enterprise mashups

Open social

jim wilde — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:55:18 +0000

Cool, enterprise mashups are getting easier and easier. We use Drupal, so an open api is something we love hearing about.

"Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook ", NY Times

"...an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards [open api's] to allow software developers to write programs for Google's social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning.

The alliance includes business software makers Salesforce.com and Oracle, who are moving to let third-party programmers write applications that can be accessed by their customers."

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Social networking and open platforms

jim wilde — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:12:00 +0000

We believe the ability to communicate and collaborate with people both inside and outside the company is a key business differentiator. We use Drupal to make web apps that connect people.

From eweek, "Google, MySpace Must Open Platforms for Social Network Growth"

"Allowing third-party programmers to build applications on top of social networking platforms is increasingly becoming table stakes for businesses that want to sustain themselves in a burgeoning market, according to experts who follow the space.

When Facebook opened its platform for outside development in May, it triggered speculation that other Internet companies would follow suit to reach broader audiences and increase site stickiness.

That speculation has reached a boil of late, with reports in the blogosphere that Google, MySpace and LinkedIn are considering opening up their platforms to allow developers to write free software programs that consumers can play with and share with others in their social networks."

These open social network platforms are great news. They give any business or organization new opportunities to reach out as well as pull in ideas, data, and information

We believe the ability to communicate and collaborate with people both inside and outside the company is a key business differentiator.

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corporate social networking software

Enterprise web 2.0 services

jim wilde — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:20:53 +0000

We use Drupal - a web application framework to make Web 2.0, social networking applications and community software solutions for the enterprise. These apps are great for improving productivity.

"McAfee said he first realized the potential of Web 2.0 technologies to become an Enterprise 2.0 platform while studying more traditional corporate software applications including ERP, BPM, supply chain management and customer relationship management (CRM). At first, he was skeptical about the value of Web 2.0 for business, but hands-on experience convinced him that it had potential.

"When I educated myself a bit about it I saw that it has huge relevance to companies because it did just about the opposite of the technology I'd been studying," he said. "It did not impose anything on users. Instead it gave them a very, very free environment to work in and lets structures emerge over time."

Defining his terms, he said that Web 2.0 includes applications such as blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and social networking [community applications] . Enterprise 2.0 is the packaging of those technologies in both the corporate IT and workplace environments."

Harvard prof. envisions Enterprise 2.0 Web services, By Rich Seeley, News Writer

Andrew P. McAfee is an associate professor with the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. Visit the author's blog for more commentary about Enterprise 2.0 and related topics.

As we implement more advanced corporate social networking applications and community software solutions, we're finding most employees require some training in Social Information Management.

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drupal

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corporate social networks

The math of small contributions

jim wilde — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:21:40 +0000

Take a look at any open source software community or social networking site to understand the math of small contributions in action.

This idea has been around for some time. I first read about it in, "small pieces loosely joined", by Dave Weinberger (one of the authors of the cluetrain). Anyway, Micheal Schrage has a good post, "Round-off Error? Hardly!" MIT Technology Review that applies the math. to the idea.

Mr. Schrage, "A brief disquisition as to why--when it comes to innovation--superficial economic analysis is worse than no analysis at all.

Let's start with the math: treating .1 percent of people as a "rounding error" may make economic sense if they don't do anything of substance or significance. But if they actually create and add value to your network and/or your business, you might be wiser to treat that magnificent tenth of a percent as an "outlier" to be nurtured rather than a statistical aberration to be ignored.

Indeed, as Mr. Harford well knows, 10 percent of a thousand is larger than 90 percent of a hundred. If we have--and we do!--Net enterprises with tens of millions of users, then that measly-looking .1 percent can be misleadingly robust. One-tenth of a percent of a million is a thousand, and, of course, .1 percent of 10 million = 10,000. That's quite a workforce. But why grant Tim his self-serving assumptions? I cheerfully argue that as a "culture of contribution" and creative volunteerism facilitates a vibrant innovation marketplace, that tenth of a percent might really be closer to seven-tenths of a percent or even 1 percent. Again, it's not the volume of contributors that matters; it's the value of their contributions. Isn't that what economics is supposed to be about? Hence my dismay with and dismissal of our Undercover Economist's "analysis."

The simple truth is that we can look at any industry--automobiles, semiconductors, telecoms--and find only a tiny fraction of "entrepreneurs" who are making real contributions. Now, I'm not for a moment suggesting that folks who volunteer their videos on Youtube or comments on Amazon or story preferences on Digg are entrepreneurs in the Schumpertarian or Hayekian sense. The (obvious) profit motive is absent. However, the community/audience/marketplace clearly sees some value in these contributions--as do the undeniably entrepreneurial hosts. The spirit--and seduction--of "increasing returns" suggests that literally tens of thousands of people will be making value-added contributions to these arenas and that, yes, noncontributing consumers will also extract some value from them. In other words, Harford's "rounding error" assertion is a bit like saying, "You know those tiny little things that huge trees have called seeds? Well, they're so small and lightweight, they don't really matter. I mean, they're not even one-tenth of one percent the size or weight of the tree...." Just as bad botanical understanding can wipe out forests and biodiversity, poor economic analysis can wipe out value and its creation. The truth is that we're just beginning to grasp the underlying behavioral economics of "open source" and "cooperative" innovation economies. Dismissing what we don't understand as "round-off error" makes poor punditry and worse economics.

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creative volunteerism

culture of contribution

economics

marketplace

behavioral economics

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Competing in a Flat World: Building Enterprises for a Borderless World

Corporate social networks

jim wilde — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:11:24 +0000

We're here for business development managers, business unit heads, team leaders, project heads, and managers whose work depends on reaching across silos or through an extended enterprise of suppliers and customers.

With business social networking software - managers and employees now have a system for connecting informal interactions and discovering new information flows.

So, stop reading about social applications and collaboration tools. Unleash your imagination and start experimenting. The real power of social software can only be appreciated with hands-on experience. Consider a pilot project.

This article is From CIO, "5 Reasons to Deploy a Business Social Network".

Social Networks Build Better Customer Relationships,

Social Networks Improve Knowledge Management,

Social Networks Facilitates Recruiting and Retention,

Social Networks Increase Business Opportunities,

Social Networks Build Community.

..And 3 Challenges Of Corporate Social Networks,

Social Networks Can Be Time Intensive,

Social Networks Mean Giving Up Some Control,

Social Networks Challenge the Organization Chart.

"Why Should I Do Business with You?", from Harvard Business Review.

"How can any business expect to outperform the competition when its own employees can't explain simply and convincingly what makes them different from the competition? Gary Hamel, the influential strategy guru at the London Business School, makes the case that most companies, in most industries, suffer from a kind of tunnel vision: They chase the same opportunities that everyone else chases; they miss the same opportunities that everyone else misses."

We believe the ability to communicate and collaborate with people both inside and outside the company is a key business differentiator.

Social networking and learning,

CRM and Social Networking

Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the new participatory culture,

Open Source Leadership as an Organizational Management Style,

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orchestrating resources

corporate social networks

social productivity

api's

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Facebook mashups and marketing

Facebook widgets, applications, and mashups

jim wilde — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:42:04 +0000

"In Facebook, Investing in a Theory", NY Times

"Thousands of software developers are creating features for Facebook, the rapidly growing social network, many hoping to strike it rich alongside Facebook's own employees."

We go even further... Users of our social web applications can use many already developed widgets, applications, and content (vids, images, text) to automagically apply on facebooks. Users/members are authenicated on login. All content is RSS/XML enabled.

On a different note... If MS gets involved with facebook, they would most likely scare off (me) many of the independent developers.

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CRM and Social Networking

jim wilde — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:47:29 +0000

Business managers need to take notice of the social web. With social software applications - social networking and community solutions combined with CRM, managers and employees can improve customer support and value while improving productivity.

Snagged this article and images from Selvas Cano, "Online Communities / Social Networking and CRM

There are a number of reasons why companies want to do community [social networks]; some see it as a way to bring down support costs, others (smarter) see it as that plus a way to obtain feedback on products, yet others (smartest) see it as all of the above plus a way to allow a web of support and sense of belonging develop among their customers and translate that into loyalty; exhausting this topic would require a book.

Now; community is about people engaging with each other and reaping value out of that engagement. To make this relevant to the diagram above lets understand that people implies both customers and/or employees of the company; employees may do it on their official company role (i.e. technical support) or in an un-official role; however allow me to only illustrate in the diagram the customer to customer portion of this to keep things simple:

These releationship diagrams are what we been driving at with our enterprise social networking software applications and mashups.

Thanks to Social Customer Manifesto for the pointer.

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Competing in a Flat World: Building Enterprises for a Borderless World

jim wilde — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 16:32:09 +0000

From knowledge at wharton... New book, "Competing in a Flat World" is a great start for any business development manager that is charged with figuring out how to apply innovative ideas.

John Seely Brown. writes, ...provides an extraordinary glimpse into a new kind of organizational architecture, one built around the notion of orchestrating resources you don't control and doing so in a way that builds both trust and agility. This architecture may well turn out to be the dominant model of the firm for the 21st century."

One of the easiest solutions for any size business or organization is to first start learning how ideas, things and stuff are happening in the consumer IT space. Consumer IT is built around social networking software, on-line communities, and social media. With these web 2.0 tools and ideas - consumers are connecting, sharing, collaborating - participating like never before.

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enterprise mashups

mashups

organizational architecture

strategy

talent

flat world

orchestrating resources

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corporate social networks

"Enterprise Mashups Hurtle Toward Mainstream"

jim wilde — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:43:04 +0000

Enterprise Mashups Hurtle Toward Mainstream, eweek

"Many companies looking to cull data from multiple sources to help their employees do their jobs better are seeking mashups as an answer, said Anthony Bradley, a Gartner analyst, Sept. 21 at the Gartner Web Innovation Summit 2007 here.

...businesses are increasingly using mashups to improve workflow efficiencies at a time when knowledge workers are looking to get information faster. The major benefit of mashups is rapid application development.

Situational awareness, in which a user can grab data from multiple sources and manipulate it on the fly to make better decisions, is the killer mashup app. This type of implementation will pace an adoption cycle in which Gartner anticipates 30 percent of companies will use mashups within the next 12 months."

We believe the ability to communicate and collaborate with people both inside and outside the company is a key business differentiator.

Many mashups are happening in the consumer IT (social networking applications and social media) space which provide all kinds of opportunities for businesses and organizations.

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situational awareness

killer apps

knowledge workers

workflow efficiencies

portals

social media

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knowledge management

Enterprise Social Networking Blasting Off

jim wilde — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 13:34:33 +0000

Business development idea - the growing market for business social networking software and community solutions as a new communications tool. That's right. Email is dying and knowledge workers really want to work together - collaborate - to get their work done.

The industry analyst firm IDC has released a new report that indicates that the enterprise social networking market (demo) is ready for ignition and liftoff.

"The social networking application market was relatively small in 2006, coming in at $46.8 million, a new study published by IDC reports. By 2009, however, this market will grow to $428.3 million creating a new application segment and establishing social networking as a new communications tool used for many purposes other than consumer socializing."

The report goes on:

"There are three social networking segments emerging. These include: self-service applications used by groups and marketing campaign teams; brand applications that focus on persistent customer engagement; and enterprise applications that provide more effective ways of working with customers, partners, and other external parties." (emphasis added).

We believe the ability to communicate and collaborate with people both inside and outside the company is a key business differentiator.

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Social Bookmarking video

jim wilde — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 12:19:13 +0000

I've been using del.icio.us for the last three years as my primary search tool. Google/Yahool are great for the generic stuff but for the meaningful stuff I use del.icio.us. Why? Easy, most of the bookmarks to web pages are intelligently filtered, noted, and tagged.

Hey, would you put crappy music on your ipod?

Social Bookmarking is one of the easiest tools for users to adopt. It only takes a few people to build up an incredibly rich library.

Try out our demo bookmarking/voting here.

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sharing

wisdom of crowds

enterprise mashups

Mashability to Mashups

jim wilde — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 16:01:29 +0000

The NY Times has an interesting article about mashups - Do the Mash (Even if You Don't Know All the Steps) "POP music has its mash-ups that combine tunes and vocals from different songs. YouTube viewers do it, too, mixing together segments from various music videos."Anyway, these mashups are happening all over the place using wikis, blogs, collaborative tools, and social networks. The biggest challenge in organizations is getting applications data base opened up using standard api's.From an IBM spokesperson, "People want to be able to write programs to exploit new business opportunities, he said. - Companies have lots of databases they want to make mashable, he said, - and share with their business partners.

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business opportunities

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collaborative software

"Working Together...When Apart "

Working Together - Collaborating and web 2.0

jim wilde — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:35:58 +0000

I came across an article about teams "working together when apart" that offers ideas for business social networking software. Especially the part about developing personal profiles where team members can quickly learn about each other - expertise locator, and work together. Check out the demo.

By Lynda Gratton

As employees scatter around the globe, virtual teamwork has become crucial. Here are 10 rules for making it work.

1. Invest in an online resource where members can learn quickly about one another.

2. Choose a few team members who already know each other.

3. Identify "boundary spanners" and ensure that they make up at least 15% of the team.

4. Cultivate boundary spanners as a regular part of company wide practices and processes.

5. Break the team's work up into modules so that progress in one location is not overly dependent on progress in another.

6. Create an online site where a team can collaborate, exchange ideas and inspire one another.

7. Encourage frequent communication. But don't try to force social gatherings.

8. Assign only tasks that are challenging and interesting.

9. Ensure the task is meaningful to the team and the company.

10. When building a virtual team, solicit volunteers as much as possible.

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enterprise mashups

mit

rich internet applications

privacy

profiles

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rich internet applications

Enterprise Mashups

jim wilde — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:46:48 +0000

From CW, "Enterprise mashups meet SOA"

If ya been reading our blog you'll remember that we blogged about these ideas before - the mashup, the api, in the enterprise. If your new, check out the CW piece.

Take two services, add a connector, and call the right customer in the morning.

The line is blurring between the enterprise and the Web. Mashups live on that porous perimeter, offering the reusability of an SOA plus very rapid development using prebuilt services outside the firewall. Soon, we may live in a world where it's difficult to tell where the enterprise stops and the Web begins. It's scary -- and exciting at the same time.

Combining, creating, and cohabiting

Google Maps mashups, which hook the wildly popular mapping service to some database that includes street addresses, have become almost cliché. Yet this type of solution is actually a perfect demonstration of the value of the mashup notion: Somebody has a need, takes a few days to create the mashup solution, and there you have it. (See Google Maps.)

More complex mashups approach composite applications (those that are made up of many services), an advanced SOA concept. For instance, you could mashup a customer database with marketing metrics, then mash up the results even further with sales forecast processes.

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privacy

open api's

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