Dana Kirk

Why should CMOs make social media a priority

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:04:47 GMT

I came up with a short starter list of why Chief Marketing Officers and Chief Communications Officers should make social media a priority.

You need to know what people are saying about you. There is a customer to customer and press to customer conversation going on throughout the internet. Any company that fails to understand and act on this puts themselves at risk for getting blindsided by the conversation. At a minimum, they should be tracking the conversation. The best practice is to go beyond monitoring to building a social media strategy to influence the conversation.

You need to know what your people are saying. If your customers are using social media, it’s also quite likely that your employees are using social media. They will be doing it no only for themselves, but also to fill gaps in the company’s social media strategy. Left un-managed, this presents numerous risks to the company’s reputation and customer/competitive relations. Inappropriate information may get disclosed and comments about policies by employees may confuse customers. Further, it is not uncommon for information published by employees with good intentions to be poorly maintained and out of date. Every company should have a Social Media Policy and a plan for cleaning up/maintaining information published about them across the internet.

You need to make your marketing/communications more efficient. Customer and stakeholder attention is now in shorter supply than ever. Traditional marketing and communications approaches are becoming increasingly less effective and consequently it’s becoming more expensive to realize communication goals. Social media and community are two mechanisms to radically improve efficiency. It will take an investment, but this investment has much greater leverage than investments in traditional media. Traditional media content scales up linearly with cost and have diminishing returns. Social media content scales up with the size of the community and can have compounding returns. Any cost conscious CMO or CCO should be figuring out how to use these tools to make their companies more cost effective.

Tell us why you think CMOs and CCOs should make social media like blogging, podcasting and networking a priority.

PS - Click here to learn more about how the University of Southern California’s CCO is using social media by listening to this Digital Podcast.

Technorati Tags: social media marketing, marketing priorities

More: Digital Podcast | Alex Nesbitt | E-Mail | 562-824-5193

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Boost Your Memory with the Palace Technique [Mind Hacks]

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:13:17 GMT

The "memory palace" is a well-known technique for remembering long sequences of items with minimal effort, and the Litemind blog explains how it works. In short, you choose your "palace"—that is, a place that you can remember vividly—and associate items with distinctive features of that location. For example, if you're remembering items on your grocery list and your home is your palace, put one item at the front door in your mind. Walk through the hallway and associate another item with the painting on the wall. Continue associating items with different parts of your palace as you walk through it. When it's time to recall the items, take the same route as the association phase.

Develop Perfect Memory with the Memory Palace Technique [Litemind]

Bloggers in the Mavs Locker Room ?

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 06:33:31 GMT

Should bloggers be allowed in the Mavs locker room ? Conceptually its not a big deal. A blogger, a beat writer, a columnists. The medium they use to deliver their content should be irrelevant. No question about it.

But then there is the question of realworld constraints. This is a picture of our locker room. This is the area the media conducts their interviews post game. As it is now, between reporters, photographers (both still and video), trainers and the players, it gets pretty full.

Right now we have a situation where a blogger that works for the Dallas Morning News would like continued access to the locker room. Prior to last week, I had no idea this person's primary job at the Morning News is to blog. I hadn't seen or read it. He was just one of the 4 or 5 people from the Morning News in the locker room post game. When it was brought to my attention I immediately made it an issue. Why ?

Not because I don't want this blogger in the locker room doing interviews. What I didn't like was that the Morning News was getting a competitive advantage simply because they were the Dallas Morning News. I am of the opinion that a blogger for one of the local newspapers is no better or worse than the blogger from the local high school, from the local huge Mavs fan, from an out of town blogger. I want to treat them all the same.

Unfortunately, there isn't enough room to allow any and all bloggers in the locker room. There also are no standards that I have been able to come up with that differentiate between bloggers to the point where I should or should not credential one versus the other. My experience in reading blogs has favored bloggers not affiliated with major media companies, but that could be my unique bias.

When I told the newspaper we would no longer allow their blogger in the locker room (he would still have access to everything else), they got upset. They took the path that their live blogger was no different than a feature article written on a website. They used Marc Stein of ESPN as an example. i explained to them that Stein not only wrote primarily features on ESPN.Com, but also was a TV commentator, and those two elements of his job differentiated him from what their blogger did. Do they not know the difference between a blogger and someone who actually writes feature articles on a destination website ?

A blogger is a blogger is a blogger. If I were to ask for media credentials as a blogger on this blog, I would expect to be treated exactly the same as any other blogger. No better or worse.

Of course my "discussion" with the Morning News did not stop there. As a blogger and a sometime commentator on the newspaper business I had to share my opinion. So when presented with the following:

" Gilbert Bailon, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, says blogging is now "part of the base job of being a beat reporter" at a newspaper. He acknowledges your need/right to control press credentials but thinks you're off base when it comes to banning bloggers from major news organizations from your locker room. He says this seems like a policy aimed at one reporter, Tim MacMahon, because he wrote something you didn't like.
(Note: Bailon is editor of the editorial page at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and previously was a top editor at The Morning News.)"

My response:

"If he is correct and blogging is part of the base job of being a beat reporter, thats a sad commentary on beat reporters. They get 500 words in a story about a game or event, if readers are lucky. If there is excess time, I would imagine that time could be spent offering indepth analysis and access rather than throwing up hundred word commentary on a blog. If there isn't space in the paper, then in depth analysis that takes advantage of the minimal marginal cost of publishing feature stories, IMHO, would be a far better use of a beatwriters time and serve as a far stronger differentiation that would attract readers.

Instead , we get bloggers from mainstream media. Newspaper blogging is probably the worst marketing and branding move a newspaper can make. The barriers to entry for bloggers are non existent. There are no editorial standards. There are no accuracy standards. We bloggers can and do write whatever we damn well please. Historically newspapers have set some level of standards that they strived to adhere to. By taking on the branding, standard and posting habits of the blogosphere, newspapers have worked their way down to the least common demoninator of publishing in what appears to be an effort to troll for page views.

As far singling out mr MacMahon, I havent read what he has written, so that is not the case. its an issue of fairness. As a blogger, and someone very familiar with bloggers and the blogosphere, I recognize that a fair policy would apply to all bloggers. There is nothing superior about a blog produced bysomeone in the employ of The Belo Corporation. So there is no reason to give them preferential treatment. Where there is physical room to fairly credential any and all bloggers, Mr MacMahon is welcome. Where we can not accomodate all bloggers, he will be excluded."

So post my little newspaper rant, it comes down to something very simple. A blogger is a blogger is a blogger and there are millions of us. . The name on your check, if you get a check, is irrelevant. BlogMaverick, Belo, xyz.blogger.com, we is what we is, and as long as there is limited space in our locker room, we is going to be outside in the Press Interview room getting comments

One last little thought. Some out there will take this as my not "liking" blogs. Ridiculous. its the exact opposite. What I don't like is unequal access. I'm all for bloggers getting the same access as mainstream media when possible. Our interview room is open to bloggers. We take interview requests from bloggers. I'm a fan of getting as much coverage as possible for the Mavs. What I'm not a fan of is major media companies throwing their weight around thinking they should be treated differently.

As has been the case since this blog started, I wont pull any punches in sharing my feelings or starting conversations about how media does its job. Its a topic I find interesting and fun. It's a reason why I enjoy HDNet so much. Expect more of it.

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Socialists win Spanish elections

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:01:58 GMT

The opposition conservative party admits defeat to the ruling Socialist Party in Spain's general elections.

Groom Mate Nose & Ear Hair Trimmer

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:47:16 GMT

I've tried a number of battery-operated nose hair trimmers hoping one of them would last, be easy to clean, and remain sharp. Every one of them failed. This stainless steel trimmer is simplicity itself! No whirring motors, wimpy foil blades, batteries or delicate electronics. It costs a little more than some electric models but works elegantly and reliably. I also like the fact it is so compact I can sanitize the entire unit in the occasional alcohol bath. I always thought trimmers had to work at high speed to deliver a comfortable and painless cut. With this device, you simply stick the unit an 1/8-inch up your nose and rotate the shaft back and forth. The first time I used it I realized I had more control. Because it works so well, isn't a hassle to use and is so easy to clean, I've adopted an early strike policy. After more than six months of regular use, I haven't noticed any dulling. Regardless, the manufacturer guarantees it for life.

-- Ray Grabowski

Groom Mate Nose & Ear Hair Trimmer
(Platinum XL model)
$20
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Groom Mate

Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:

Merkur Classic Razor

Headblade

Col. Ichabod Conk Shaving Soap

Is Your Client a Certified Orifice?

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:48:51 GMT

Bob Sutton continues to fight the good fight against certified orifices. He started by literally writing the book about it. This time, he's created a test for you to determine if you have the client from hell. Click here to take the ACHE (Ass**** Client from Hell Exam). Luckily, he provides a path out of this predicament. The point is: Life is too short to deal with orifices. Of course, it could be you that's the orifice. Click here to determine if that's the case. Incidentally, he just wrote a great post about why you should hire female superstars but not male superstars.

The Big Picture

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:07:34 GMT

Up or down? That's what this week's Macworld show came down to for most news organizations. Would the new Apple products make the company's shares go up or down? They went down. Macworld was a bust, we were told repeatedly, as if it really mattered. I don't own Apple stock so I couldn't care less whether it goes up or down, nor could most customers. Apple was supposed to introduce another iPod or iPhone, or iSomething that would sell four million or 10 million copies in the next 200 days, driving share prices higher. But it didn't happen. Apple introduced some cool stuff, but nothing that would sell four million units this year, hence the letdown.

Hogwash.

A bunch of day traders that used to making a quick 10 percent on their money during Macworld week didn't make that 10 percent this year, so they were disappointed. A bunch of reporters eager to write about those day traders making their 10 percent were disappointed, too. Meanwhile, the rest of us who don't care about day traders were left without much perspective on what any of these announcements actually mean. So I'll do the heavy lifting here and gratefully get back to something non-Apple next week.

First let's look at the MacBook Air, which is a cool product with a bad name, though I guess it worked well for Michael Jordan, so what the heck. It is very doubtful that Apple will sell a million Airs in the next year. It is doubtful Apple will sell even half a million Airs and Steve Jobs knows this. What's important here is not the subnotebook computer but the bits of it that will likely make their way into much more interesting Apple products to come.

Take that specially packaged Intel CPU, how did that come about? Steve Jobs didn't beat the heck out of Intel CEO Paul Otellini to get a little CPU that would go into fewer than half a million boxes. Steve did what he always does. He beat the heck out of Paul Otellini with the promise that this little CPU -- for which we can expect Apple will hold some exclusive for the next six months -- will end up in millions and millions of Apple products, nearly all of them costing a lot less than a MacBook Air.

Apple is very important to Intel. Though nobody says it out loud, Apple is the last of the major computer companies that uses 100 percent Intel processors. And Apple's ability to do more with less has to be a continual inspiration to its competitors. As Apple slides further and further into the consumer electronics and networking markets, Intel will be right there, too. I still expect we'll see an Apple tablet this year, for example, and it will use this same Intel CPU.

How about that new trackpad with the multi-touch interface? Could that be the first look at that mouse replacement I predicted would be coming from Apple this year? Maybe. You can be sure we'll see a lot more of that baby.

What about the Air's lack of an optical drive? It's hard to find a place for an optical drive in such a thin computer, but isn't Steve Jobs the guy who when he returned to Apple railed against notebooks without removable media, like the PowerBook 100 and 2400 and the various PowerBook Duos? Why did Steve change his mind now? Because Steve wants to replace optical drives of any sort with bits provided over the network, preferably from iTunes. That's also why we didn't see an Apple Blu-ray announcement this week and -- if Jobs has his way -- we'll never see one.

Let's turn now to the second-generation Apple TV and the question I seem to be the only one asking: why did they drop the price to $229? Had they dropped the price to $99 I'd say, "Okay, they've decided to lose money on this thing to grow the rental market." But why $229? Did some focus group tell Apple there was price resistance to the Apple TV above $230? It's a set-top box! People don't want to pay anything for a set-top box and if they do pay something they sure don't want to pay $299 OR $229.

The entire Apple TV category is a minefield for Steve Jobs. It's a tiny Macintosh, remember, though with its innate Macness carefully hidden. Steve COULD HAVE blown the doors off Macworld if he had simply allowed the Apple TV to BE a Mac, albeit limited to HDMI displays. If you could buy a Mac that attaches to your HDTV for web surfing as well as all the other Apple TV functions, even at the original $299 price, it would have been a HUGE hit. But it might also have hurt Mac Mini and iMac sales, so Steve couldn't bring himself to do it.

In the long run I think the whole Apple TV product category will be subsumed into the television, itself. Here, too, is another minefield because people replace their computers a lot more often than they replace their televisions, so Apple going into the TV business (like Dell and HP have) might help sales at first but later hurt. The more likely move for Apple, therefore, is to eventually create the Apple TV Nano, which is an Apple TV built into a CableCard. This is technically feasible right now and 18 months from now it will be a no-brainer. The big HDTV vendors would jump on that one like crazy since it would drive CableCard-equipped HDTV sales, which have been less than stellar.

Apple's movie rental service offers a lot to talk about, too, though the part I find most interesting is simply the likely impact on broadband ISPs. It's not just Apple, but also Amazon, Netflix, and others that will drive this impact, though those competing efforts are accelerating right now because of Apple.

The broadband ISPs are already jostling for advantage, talking about limiting throughput and making people pay $30 for the bandwidth to download an HD movie. They simply don't want to pay for the additional backbone capacity required to support this level of traffic. But the even bigger reason why the ISPs are moving right now is they perceive a perfect storm that will allow them to RAISE PRICES. Whether we are talking about a cable company or a phone company, these ISPs make more profit from selling broadband than they do from selling their original service, whether it is phone or TV. Cable prices keep going up, true, but nearly all of that goes for increasing costs for content. Internet content costs an ISP nothing, but that doesn't mean they won't try to charge us more if they can.

What's crazy about this is that most of the HD content we're getting upset about is static. It is perfectly reasonable to put every movie ever made on a server and put just such a server in every cable company or DSL machine room and never have to touch the Internet backbone for that content, which is exactly what I've explained the big ISPs are already starting to do through IP multicast. But now they'll want to be paid for it. The dark horse here is Google, which has spent a couple years positioning itself to offer to handle this service on behalf of ISPs and consumers alike in exchange for us watching some commercials. If it is up to consumers, Google will succeed.

And Steve Jobs knows this, because with their interlocking boards, Apple and Google have to know precisely what the other is up to.

So Macworld was just another step in a very measured plan to establish global media dominance for Apple and probably for Google, too. But it's a plan that requires patience, which the press can't -- or doesn't want to -- understand. So it is up to us as individuals to decide whether this is good or bad. I'd say the jury is still out on that one.

Success & Motivation: Don't Lie to Yourself

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:29:45 GMT

Mar 18th 2006 12:41AM

I learned a lot from Don Nelson when he was coach and GM of the Mavericks. He told me something early on, that opened my eyes. I forget the exact conversation, but we were talking about players, and I asked him why he didnt talk to a specific player about something that was going on. What he said was that "THe worse evaluator of talent is a player trying to evaluate himself."

The same applies to business people and particularly to entrepreneurs and want to be entrepreneurs. We tend to be less than honest with ourselves about our strengths and weaknesses.

I have been just as bad at this as anyone, particularly when I was getting started in the business world. For those of us who dream of starting and running a business, we know that we have to have a level of confidence in our own abilities. We dont want to believe that there are things we cant do. We want to believe that if we try hard enough, work long enough, and get a little lucky, that the sky is the limit. The problem is that we let our confidence cloud our judgements of what we truly know about ourselves.

Im one of the least organized people I know. Today, i have an assistant and others that help me run my life. If you ask me where IM going to be in 3 days. I have no idea. I do know that i have a kick ass assistant who is going to make sure that when i wake up that morning, I know where Im going and how to get there.

When i was 23 years old, sleeping on the floor and starting MicroSolutions, no assistant. No organization. I was a procrastinator. Accounting was a shoebox of receipts. I was a mess.

But I lied to myself and said that I could deal with it. That i would make time to get it all figured out and organized. That if I only set my mind to it, I could be a detail person. I could stop procrastinating. It doesnt work that way.

I did the things I was good at. I could sell. So I sold. I could write software programs. I could integrate PCs. I could set up local area networks. And I did. My business grew. But it also grew out of control A local area network or a software program without documentation is a disaster waiting to happen. And they did. Not to the point where it killed my business, but to the point where I spent far too much time fixing things rather than selling new deals.

Fortunately, one of my best customers at the time was interested in becoming a partner in my business. Martin Woodall ran a company called Hytec Data Systems. He was not only smart and a good programmer, but he was the most anal, detail oriented person I had ever met in my life. The perfect partner for me.

Our partnership wasnt always easy. We had more than our shares of knock down drag out fights. He of course would want everything done with precision and if lack of perfection was an option, he didnt want to do it. I of course was the exact opposite. I was the GO FOR IT guy. We can sort it out after the fact. We were perfect partners. We knew and trusted the skills of the other and although many might not think yelling was the best way to work things out, we managed.

It all came down to choice. I had the choice between lying to myself and pretending that I could turn on a switch and become a details person, or accepting the fact that Im not, and partnering with someone who is. Continuing to lie meant I would probably lose my business.

Every entrepreneur faces comparable choices. Each of us has to face the reality of who we are and what we are.

What choice will you make ?

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JailBreak: Over 1 Million Served

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 22:19:38 GMT

Web based jailbreaker AppSnap has executed its code for iPhone liberation over 1 million times. The hack makes it possible to run unsanctioned applications on your iPhone, such as an eBook reader or Blackjack for phones of firmware 1.1.1. It doesn’t free your phone from the AT&T network, though.

The hack works by exploiting the way the iPhone’s firmware handles TIFF images, but patches that flaw after the jailbreak is completed.

iPhone Atlas is reporting that the application has recieved over 2,000 donations in exchange for their hard work.

The next step in the next step

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:17:35 GMT

Thanks for the excellent discussion that followed yesterday's post, the second in a series about new directions in editorial systems. There's no doubt that there will be more Digg-like systems, based on all kinds of software. Let's hope that there's innovation to match.

I've been head-down for the last month, writing code, designing, working with a small group of testers, learning, rewriting, etc. My deadline is early December, which is coming up very soon. I want to be able to talk about this work at Le Web 3 in Paris on December 11.

Yesterday, I heard for the first time about software called Pligg, it apparently is a Digg clone that runs on LAMP systems. I don't know much more about it, but I'm certainly interested. I have a MAMP test-bed running here, so at some point I will probably try to set up a Pligg installation to play with.

Yesterday I got the Slingbox, my second one (the first was given to a friend, I was frustrated at setting it up). This time it worked, and now I have TV on any computer in the house. This is really cool, actually it's so cool I'd say it's a thrill. The setup still required guessing and fear that I was doing it wrong, they used terminology that I was not familiar with, for the type of remote I have. But in the end it worked. The reason it didn't work the first time is that the connections on the back of a modern TV and settop box were foreign to me. Now they're familliar.

I also got my HD tuner for the Mac, runs on a USB port. I haven't had time to set it up, but I'm anxious to do so.

I'd also like to also thank the guys at Disqus for providing excellent comment software, it runs very nicely in my environment, and has sufficient moderation tools to keep discussions focused and not abusive. The community at Scripting News is becoming visible again, and I'm happy to report that they're still the smartest, most knowledgable, helpful and generous mofos I know. It's making this blog much more fun for me. And you can quote me on that.

The next step in Digg clones

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:17:26 GMT

On Saturday I wrote a post asking for private email from people who are working on Digg clones. I got about a dozen responses, they all look good. I think any of them could work for the project I have in mind.

This left me with a vexing problem -- which one should I work with, and what should I tell the others? I decided to work with all of them, and anyone else who may be reading, by describing the project here, openly.

So here's the idea...

Imagine Digg in the old days, when there were just 25 people using it. Maybe that wasn't enough. Maybe it didn't really get interesting until there were 100 users or 250 or 1000. It was good, the articles were gems, things we weren't finding on our own, there were huge numbers of them, but they were prioritized, and the community had a heart of gold, people were doing it for love. The maturity level was high.

But then something happened as Digg grew from 100 users to 100,000 and more. I'm not going to characterize it other than to say that it stopped being interesting to me as it grew. The stories weren't what I was looking for.

I wonder if we could start a Digg-like community with the readers of Scripting News. The numbers are small, relative to Digg, it would be just like the old days, maybe 250 active participants. I was describing the idea to Fred Wilson this morning, and offered that his blog might host such a community. Or we could do a Digg-like community with 25 people by invitation, some you've heard of, some you haven't. All would be voracious news junkies. They would be empowered to add articles, comment on them, vote them up or down. I would invite Scoble, Fred Wilson, Steve Rubel, Amyloo, Jim Posner, Lawrence Lee and (I'm sure I'll think of many more). We'd count on the judgement of these people to find us interesting news items, and be fair in deciding their relevance.

Key point -- it would serve as an editorial system. Only members could participate in the social functions, but anyone could read the results. You could see what the community decided was important at any moment in time. You might choose to read the TechCrunch Digg clone, but not Scobleizer's or Instapundit's.

Two very smart people are thinking this way too.

1. Steve Gillmor, the genius who brought us attention and gestures, has exactly this kind of system running right now, in private beta. I first stumbled across it when I described the idea to a friend back in October, and was told "You have to talk with Steve!" So I called him, and sure enough he had it. He plans on unveiling it publicly very soon, perhaps even this week.

2. Om Malik and I talked about this on Saturday when he came to visit in Berkeley. I am pretty sure this is part of the editorial system he'd like to use at GigaOm. One thing we both agreed on, strongly, is that it's time to shake up the market for open editorial tools. It's been stagnating. Enough of that!

So that's the idea. I want starting a Digg-like community to be as easy as creating a weblog on blogger.com. Just fill in a form, click Submit and off we go. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Sure most will be ghost towns, there will be press articles talking about the abandoned communities, but I bet we look back in a couple of years and see the landscape in the blogosphere has changed yet again.

Building TwitterGram into a really big thing!

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:07:51 GMT

I love TwitterGram. It's a really cool tool, I use it when I have an idea to communicate and I'm nowhere near a laptop or desktop. I call the special number, 646-716-6000, speak for up to 30 seconds and the system takes care of the rest.

Yesterday I did a gram as I drove across the Bay Bridge and was amazed that I could tap into the wifi signal of a nearby AC Transit bus.

It's for little ideas that you want to share quickly. All you need is a cell phone.

I want to keep TwitterGram competitive, to make a business of it. I need a smart young person with lots of energy to manage the product. We'll need a CEO, if it's going to turn into a company. We need to lobby Twitter to add a key feature, or figure out how to provide the functionality without Twitter. And we could use a programmer and a site designer too, to get started.

I'm interested in ideas and looking for people to help me build this tool into a product, and maybe a company.

RSS 2.0 comments element

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:09:25 GMT

RayS on Twitter asked why it is that more feed readers don't support the element in RSS 2.0. Interestingly, less than two hours before, I had added the element to the Scripting News feed. It's appropriate because there are now per-element comments here, people who subscribe should have the benefit in addition to people who read this blog in a web browser.

Truth is that some feed readers do support the comments element. All of mine do, dating back to Radio 8.0 shipped in January 2002, which is still my daily reader. It's really a simple feature, not very hard to implement. If an item has a comments element, it's represented as a little pencil in the right margin. Click on it and you go directly to the comments.

Maybe by writing about it here we'll find out that others already support it, and maybe encourage others to add support.

Steve Rubel lets one rip!

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:25:46 GMT

He had some Wheaties this morning for sure.

My advice...

1. Remember to have fun.

2. We're all bozos on this bus.

3. We're all barking farting chihuahuas.

4. I make shitty software and so do you.

5. It's even worse than it appears.

6. You never learn anything hanging with the same people.

7. Thank heaven for little girls. (A repeat of #6.)

8. It's later than you think.

9. It's not like anyone gets out of this alive.

Beyond Web 2.0: The social web or the semantic web ? and the rise of the Umbrella social networks

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 23:23:09 GMT

Synopsis:
Beyond Web 2.0 is still more Web 2.0(for now). The full impact of Web 2.0 will be felt only in 2008 and beyond. The Semantic web is not the future of Web20. The full impact of Web 20 itself has yet to be felt because Web 20 technologies like cloud computing and 'umbrella social networks' (i.e. social networks encompassing the personal web, enterprise and the mobile web and incorporating presence) are still emerging and will gather momentum in 2008 and beyond.

Introduction
It seems ironic to talk about ‘beyond Web 2.0’ almost a week away from the Berlin Web 2.0 expo (where I am speaking).

Extending the ‘2.0’ numbering notation, we could naturally think of Web 3.0.

Much has been already said about Web 3.0 – most of it self serving.

Nova Spivack and Jason Calacanis have each attempted to define Web 3.0 corresponding to their respective companies (Radar networks and Mahalo)

In a world of hyper connectivity and information sharing – such definitions don’t go very far because of their inherent limitations based on their proponent’s businesses. So, I won’t go into those in detail. You can read more about these definitions HERE

Even Tim Berners shrugs at the term Web 2.0 but ironically does not hesitate in attempting to speak of Web 3.0 as a form of Semantic web. Of course, the semantic web is defined in an article from Tim Berners Lee himself as early as 2001 in the Scientific American magazine (The Semantic Web A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities By Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila)

But to understand ‘beyond Web 2.0’ – we have to appreciate a bit about why Web 2.0 took off as much as it did .. and why so many people did(do!) not get it.

Social software and social computing
In defining the Web 2.0 paradigm, Tim O Reilly’s genius lies in taking computing along the social domain and in laying the intellectual foundations of a new class of software i.e. social software.

Even before the seven principles of Web 2.0 were postulated by Tim O Reilly, we intuitively accepted the social aspects of the Web(for example Wikis existed before that time and were created by Ward Cunningham). However, Web 2.0 brought all these ideas together and provided us a common lexicon / framework to discuss these terms

Critically, Web 2.0 comes under the umbrella of social computing/social software. The term Social software is normally applied to a range of web-enabled software programs that allow users to interact, share, and meet other users. (Adapted from wikipedia definition of social software)

One might view ‘social software’ as a contradiction in terms. Traditionally software is almost ‘antisocial’ (i.e. logical – with little or no human interaction)

Consequently, many people from a programming background find the idea of social software as ‘marketing driven hype’. And some from marketing – do indeed hype it as the next big thing.

However, that should not take us away from the basic merits of the Web 2.0 definition as defined by the seven principles of Web 2.0 and a new class of software that is underpinned by Web 2.0 principles like harnessing collective intelligence, the web as a platform and so on.

Beyond Web 2.0
If we recap the title of Tim Berners Lee’s article on the semantic web, it says : A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers

So, to me; it is all about meaningful to computers(semantic web)? OR meaningful to people(social software/social web)

Of course, they are not mutually exclusive .. hence they will coexist – but the emphasis on each is important. The semantic web is oriented to a new form for content that makes sense to machines. The social web(which includes Web 2.0 ) relates to web enabled software that facilitates communication between people.

The paths of machines and men .. are both divergent and coexisting.

So, let’s start with the machines(the semantic web)

The semantic Web
The end goal of the semantic web is to extract meaning from data. Hence, content should be machine readable, machine interpretable(the computer must make sense of it) and machine actionable. In its ultimate incarnation, it leads to the rarified world of science fiction bots negotiating deals on behalf of their creators.

How practical is all this?
Not very – in my view.

Avatars and bots aside, the more basic question is: Who will add the semantics(structure) to the semantic web?

The semantic web needs someone to do the semantics before it becomes truly useful. This is a chicken and egg situation – to make the semantic web useful, you need content to be tagged – but who would tag the content in the first place(and why)?

Semantics for a specific vertical are relatively easy. Semantics for 'Joe public'(consumers) are another matter entirely.

And to be really useful; the semantics must be for all .. And this is where almost all efforts led by specific companies may fail because the web cannot be expected to cede control to a company - it must be an open standard. And even if islands of semantics evolve(one for pharmaceuticals, one for automotive and so on), they may be just that - islands ... Islands of semantic content are useful – but do not translate into a semantic web.

Ironically, the best solution to the semantic web ‘chicken and egg’ problem(aka who will create the semantics for the semantic web) comes from Web 2.0(social web). Web 2.0 ‘works’ because it solves this very fundamental chicken and egg problem by getting the users to do the semantics in return for some benefits(storing and sharing pictures for example as in flickr). Thus, it provides a ‘lite’ solution to the semantic web problem.

This illustrates the limitations of taking a software only approach of the semantic web. If you ignore the social aspects of the Web, then software can take you only so far ..

Web 2.0
Before we proceed with this section, A quick note: I do not consider either Mobile Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 as ‘beyond’ Web 2.0 because they are sub memes of Web 2.0 i.e. extend the basic idea of Web 2.0 along specific dimensions.

Unlike the semantic Web, Web 2.0 addresses a completely different problem domain – that of social computing.

Thus, if we consider web 20 as primarily a manifestation of the social web, then it follows that the idea of 'beyond web 20' has to address the evolution of the social web (and not the semantic web)

In my view, the two Web 2.0 concepts that pertain to the evolution of the social web are
a) Social network as a 'meta/umbrella' layer above the personal, enterprise and the mobile web
And
b) Cloud computing

The full impact of both is yet to be felt.

The first is a relatively simple idea – but very disruptive ..

It can be summarised as ‘facebook(or similar) as your primary interface to the Web’.

The idea is - we "log in' to a single profile on our social network. The resultant social network then becomes an ‘umbrella’ network encompassing your Web, Mobile Web and even the Enterprise Web. The concept of umbrella social networks becomes even more powerful when presence is added to the mix.

This is a concern to many including Google. Many people no longer use email because email is replaced by facebook messages. If your entire web experience is replaced by facebook and the advertising for facebook is exclusively from Microsoft .. this is clearly a threat for Google(and a master move on behalf of Microsoft). So, already we are seeing some moves in this direction – and one can expect some response from Google to this.

(Note: I can't find the reference but JP Rangaswami had spoken of a similar idea – which I call ‘umbrella social networks’ - in one of his blogs. If I find the blog, I shall link it.)

To really work, this idea needs a fine grained privacy control and an open social network. But it is not so strange to think that our entire web experience may be driven from a facebook(or similar) profile. Facebook is already courting the enterprise

Also, in the article 15 reasons Facebook may be worth $15bn, here are some insights ..

>>>
7. Facebook is the new web: The decision to open up the network to outside developers turned Facebook into a destination for many uses, like messaging, photos and video. Of course, as Facebook is on the web it could never really be the new web.
11. Facebook messaging is the new e-mail. Everyone feels stressed from a deluge of e-mail from unwanted people and companies. But Facebook messages are always from friends.
12. Facebook's "status updates" have become the easiest way to let friends know what you are doing and how you are feeling at any given moment.
<<<

Related to the idea of umbrella social networks is the idea of ‘Cloud computing’ – I have spoken of cloud computing many times on the OpenGardens blog for instance : Mobile Ajax- more than a pretty face and Cloud computing in the context of enterprise 2.0 . The idea has many adherents – especially Nokia and Google.

It is related to the idea of umbrella social networks since to have a seamless experience between the Web, the Mobile Web and the Enterprise; the data has to ideally reside in the ‘Cloud’.

So, the core idea is of this blog(and the evolution of Web 2.0) can be summarised as:
Cloud + a social network user interface to the cloud(where the cloud spans the Web, the Mobile Web and the Enterprise).

Eric Schmidt also refers to cloud computing as the future of applications with applications having characteristics like : being pieced together, small, data is in the cloud, run on any device PC or mobile phone, fast, customizable, distributed virally(social networks, email etc).

Conclusion
Let me recap the synopsis as the conclusion ..

Beyond Web 2.0 is still more Web 2.0(for now). The full impact of Web 2.0 will be felt only in 2008 and beyond. The Semantic web is not the future of web20. Instead, the full impact of web 20 itself has yet to be felt because web 20 technologies like cloud computing and 'umbrella social networks' (i.e. social networks encompassing the personal web, enterprise and the mobile web and incorporating presence) are still emerging and will gather momentum in 2008 and beyond.

Please contact me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com if you want to meet me in Berlin for the Web 2.0 expo where I am speaking next week

Image: http://cies.fsu.edu/images/Brochure%20pictures/Umbrella%20group%20shot.JPG

Yahoo opens up ..

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 23:22:42 GMT

Jerry Yang seems to be making some positive changes and going away from the old media centric approach of Yahoo .. This makes far more sense to me ..

Yahoo recasts site as “starting point,” plans Asia deal

Yang said Yahoo would focus on getting its 500 million monthly users to consider its email, search, mobile Internet site and main portal essential tools to which they return multiple times daily.

Two well respected bloggers in the social computing space cover the beyond Web 2.0 - umbrella social networks - cloud computing blog

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 23:21:32 GMT

Two well respected bloggers in the social computing space cover the beyond Web 2.0 - umbrella social networks - cloud computing blog

See Judy Breck's views and Tom Mandel's post. Thanks Judy and Tom!

Engadget Mobile goes hands-on with the T-Mobile Shadow

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:16:43 GMT

Filed under: Cellphones

Head on over to Engadget Mobile to catch the new T-Mobile Shadow live and in person. We hear the slider action is a little addictive, so don't be surprised if those slackers take the rest of the day off to enjoy their new toy.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

ABC World News - AUDIO, 10.29.07

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:25:56 GMT

Webcast: New Normal in Iraq; Road to the Nomination; Rising Google Searches

Boost Mobile Partners with Mobile Complete to Create Boost Mobile VDL

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:25:51 GMT

Mobile Complete, a company that provides mobile application testing, monitoring and support services, launched the Boost Mobile Virtual Developer Lab (VDL) today. Boost Mobile VDL is a remote testing service that utilizes Mobile Complete’s DeviceAnywhere service. DeviceAnywhere enables users to remotely press device buttons, view displays, listen to ringers and speakers, connect and disconnect batteries and play videos from a desktop computer over the Internet. Users have virtual access to all the interfaces of a device as though the device was in their hands.

Boost Mobile is a Pay-As-You-Go mobile phone service provider that works to gain market share among young users. A majority of its 4.5 millions customers are under the age of 25. It is hoped that Boost Mobile VDL will decrease the time it takes content and application providers to bring new services to the Boost Mobile network.

“Boost Mobile is committed to staying ahead of the curve with some of the most innovative and up-to-date products and services available on the handset,” said Neil Lindsay, vice president of product management, Boost Mobile. “By partnering with Mobile Complete to create the Boost Mobile VDL, we’re making it easier for our community of developers to collaborate, test, manage and deploy our special limited edition ringtones, games and applications and bring them to market faster than ever.”

Boost Mobile VDL initially includes online access to over 20 hand sets, including several pre-commercial phones. Besides virtual access to the mobile phones, Mobile Complete will provide technical support for developers with any pressing questions. The goal of this partnership is to enhance developers’ abilities to deliver content quickly and cheaply. I don’t know what type of phones Boost Mobile’s customers use, but if Boost Mobile VDL is to be useful to developers, a majority of Boost Mobile’s 4.5 million customers have to be using, or will soon be using, the hand sets that the virtual laboratory hosts.

Boost Mobile
Mobile Complete

Podcast: Why digital kids are saying no to e-mail

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:48:36 GMT

Digital kids say the darndest things, why Fake Steve Jobs is pissed, and a bionic hand gets the thumbs-up.

Podcast: Why customers are hanging up on Vonage

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:46:36 GMT

Vonage faces new questions, Blockbuster buys into the Internet, and AMD goes show biz.

Once you go Mac

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:53:19 GMT

I sold and bought my first PC a long, long time ago. Back in the late 80s I owned a Mac, I think it was a Mac2. I honestly thought there would never come a time where I would buy a Mac. Ever.

Then I upgraded my PC to Vista. What a disaster. I had grown accustomed to my PC freezing every now and then. Enter Vista and my PC was frozen more often than it was working. The biggest culprit was MicroSoft Outlook.

The application has to have a memory leak. I could follow memory numbers as they grew and grew. Then as my email was downloading, the rules would stop working and everything went straight to my inbox. Spam and all.

When you get as many emails as I do. Thats a problem. When it also causes the system to freeze, its more than just a problem.

My first step was to get a copy of CPU Magazine with Vista tricks. The tricks helped. Everything froze or crashed less often. Significantly less often. But the annoyance factor was beyond belief. I dont run any special applications. I run outlook, Office and firefox. Thats it.

I had gotten to the point where I was embarrassed to be a PC owner. The thought of someone calling me and asking me to go to my computer to find something was paralyzing (ok, not that bad, but it sounded cool writing it).

This wasnt just a problem on my Desktop, it was a problem on my laptop with Vista as well.

So a few months ago I made the executive decision to buy a MacBook to replace my laptop.

I haven't looked back.

Its not that there arent hassles with the Mac. There are two. One there isnt a version of Outlook for the Mac. As someone who has more than 10 years and gigabytes worth of emails in multiple outlook files, the concept of exporting and importing wont fly. So i am keeping my PC Desktop purely to download my emails into Outlook so I have a master database. But I only do so after deleting unimportant emails from the server using my Macbook.

The 2nd problem is the lack of the right mouse click. I know its a Mac thing to only have one button, but its a hassle. Sure there are work arounds, none of which are quick and easy for a longtime PC user.

Both of these are easily offset by 3 simple Mac elements that make me very happy.

First is that when I close my MacBook without turning it off, it doesn't lose power. It can sit there for hours and then work when I open it up.

The 2nd is that it rarely freezes up. Maybe 3 or 4 times in months.

Finally, i LOVE the fact that it boots up in 1/1000000000 of the time it takes my PC. It probably will add years to my life .. (ok an exaggeration).

Im not an Apple fanboy, but I love me some MacBook

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All Publicity Isn't As Good As It Used To Be.

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:52:11 GMT

"All publicity is good publicity" It may have been true at some point, but it certainly is not true today. Nor will it be true forever more.

Instead, the motto has changed to "All Publicity is Abused Publicity"

The reality is that in todays ultra competitive chase to get your attention , if something you say or do is seen by more than 100 people, someone is going to attempt to re-purpose it to their own benefit or amusement.

In essence, the internet has put us all under a form of digital arrest.

"Everything we say or do, can and will be used for or against you on a website somewhere at some time, from now and ever-more"

There will be someone there with a camera phone to memorialize the mustard that dripped on your shirt from your hotdog and some website will use it to explain how the stress of "fill in the blank" is getting to you.

Someone will keep a picture from your 5th birthday party when your sister dressed you up as a Spice Girl. Your local newspaper will write an article saying how cute it was. Then some website or tv show, produced by someone who doesn't like you, will use it to try to convince their readers that you are gender confused and here is proof that it started at an early age

Silly examples for sure, but real.

The one thing the internet lacks that will forever change us all is Context. There is no way to retain context when you cut and paste. No matter the original intent of the words or pictures, anything on the net probably will find its way into situations for which they were never intended

Publicity, in fact all information used to have a shelf life. Newspapers were relegated to the hassles of microfiche. TV became a box or tape on a shelf somewhere. You could find it, but the cost in dollars and time were significant. Which of course reduced its use.

Thats no longer the case. Between the internet archives and search engines Everything is Everywhere. Forever.

The Net is a beautiful, wonderful utility but it certainly not an innocent medium.

The internet has put us in interesting times.

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