the near-term. The experience of the user is one of higher involvement, and potentially less confusion. In various surveys, those Internet users who were familiar with instant messaging technology expressed a willingness to use it rather than the telephone for tech support, and more so that email. This is a no brainer. [Thanks to burgburgburg at slashdot] Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology March 19, 2004Blog Survey: Summary of Findings - Fernanda Viegas
I saw that a recent survey about blogging had been developed and analyzed by Viegas, who is a PhD candidate working in the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Lab. The bottom-line: "Formerly viewed as a marginal activity restricted to the technically savvy, blogging is slowly becoming more of a mainstream phenomenon on the Internet. Thanks to much media hype and some high profile blog sites, these online journals have captured the public's imagination. As novice authors plunge into the thrilling world of blog publishing, they soon realize that publicly writing about one's life and interests is not as simple as it might seem at first. As they become prolific writers, more bloggers find themselves having to deal with issues of privacy and liability. [emphasis mine] Accounts of bloggers either hurting friends' feelings or losing jobs because of materials published on their sites are becoming more frequent." Another indicator of the changes that social tools have -- new ways to hurt people, get sued, or lose your job. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Media AOL On The Block?
Time Warner is apparently considering a spin-out, sale, or reorganization of AOL, according to CNN.com [quoting a New York Post story I can't find]. The company has lost 2.2M customers in 2003, and you have to expect the rest of the high-priced narrowband ISP business to collapse over time; however, "the unit has continued to produce profits though, posting operating income of $663 million and earnings before depreciation and amortization of $1.5 billion in 2003. Its revenue of $8.6 billion, while off 5 percent from 2002 levels, was the second largest contributor to company revenues after its filmed entertainment unit, which had a record year." Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Business March 18, 2004Calling All Social Networking Applications
[Updated again: 18 March 2004. Note: I will keep updating this as long as I continue to get more SNA recommendations.] As an outgrowth of my ongoing relationship with the nice folks at Darwin and CIO, I will be developing a report on social networking that they will be publishing, likely to be entitled "Social Networking: How to Harness the Power of Social Capital for Your Business." I will include profiles of the various enterprise-oriented social networking applications and services. I am not profiling the various dating-oriented services, like Match.com and the like. My hope is to complete by the middle of next month. Please contact me for more information. My List of companies/services include the following, so please help me if I have overlooked any: ActiveNet (Tacit) Comments (11) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Its a Small Planet After All
I saw a press release the other day, about a new social networking app called Small Planet. I pinged the contacts, begged entry to the 'by-invitation-only' service, and was surprised at what I discovered. Small Planet is a much more sophisticated integration of various supporting social tools than other, more well-known sites. While geared to the individual market (as opposed to enterprise), the service does a good job of pulling together personal network management and search, group management and group blogging, photoblogging, moblogging, social activism, events, and (last but not least), a unique value proposition around collective purchasing power. The service is intended to target younger individuals, and its pitch around collective purchasing -- of mortgages, insurance, and so on -- is kind of a reverse spin on AARP. This aspect of the site does not seem very advanced: probably will have to wait until a crticial mass of young hipsters have signed up. In the meantime, check out some of the features. Comments (2) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: danah boyd Cringes
danah boyd (no relation, although I wouldn't mind) cringes from Jonathan Abrams' talk at SXSW on social networks: "I really wanted to like Jonathan Abrams' talk at SXSW. I was trying to put down my frustrations and listen. But he broke me. Not with the anecdotes, but the horrible misunderstanding of social networks.Ouch! I guess we are getting to the point where the terms start to shift based on the marketplace of money rather than of ideas, and everything becomes blurry and muddy. I have had a number of comments recently from pals telling me that I am blurring the concepts of social networks and social networking applications. Yes, I am. They are hopelessly blurred for me, even though I could try to keep them neatly compartmentalized, I guess. Although I don't know why I would, since they are converging. I do, however, want to keep the distinctions that danah alludes to -- remembering the predecessors of today's cool SNA sites -- instead of acting like this all started a few minutes ago. Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: March 17, 2004Nintendo To Offer IM?
"In an analyst report issued Tuesday, P.J. McNealy of American Technology Research said the upcoming Nintendo DS will offer Instant Messaging functionality. Rather than being offered nationally, though, the DS is more likely to offer local IM service, using free bandwidth with unlicensed RF spectrum (essentially, the same bandwidth that's used by two-way communication devices). Users would type messages on a touch screen using a stylus."Sounds like they plan to allow IM among gamers in close physical proximity -- the range of walkie-talkies -- as opposed to starting their own international IM network. However, once you have implemented any sort of IM client, you could later on extend it -- either with a new public IM network, or through partnerships with other existing networks -- to provide universal access. Of course, with so many rumors swirling around about the Nintendo DS -- multimedia capabilities (movies played from flashcards), wireless gaming (what exactly do they mean?) -- its hard to know where the speculation ends and hard facts begin. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Art & Entertainment | Technology Customer Intelligence - Britton Manasco
Customer Intelligence will be exploring the newly revirginized territory where companies meet and converse with customers. A unexplored country that needs guides like Britton to point out the signposts and changing weather, that shifting frontier is changing even as we speak. And anybody that has Willy Wonka in his first piece has to be watched, closely. He's on my blogroll, as of today. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Henshall on "Social Networking Is Broken"
Stuart writes a litany of poor design issues that leads to the conclusion that Social Networking is Broken. Along the way, he mentions the report I am concocting on SNAs, and wonders why I leaving out all the dating sites. Well, I don't think they have a great deal of applicability to what is going on inside the enterprise, which is what the report is pointed at. [By the way, I hope to structure an online survey about SNA use and perception in the next week. Stay tuned!] One of Stuart's points is close to my heart, and is a topic that I have raised with many of the SNA product teams and management: SNAs are generally developed as an out-of-context experience, where you have to leave your working context, and go 'over there' to some website. The emails that LinkedIn, Ryze, Spoke, and others pepper you with feel intrusive, impersonal, out of date, and not contextual. What is lacking is the experience of instant messaging-oriented systems, where you log in when you start up your PC, and you are pinged throughout the day about various happenings in SN-space. [Consider my recent write-up of Groove's v3.0 beta which has adopted the inclusionary and sticky IM user experience whole hog.] SNAs seem to lack that close embrace. Stuart writes: "For the most part none of these social networks are on my desktop, unless I happen to have their page open. And then with the exceptions of Ecademy, Tribe and Flickr they don't let me know whether any of my friends are online or not. As most of the people I really work with either don't use them or are as sporadic as me I still little chance of finding spontaneity within. They all fail for none of them provide the things I really need."Stuart points out that a few SNAs indicate online presence of users (meaning that they are logged in via web), but they don't allow the full gamut of user experience that makes IM so rewarding -- presence, availability, messaging (and I don't mean the async 'offline' message model, either), and alerts. Alerts in particular add a missing dimension to social awareness. Knowing when designated members of your social circles log in or log out, when new content (requests for help, comments on running threads, and so on) has been added to shared spaces, or when new members join groups -- all these events are involving and add a richness of involvement that is lacking in out-of-context portal-oriented experiences. I just don't understand why the SNA vendors don't move into the 21st century, and get real. Tribe.net has added RSS feeds from shared Tribe spaces, but that is only a partial solution to the general alerts question, although a step in the right direction. I can presage a rapid convergence of real-time messaging and SNAs, simply because the average person is not going to want to replicate their network information all over the place, and would willingly cede relationship management to one system that does a decent job of the core 20%: the 20% that will provide 80% of the value. Inevitably, this will have to adopt something like the wraparound feel of the IM experience. Expect the IM networks to wake up and see this as a means to differentiate their increasingly undifferentiated offerings. Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology March 16, 2004Skype Raises $18.8M in Series B
In another indicator of the exploding faith of the financial community in the downstream potential of IP telephony, Skype announced raising $18.8M in a series B round of VC funding. Skype has gathered 3.5M registered users of its VoIP software solution since last August. This second round was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Index Ventures; other investors were not disclosed. The firm's initial funding round closed in mid-December, and was not previously announced. First round investors included Tim Draper (as an individual investor), Draper Investment Co., Bessemer Venture Partners, and Mangrove Capital Partners. This follows closely on the heels of the Yahoo/BT announcement (see earlier story) last week.
Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Business | Telecommunications Monster is Going Social: The Battle of the Rolodexes
Bambi Francisco reports on Monster Worldwide, now attempting to counter the threat of social networking-based alternatives, such as LinkedIn and Tribe.net. Monster plans to adopt the viral marketing themes of social networking: "[Monster] plans on March 23 to allow its members to invite colleagues and friends to become part of a Monster Rolodex of sorts.There's good reason for all the competition: Money. "[Monster's] mainstay recruiting business generated $424 million in sales last year -- $234 million came from job postings and $124 million came from recruiters looking to get to the resumes. Monster's two main rivals, Yahoo's HotJobs and CareerBuilder, generated $105 million and $160 million, respectively."But Monster wants to be the gorrilla controlling the netwrok, working as the intermediary between job seekers and employers, unlike the social networking players who expect individuals to manage thier networks. Perhaps I could exclude Spoke from that group, since they have pre-loaded millions of individuals into the 'public' side of their social network solution, using information from public sources. But in general, the social networks within LinkedIn, Tribe.net, and so on are populated by the activities of individual users, or corporations who license a server-based version of the software and then load it up with corporate data and employee's contacts. But in all SNAs, the burden of mediation falls back on the individual. It looks like Monster wants to cut through that approach. Perhaps the sheer immensity of the numbers will make it impractical. Personally, I feel that all social networks lack an obvious feature: my networks are not homogeneous. I belong to many networks, some of which are completely non-overlapping. My network is in fact a bunch of separate networks. Dividing these in some useful way is the only hope for harnessing truly large networks, of thousands or (gasp) millions of potential contacts. This is a chance for a giant like Monster to significantly advance the state of the practice -- or fall on its face and lose the market to a ragtag collection of more agile startups. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: March 15, 2004Findings from Hubbub
An interesting piece Martin Langham that touches on the findings that have emerged from the Hubbub research program at AT&T. "Early studies of instant messaging concluded that it was mainly used for short sharp conversations and that instant messages tended to be brief and cover a single topic. Instant messaging was used for quick questions and clarifications, coordinating impromptu work, social and phone meetings and keeping in touch.Another IM myth debunked. People can and do use IM for complex, work-related communication. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Shakespeare's Social Networks
A slashdot pointer brought me to an interesting application of an IRC bot called PieSpy, which maps social networks in IRC chatspace. But its been used to analyze social networks in Shakespeare's plays. Neat. (Click image to see fullsize version.)
Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Science The Economist on Blogging in the Enterprise
I saw that the Economist looked closely at Socialtext's Wiki/Blog fusion technology in the recent Blogging Goes To Work [premium content requires subscription]. I mentioned SocialText's tool in my most recent Darwin column, Wicked Good Wikis, and the Economist piece seems to take a similar slant: "While bloggers—half of whom are teenagers, according to one survey—are convinced that they are changing the world, not everyone agrees. There are, whisper it, even some people beyond the insular world of the “blogosphere” who have not even heard of blogging at all. Ross Mayfield, the founder of Socialtext, a firm based in Palo Alto, California, wants to move blogging beyond its usual constituency of teenagers and wide-eyed political activists. His company is taking a novel approach, arguing that blogging might actually be useful in business.The teenagers are always onto the big new stuff first. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Michelle Johnson on ICQ Universe
A good piece about ICQ Universe at Boston.com by Michelle Johnson(reads like a blog entry, not typical 'old media' reportage) "While ICQ Universe wasn't built for business networking, Givon [ICQ's director of marketing] thinks it's possible some people will use it for that purpose. The site's colorful look and feel is clearly intended for social interaction and it will probably appeal to a younger audience. Most ICQ users are under 30, connect to the network at least five hours a day, and are into activities such as gaming, downloading music, and online shopping, according to the company. Aside from the chance deal, and the constant chatter about work and jobs that goes on in consumer social networking, I think that business-oriented social networking is much more likely in locales designed to actually support it. Comments (2) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: March 13, 2004Groove v3.0: A Tool For Our Times
I had the opportunity this week to get a demo of the new beta from Groove, v3.0. Wow! I was bowled over, for a number of reasons: vastly improved user interface and user experience, close integration with Windows shared folders for sharing of files (including embedded presence of workgroup members displayed in the Windows folders), and an great alerting model. Groove has also developed a rich forms tool, to support the creation of and use of form-based information. Groove 3.0 is so different from 2.5, its almost like the whole user experience has been turned inside out. Last year, I reviewed version 2.5, and wrote about my dissatisfaction with the UI: "Groove User Interface  With the new 3.0 client, I take it all back.
It looks like someone in product management at Groove heard what I was bellowing about (and probably a few other paying customers howled too), since the UI metaphor is now almost indistinguishable from the now-standard instant messaging client interface. At the right you see the Groove "Launchpad" in a tabbed mode, showing my contacts (Ryan Hoppe, of Groove), as well as a tab for workspaces. Instead of always dragging files into Groove workspace, the interaction now can be much more in context, since 3.0 workspaces can be associated with shared folders on your desktop -- wherever you want them to be -- and these could be existing folders. To manipulate the files, you can stay in the normal Windows model, and when you make changes to the files, the updates are transmitted to other Groove workspace members, without any added actions on your part. Very, very cool. You can still have old-style Groove workspaces, which are not linked to folders or your desktop. And these old-style workspaces, as before, can be extended with various tools, such as discussions, notepads, outlines, and project tools of various sorts, as well as games like tic-tac-toe and chess (although the latter group have always seemed off-message to me). These tools cannot be (at least in the beta) embedded into shared-folder-based workspaces, so it seems like there are going to be two distinct kinds of workspaces. There seems to be some way to create embedded workspaces, so perhaps that will bring the two together: you could embed a shared folder workspace within a conventional workspace, for example. We'll see. As you can see in the JPG below, Ryan's presence info is shown in the shared folder, and there is a placeholder where (in the final release of 3.0) Groove chat will be embedded right in the Windows folder. The user can toggle back and forth from this Groove presentation of the folder to the conventional Windows display, without the Groove widgets showing. Users are alerted to offline messages, requests for chat, folder updates, and the coming and going of buddies by transient popup originating from the Windows tooltray. I haven't invested the time necessary to become proficient in Groove forms creation, but I found it relatively easy to create an ugly form for ordering chinese food. I bet that anyone with a modicum of design sense and some knowledge of form layout (that leaves me out) could build real forms pretty quickly. Ryan and Andrew Mahon of Groove explained to me that the form tool supports a class-oriented sort of inheritance, so that families of forms can be developed that share attributes, greatly simplifying the development of form designs and their use. Looks good at first glance. Close I was not really prepared to be surprised so positively by Groove 3.0, but I admit it, I was. Of course, I have not been working with Groove behind the scenes on the release (and after the harsh words I leveled at them regarding the UI on the previous generation, who could blame them), so I had no visibility into the product planning. However, simplyfying the UI to get a better UI was really needed, and what better metaphor to adopt than instant messaging? The real breakthrough in this product will turn out to be the integration with shared folders on the desktop, as much as the new UI pleases. The core value proposition of Groove (and its nearest competitors, like the new Shinkuro , which I haven't yet gotten to review) is real-time collaboration around shared files. Changes to shared files, forms, and other information is distributed to workspace members in what could be considered near real-time, although Groove also supports offline use and subsequent synchronization through a replication model. The product is directed toward agile, distributed teams, and would be a natural for professional services organizations, field service, nomadic consultants, and cross-enterprise teams that do not share common information infrastructure. The product meets the collaborative and security needs of ad hoc groups, whether sitting around a table at Starbucks, in a conference room at headquarters, or scrambling to make sense of incoming intelligence, under fire at the Baghdad airport. Definitely a tool for our times. Comments (7) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology March 12, 2004Yahoo and BT: IM-to-POTS
Looks like Yahoo is pushing into internet telephony integration with Yahoo Messenger. Yahoo and British Telecom are planning to offer voice messenger services in the UK via Yahoo Messenger, the companies announced this week. The product will be called Yahoo Messenger with BT Communicator [that's a mouthfull of contending brands]. Limited trials start in May and will roll out later this year. It will be an Internet telephony service, using VoIP. Looks like Yahoo is waking up to the value prop of being able to connect to all those folks out there with telephones, from your desktop IM client. Now if only AOL and MSN similarly connect, and if telephone users will be able to connect to desktop IM users via VoIP, we will have sneaked into interoperability through voice telephony shenanigans. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Telecommunications March 09, 2004Stewart Butterfield's People
Stewart Butterfield of Ludicorp and Flikr fame (yes, I know I still haven't made time to review it, I know, I know), has a collage of the people that make up his Flikr network. I'm in there (if you click the thumbnail, you can see me like 10 down and 2 over from the upper right hand corner). [Thanks, Hylton!] Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: March 08, 2004Akonix Acquires Natural Messaging
Akonix, the instant messaging management vendor, today announced the acquisition of Natural Messaging, a company focused on developing conversational interaction (a la 'bot and voice technologies) with applications. This certainly strengthens Akonix' architecture story in the area that its strongest competitors -- IMlogic and FaceTime -- are putting their efforts behind: application integration. Akonix also has announced an application developer program, close on the heels of IMlogics similar announcement a few weeks ago at DEMO. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Business Tribe.net: RSS Output From Tribe's Message Boards
Marc Canter pinged me about a newly launched feature at Tribe.net: support for RSS output of Tribe's message boards. This is an interesting fusion of bottom-up information from Tribe members and the RSS model for blog (and other sources) content aggregation. I have written about the power of this sort of group content aggregation in many venues. It's great to see that the social networking leaders are moving so quickly. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Fonetango: social networking via cell phone
I read a piece at Geekzone about a new New Zealand cell service that combines social networking with something like the Plaxo contact sharing service. Fonetango supports sync backup of the numbers programmed on certain cell phones, but also analyzes the social relationships implied in who has whose number programmed. "fonetango's awesome new services Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: The Anti-Social Software Suite
[Seen at apophenia] Comments (3) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology March 05, 2004ICQ Going Social
I saw at SocialTwister that ICQ is launching a social networking service this week: ICQ Universe. More to follow, as soon as I get invited. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: March 04, 2004Furqan Nazeeri's Bionic Bot Demo: IM Planet Notes
And when the bot can identify a series of IM strokes that constitute a transaction, it acts as a clerk, and extracts the order info, pending the transaction to the broker. Then, on confirmation, the bot pushes the transaction into the trading system, and subsequently notifies the buyer of the transaction details. Very cool. Great example of how to augment an existing workflow with integrated tools -- in this case, with sophisticated bot technology -- and not forcing people to adopt completely new, forieign workflows. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Ed Simnett's IM Context Insight: IM Planet Notes
Ed Simnett of Microsoft made an interesting observation in a panel session on IM Integration. Basically, he suggests that sendling along some context indicator along with an instant message, to help quickly establish the reason or rationale for the interaction. This could involve information about the application being used when the IM was initiated, or the topic involved, or perhaps which project is implicated. (as represented by a Sharepoint folder, for example). Kind of like a presence indicator for the instant message session itself. So the participant could query the IM session (perhaps by moving the cursor over the title region of the message, and getting a tooltip) and seeing the context. (Reminds me of the extended presence information in Xfire, the online gaming IM network I recently wrote about, where the gamer's presence information includes what game is currently being played.) I will hereafter refer to this idea as the "Simnett Context" for an instant message. Comments (2) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Edmund Fish Keynote: IM Planet Notes
Edmund Fish is SVP & GM, Desktop Messaging at AOL The Year Ahead Something happened last year. Instant messaging went from toy to mission critical tool. What happened? Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: March 03, 2004John Sakoda's 4 Myths of IM Interoperability: IM Planet Notes
Jon Sakoda of IMlogic 1. We're waiting for a technology standard. - Wrong. Business drives interop, not tech 2. Its all Politics. - Uh uh, there are still technical issues. Connecting hundreds of millions of people together is hard. 3. Consumers will be better off. - Enterprises will drive,way before consumers. 4. There are no solutions today. - In the absence of standards, interop is emerging anyway. Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Audio Alibis
"Did you ever wish you could hide your location when talking on the phone? Ever wanted to give the impression you were somewhere else?[Thanks to SmartMobs] Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Paul Haverstock, Microsoft: IM Planet Notes
Paul Haverstock, Architect, Real-Time Collaboration Business Unit, Microsoft [Should line up pretty well with the recent interview I had with Gurdeep Singh Pall] Paul worked for 14 years for Lotus, built the Sametime franchise, and was the force behind Domino. A real coup for Microsoft to get him away from IBM/Lotus. Instant Messaging Challenges Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology Instant Messaging Planet: My Preso
I am chairing a panel today at the Instant Messaging Planet conference in Boston. For those interested, here's my presentation, entitled "Socializing Instant Messaging." I plan to post comments during the conference on anything that catches my eye. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology March 02, 2004Start Your Own Social Networking Company: For $280!
Why are the venture capitalists investing millions in social networking startups when you can start your own SNA service for $280 (with 1 year updates, no less), courtesey of the nice folks at AltraSoft: AlstraSoft E-Friends - Run your own online social networking community just like Friendster. Members create their own personal friends network, meet new friends, dating and join groupsThis is absolute proof that we have reached the bizarro stage of the social networking exponential buzz curve. Comments (10) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Going Wireless
Business2.0 reports on recent projections about the defection of current wired phone users to a pure wireless model: "In a study released last week, InStat/MDR projects that the percentage of telephone users in the United States who have abandoned their landlines for wireless phones will increase from roughly 5 percent today to 29 percent by 2008."Some of the reasons, according to InStat analyst Clint Wheelock:
Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Telecommunications Social Networking And Communities To Get Top Level Domain
A new top level domain -- ".pw" -- is being launched for social networking and community use: The PW Registry Corporation announced today plans for the activation of the PW top-level domain (TLD), the Internet's first and only domain extension devoted to "Communiti | ||||
TrendIQ monitors the buzz around certain memes in the Internet, and hass been tracking various players in the 
My March column in Darwin is up for your reading enjoyment.
The March 8 episode of 
Friendzy has not seemed to catch on much with the business crowd -- I haven't received many requests for contact there; only one, I think. But their recently announced support for uploading contacts from Outlook may change all that. More to follow.
A recent 
My close friend and colleague, Britton Manasco, has kicked off his new Corante Industry Insider 
Furqan Nazeeri of 
I have stumbled onto a weird, but potential interesting service: 