tagging

Endless possibilities

jim wilde — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 13:22:52 +0000

To get ideas - engage the wisdom of crowds, in ways you've never imagined possible. You can see this idea in action on del.icio.us and technorati.com.

Kathy Sierra from creating passionate users blog remarks on "The wisdom of crowds" ..."the wisdom comes not from the consensus decision of the group, but from the aggregation of the ideas/thoughts/decisions of each individual in the group."

Assigning order to a chaotic process. People in businesses and corporations are starting to use social software, virtual communities, and rich learning environments to relate ideas, stories and information to each other. These virtual communities help employees spot new business opportunities before the competition does, create a meeting place, be open to radical opportunities, break down silos, support experimentation, enable managers to represent the customer vis-Ã -vis their own organizations, and help everyone move forward.

The problem used to be that information was a scarce resource. On the flip side, most employees did not need to know much about the organization to do their job.

Keeping up with rapidly changing times. In the new millennium, yesterday's Employees have been replaced with today's Professionals - they need uncluttered information, both internal â€“ regarding the company, and external - regarding the competition, trends in the industry, etc - to solve problems, meet challenges, and do their jobs. The conundrum is that today's Professional needs help with ideas and information yet has no mindspace (time and attention) to sift though the clutter.

On a counter intuitive note, everybody needs a good heap of CLUTTERED INFORMATION to tinker with in order to invent new ideas.

With external information, the central challenge of intelligence gathering has always been the problem of "noise": the fact that useless information is vastly more plentiful than useful information. With more information available, it is harder to discern what information really matters.

With internal information or the lack thereof, the main challenge for today's professionals is trying to figure out how their daily work activities fit with what the organization is trying to achieve. Most employees do not read 10-K's, annul reports, or much about business objectives, goals, etc. This causes a disconnection on what needs to be done. What's more, plans change faster than people are able to grasp them.

Serendipity anyone?

With employees using socail networking software and virtual communities, they have a better opportunity for chance encounter and better cooperation across departments.

Since most companies struggle with the "silo syndrome" employees from different departments tend to keep to themselves, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. A social network or virtual community lends itself to chance encounters among people who don't, but should, know each other.

Tags:

Social Media:

A central web 2.0 principle

jim wilde — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:12:59 +0000

Ahhhhh, the old 80/20 rule applies to social and community sites.

Students at LIAFA University in Paris partnered with a team at Orange Labs to analyze Flickr (a web 2.0 application) using data from 2006. They produced this paper.

Abstract

Web 2.0 works with the principle of weak cooperation, where a huge amount of individual contributions build solid and structured sources of data. In this paper, we detail the main properties of this weak cooperation by illustrating them on the photo publication website Flickr, showing the variety of uses producing a rich content and the various procedures devised by Flickr users themselves to select quality. We underlined the interaction between small and heavy users as a specific form of collective production in large social networks communities.

Here are some of their findings.

- 20% of users account for 82% of all photos,

- Pro users make up just 3.7% of users, but account for over 59% of all photos

- 39% of users are inactive

- 23% of users have no public photos, but have used the site to communicate

- 64% of contacts are reciprocated

What the research shows is the power of a small group of users to shape the community. This group puts a lot effort into tagging, commenting and discussion which turns Flickr from a photo storage site into a vibrant community.

What's your experience with web 2.0 or social software applications?

Tags:

tagging

online communities

orchestrating resources

participation

social media

research

user generated content

web 2.0 prinicples

tips

weak cooperation

Social Media:

Expertly filtering the wisdom of crowds

jim wilde — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:12:22 +0000

Organizations trying to capture the wisdom of crowds (employees, customers, partners) are using social networking software - web 2.0 technologies.

Most of these social software technologies, at least the ones we set up, use tags (think tag clouds), folksonomies, taxonomies, , voting, reviews, recommendations, and search. This makes it quick and easy for experts as well as cross-collaboration teams to quickly and easily filter through ideas.

"can the crowd replace the expert?" from InfluxInsights by Ed Cotton.

"Companies are already tapping into the wisdom of their crowds of employees and consumers hoping for gems that challenge the experts.

However, it's one thing to facilitate and collect all the input and its quite another to make that input great.

Collection alone is not enough, there needs to be another level added to the process.

This could happen if small teams cross-collaborate to make the initial ideas better, or if real experts are brought in and thrown into the crowd to extract and facilitate.

This challenge is the same for ad agencies, as they demand creative thinking from every employee, rather than just those with the word creative in their job title.

The old-fashioned brainstorming session might not be long for this world, real collaboration requires new processes, new skills and new tools and
technology."

Tags:

Social Media:

classification bookmarking

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.

Tags:

social information management

Social Media:

Social Bookmarking

social information management

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

jim wilde — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:05:28 +0000

This is the what and how of social information management

YouTube: Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us via Digital Ethnography @ Kansas University

We can all act on our imaginations farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before.

Tags:

sharing

social web applications

Social Media:

Social networking software gives business the blues.

jim wilde — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:20:32 +0000

Social Networking Software - Community Drivien Sites - Collaborative Tools Creating communities, connecting people, sharing knowledge, capturing ideas, and spurring mashups scares the hell out of most organizations, businesses, and associations. Risky stuff! Be afraid! Community Driven Sites Are Unpredictable. Do you really want to know what employees, customers, suppliers, users, stakeholders, et al., have to say? Do you really want all of these people connecting and sharing ideas, information, knowledge? [...Tools that cast a wide net will capture open minds...] These tools are powerful, situational, productive, and cheap (SaaS model). They can also be set up on intranets and dedicated servers. On the most basic level, all you need is a web browser and an internet connection. [...productive and timely information...] A social network platform pushes and pulls together the wisdom of diverse, independent groups to create - mashups - new contexts that shed light on problems. Social networks are messy and chaotic but generate new ideas, crazy connections, real solutions, more productive and timely information faster than you could ever achieve without one.

Tags:

Social Media:

collaborative software

"Using communities to enhance search results"

jim wilde — Thu, 11 May 2006 16:16:33 +0000

I get email alerts from MarketWatch. BTW I snagged the image from HBR.Here's the lastest one, "Using communities to enhance search results." Wow, imagine that. Link to google co-op. Nothing really new. Users can start topics, add their searches, bookmarks, notes, get feeds, etc. Let's say, del.icio.us (owned by yahoo). I thought I'd pass it along in case your new to the socialization of the net. What's great, goog is big enough to create a gigantic filtered net. Time will tell.

"Google going vertical

Using communities to enhance search results By Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch, Last Update: 12:12 AM ET May 11, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- As Google's algorithms do what humans can't -- scale -- community-based searches seemed like something Google would not be interested in.

After all, communities are made of people who tend to be fickle, slow and inherently lazy. They can't handle or process what Google's machines can do.

Yet, Google (GOOG)
is harnessing communities with Google Co-op, a concept that lets users contribute their knowledge and expertise to improve search results for everyone. Google also announced, on Wednesday, Google Desktop 4 and Google Notebook, which allows people to share their notes about their searches.

When I asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt what was the most exciting product launch in the last year, he said "Google Co-op."

In his words: "It's a powerful idea" because it gets people to help Google structure the data. Through a co-op, "user-generated data becomes part of the answer," Schmidt said.

What's more, Google doesn't have to do anything. "Best part of a co-op is that it shows up without us asking." The idea behind Google Co-op, Schmidt said, is that users contribute to create rich resources of information across various topics. It's a lot like Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia created and edited by users, he said.

These topics or verticals will be formed as a result of the
communities creating them. In his words: "There'll be more verticals."

Community-based searching has been gaining a lot of attention of late.

I recently wrote about PreFound, Plum, Jeteye and Kaboodle. All these services are trying to get communities to aid in giving people better results for their searches.

Google's Co-op certainly shows that even Google -- which thrives on building the best technology -- believes in the power of humans.

I think this is a brilliant idea for Google to tap into the more arcane searches. Among the digerati, these searches are called the "long tail." Getting to the long tail of searches, the results of the most convoluted or obscure search queries, is something that humans can help with.

"Machine algorithms aren't good at it," Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering at Google, said to me.

"Great," I said. "Humans 1, machines 0."

Eustace gave me a little smile, with a look that said, but it won't be for long.

"For the time being, the human judgment is still much better," he said.

So, how does Google Co-op work and is this Google's foray into community-based searching? For that I spoke with the lead product manager, Shashi Seth. Seth said that yes, indeed, Google Co-op is the search engine's push into community-based searches.

So, how does a community get involved? This is how Google's Seth explained it. First, if you want to participate, go to Google.com/coop. Sign in and create a profile and a label. For instance, if I want to make a page about travel in Napa, I might label it "Travel in Napa." Then, I could put all sorts of information in that page. (For anyone who read my column about PreFound, the idea is the same. PreFound allows people to be Featured Finders to create pages about topics. In
this way, anyone who wants information about that particular topic can leverage the work of that particular Featured Finder.) In many ways, Google's Co-op is the same thing.

If I want to create a page about Hawaii and throw in a bunch of information from searches I had conducted in the past, I can create a page and label it Hawaii. Others can contribute to that page and others can subscribe. The more subscribers, the more relevant my page becomes.

Google Notebook also harnesses the community by letting people share their search results. If you're searching you can throw your search results -- links and images, etc -- into a notebook. Others can share in contributing to that notebook. And, you can make that notebook public.

Again, this idea is similar to the companies -- Jeteye, Plum, etc. -- I've been writing about.

The question is, is Google the environment that motivates a
community to get involved? It may just be a social network. When I asked Schmidt about News Corp's MySpace and the power of social networks, he said that these social networks don't make money. Google would like to find a way to help them make money. "Does that mean Google has to partner with a social network?" I asked. "How does that work?"

He gave me that Schmidt smile -- a nice warm one he seems to easily give regardless of his mood -- with a look that said to me: "I'm staying reticent."

Rather he said, "You can figure it out." I guess I can figure it out.

Google has moved into community-based searching, which I've thought a compelling idea. Communities are formed in social networks, like MySpace.

MySpace wants a search engine. Is there a connection or partnership in the works?

We'll see."

Tags:

vertical social networks

socialization

intelligently filtered

Social Media:

Advancing Insights - Keeping an Eye on Distant Events

jim wilde — Thu, 11 May 2006 14:13:45 +0000

In a new book,"Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals That Will Make or Break Your Company ", author George Day and co-author Paul Schoemaker make the case for open minded management. Mr. Day sez most "...90% of CEO's act more like COO's" (more concerned with short term profits) than asking questions about the periphery or edge (read John Hagel - global process networks) of the business.

I find the idea compelling because it jibes with what we try to get across to managers with Ideascape (enterprise social networks). Businesses need a lightweight system to connect employees, partners, suppliers, and customers to ideas and information so that they can interact and make better decisions - faster.

If you're interested in this stuff, take a look at the cluetrain manifesto.

Anyway, Wharton has a podcast interview with Mr. Day. (reg req)

"In Wharton marketing professor George Day's world, the term "peripheral vision" means the ability of companies to detect, interpret and act on distant signals, whether a rumor heard about a new rival, a newspaper article about a new medical device, or the popularity of a blog started by a dissatisfied customer."

Funny thing about blogs. I read this morning, "The balance of power shifts from seller to buyer" by Stuart Lauchlan. Mr. Lauchlan, lmao, describes in detail his trouble trying to use his ATM card from Barclays Bank. He also has a link to a post about a new study on trends in the marketplace. Mr. Lauchlan, "...its basic premise that the balance of power has shifted from seller to buyer - but the sellers haven't woken up to this idea yet. As such a lot of companies are going to end up in a lot of trouble as buyers exert their new found power."

Interesting! Last year, Jeff Jarvis blogged about the problems he was having with Dell Computer's customer support. I wondered at the time (06-2006 - Dell trading at 41) what effect the Dell PR nightmare would have on stock price. Well, today the stock is trading at 24 (a 52 week low).

Update 5-13-06: From the The NY Times - "Dell's World Isn't What It Used to Be"

"Dell is indeed spending more on customer service, which is a reason earnings have been damped. It is hiring more people for call centers in the United States and Canada. "The time to answer the phone has been cut in half in the last month," said Joe Marengi, senior vice president for Dell's Americas business. Staff members are being trained to resolve complaints before they escalate. "The amount of escalations were going way too high. You can go out and see on the blogs what is happening."

The company, once known for great service, has faced a rash of mistreated customers to the point, analysts said, that the problem was becoming part of consumers' perception of Dell. The blogger Jeff Jarvis complained about his problems on his BuzzMachine site. In another case, Dell was said to have sold an expensive server to a woman who merely wanted a device to connect two PC's. Dell resolved Mr. Jarvis's complaint, but it was never clear that the woman with the server was ever given the right product, a router."

Tags:

Social Media:

community software management

Developing Social Networks and On-line Communities

jim wilde — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 14:47:28 +0000

Here's a podcast for anybody wanting to understand the basics of developing an on-line community or social networking or web 2.0 application. Covers both technical, rss and tagging, and the social aspects, trust and participation.

From Knowledge at Wharton, Podcast: What Makes an Online Community Tick? Ask Craigslist, Yahoo and Pheedo. (registration required)

"On-line communities, [social networks and web 2.0 applications] have become not just a major social force, but a significant driver of business activity both online and offline. Facilitating, nurturing and benefiting from those communities, however, is not a simple task. To explore what makes these communities tick, Kevin Werbach, a professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton, spoke with Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.com, Julie Herendeen, vice president of Network Products at Yahoo and William Flitter, CEO of Pheedo. All three are involved with successful online communities and efforts to leverage and facilitate online communities, but in very different ways."

Tags:

Social Media:

Tagging for Aboutness

jim wilde — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 18:23:13 +0000

Dave Weinberger, Me on Tagging on All Things Considered

NPR's "All Things Considered" last night ran a three minute commentary of mine on tagging. You can hear it here, thanks to Michael Shook. [Later: Here's NPR's own version.]

Here's a near-transcript:

Google is smart, but here's a tough problem for it. Let's say you type in "africa," "agriculture" and "grains" because that's what you're researching. You'll get lots of results, but you may miss pages about "couscous" because Google is searching for the word "grain" and doesn't know that that's what couscous is made of. Google knows the words on the pages, but doesn't know what the pages are about. That's much harder for computers because what something is about really depends on what you're looking for. That same page on couscous that to you is about economics could be about healthy eating to me or about words that repeat syllables to someone else. And that's the problem with all attempts by experts and authorities to come up with neat organizations of knowledge: What something is about depends on whose looking.

For more information on tagging, del.icio.us and folksonomy, search the site.

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Social Media:

Web 2.0 at work!

jim wilde — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 13:47:53 +0000

Erin Bradley - Search Views, has a story, "Cameraphone, Social Networking Nab Subway Flasher " that demostrates a good point about one of the many social network systems available today. As we all know, the cost of technology is always dropping and soon these multipurpose cameraphones will be in the hands of everyone. Oh, yeah - they are Net enabled, which means they can instantly put photos and text on several of the social network systems from almost anywhere for everyone to see, and, get this - to comment on. Hey, the net is friendly.

From Erin...

The image of the subway flasher which was captured on a quick-thinking woman's cameraphone has been making the rounds in the media for a few days.

This is an awesome story and a great example of someone keeping a cool head in a scary situation. It's also good to see the 'Big Brother' phenomenon (cameras everywhere you look) working out in the average citizen's favor for once, not to mention the street cred this gives to social networks like Flickr -What do you mean they're useless?! they can solve crimes!

Welcome to web 2.0.

If you think back to last year's tsunami or to more recent events like the London bombings and now hurricane Katrina, people are using social software - flickr, technorati, blogs, wikis, and social networks - to get real-time information about people, places, and things.

We are all journalists today - anyone can report on anything. We can tag our posts, images, and podcasts and let them fly on the Net. They become available immediately to one person or to millions. The Net is friendly. People who post are reaching out and sharing their ideas and information - inviting us all to participate and to contribute.

Depending on where you stand, for example, flashing people, or trying to do something good - these new tools will change the way we operate as individuals, businesses, organizations, and societies.

LOL The flashing guy reminds me of what most people think about advertising.

Tags:

Social Media:

Web 2.0 for the Enterprise: Where the Action Is?

Website Development - Web 2.0 - Social Software

jim wilde — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 11:36:28 +0000

Social Networking Software, Social Media, Web 2.0 & Enterprise 2.0

This is a collection of enterprise 2.0, web 2.0, social media, communities, and social networking software links. It is intended to educate curious minds because there is much more to implementing this stuff than just software. For business ideas and tips, read our blogs, use the search ,or tags to learn more about the challenges.

Social Information Management (SIM) Understanding virtual communities and Web 2.0 applications is important to your business, and you need to spend some quality time using them to really get what they're all about. The power of user-driven tools lies in the using. Just reading about them, or spending an hour or two playing with them, doesn't do them justice; you've got to go hands-on to appreciate their power.

Start with wikipedia - web 2.0 to get a fresh update on the latest stuff. Oh, let's not forget O'Reilly with, "What Is Web 2.0, Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software."

From O'Reilly Media, "Web 2.0, Principals and Practices " is an exceprt of their latest report on web 2.0 and how it applies to the enterprise.

"Web 2.0 is a set of economic, social, and technology trends that collectively form the basis for the next generation of the internet - a more mature, distinctive medium characterized by user participation, openness, and network effects.

Web 2.0 and social networking software. Companies are using these ideas and social software platforms to build powerful web services and ordinary people are using them to share and remix - mashups - media of all types on the net.

Learn why managers are using Advancing Insights to sort out and implement enterprise social networking systems and collaborative tools.

From an article in MIT Sloan, "Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration" and from Mr. McAfee's blog, the author of the article, "The Trends Underlying Enterprise 2.0".

Here's a demo of an corporate social networking platform. .

Top 10 Management Fears About Enterprise Web 2.0

"Internet 2.0: the economic, social and cultural consequences of the new Internet

Our enthusiasm for the internet is returning. The nuclear winter that followed April 2000 has lifted. The startups are back, baby. Microsoft is once more playing catch up.

If you are a civilian like me (an anthropologist, that is, without much technical savvy), it's a little mystifying. Will Internet 2.0 change everything or just some things? Is this a revolutionary moment or an evolutionary one? Is everything I know wrong, or just this, that and the other thing? Is this 2.0h! or merely 2.0."

John Hagel, Edge Perspectives - What is Web 2.0? and Web 2.0 Redux.

WHAT? Ready for Web 3.0? from John.

The Web 2.0 and beyond Ã¢â‚¬ a conversation - Three Internet gurus talk with ThoughtCast about the - social architecture of the web, and how it might bring people together, and/or pull them apart! David Weinberger, Chris Nolan, and Stowe Boyd.

Paul Graham writes about Web 2.0...

"Ajax" - One ingredient of its meaning is certainly Ajax, which I can still only just bear to use without scare quotes. Basically, what "Ajax" means is "Javascript now works." And that in turn means that web-based applications can now be made to work much more like desktop ones.

Democracy - The second big element of Web 2.0 is democracy. We now have several examples to prove that amateurs can surpass professionals, when they have the right kind of system to channel their efforts. Wikipedia may be the most famous. Experts have given Wikipedia middling reviews, but they miss the critical point: it's good enough. And it's free, which means people actually read it. On the web, articles you have to pay for might as well not exist. Even if you were willing to pay to read them yourself, you can't link to them. They're not part of the conversation.

Don't Maltreat Users - During the Bubble a lot of popular sites were quite high-handed with users. And not just in obvious ways, like making them register, or subjecting them to annoying ads. The very design of the average site in the late 90s was an abuse. Many of the most popular sites were loaded with obtrusive branding that made them slow to load and sent the user the message: this is our site, not yours. (There's a physical analog in the Intel and Microsoft stickers that come on some laptops.)

If you have not read Paul's essay on, "What Business Can Learn From Open Source", now is a good time.

Using Social Networking Software from the Computer Writing and Research Lab a division of Rhetoric and Writing | The University of Texas at Austin.

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

Give us a call, 973.433.4007, to learn how the wisdom of crowds can help your business become more profitable.

Specialized social networking software - blog search, tagging, bookmarking and other cool stuff that is turning biz upside down on the net.

del.icio.us
Ideascape
justcurious - this is too fuuny
fac.etio.us a tag hierarchy of del.icio.us
del.icio.us filtered
furl
Talkdigger
Sphere - new blog search engine (beta)
rawsugar
feedster
technorati
Diggdot.us
pubsub
Bloglines
All you can upload (cnet - image uploading )
Flickr
Youtube
Ice Rocket
urban dictionary
google blog search
random text generator
fun on-line generators
Trendalicious
Blog Pulse
Collabrank - del.icio.us
e-Hub ...many cool links to what's going on with web 2.0.
Rollyo
Groop.us - clustering of del.icio.us tags
RSS stuff for search - New media
Google and rss
Fun google maps and mashups
Top Ten Underserved Web 2.0 Markets
Yahoo blog and news search - cool - it also pulls in flickr images. Yahoo delivers news from everywhere much the way we can deliver ideas and information within an organization.
The Ultimate Guide to Google Services

Tags:

spcial network platform

rich internet applications

corporate social networks

social media

social media tools

Social Media:

Comparing Enterprise Blog Software

jim wilde — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 17:17:28 +0000

Note: Keep in mind that this information was published on 2005-08-05 - a lot has changed with what used to be called enterprise blogging software. These days, blogs, wikis, groups, forums, misc., are referred to as social software applications or web 2.0 technologies.

The days of cheap blogging are over. As it becomes more visible - and expensive in terms of both time and money - supporting it with informal budgets and borrowed resources just won't cut it anymore.

Keep in mind that software (30%) is only part of a solution. We use a custom version of Drupal (open source) to help customers implement enterprise blogging systems. The core of Drupal provides an excellent framework, like most open source projects, for starting out. But, it gets to be challenging (scaling and performance) adding non-core modules/plugins/widgets. You really need to know what you're doing, both with the software and managing a community for this stuff to rock.

We have been actively using Drupal to create online communities, collaborative tools, and enterprise blogging systems for over the last three years.

We take a hybrid approach between open source, closed source, functionality, risk and support to deliver simple or advanced, custom solutions. Ones that are stable with superior performance and maximum uptime.

Robin Good, Group And Multi-User Blog Platforms Compared

Comparative Report

The report puts head-to-head Silkblogs, Drupal, Manila, 21Publish, Typepad
and Wordpress, MT.

Here's info on Movable Type: Powerful enterprise blogs.

Drupal correct score is 10.5 (out of 11), which makes it the best scoring tool overall, above Manila (score: 9.5 - only when used with the Userland Radio Community server) and 21Publish (score 9.5).

Enterprise blogs should have all of these features and functions:

user administration,
advanced and group publishing, revision control with rollback,
security for publishing internally (inside the organization) and externally (what the public sees and commnets on)
workflow management, multi-threaded discussion capabilities within blogs, wikis, forums, group chat
private messaging,
trackbacks on all external posts
auto discovery of internal links
full wysiwyg (WIZ-zee-wig)
editor for posts and comments (configurable)
news aggregation on topic and keyword,
metadata functions with controlled (taxonomies) vocabularies
tagged - folksonomies (internal and external)
hooks and links (API's) to 3rd party services (del.icio.us, technorati, flickr, et al). These API's are important to weed through - recommendation engine - the "conversational mess" to find and discover ideas that are revelant to your task at hand.
XML/RSS publishing for content sharing purposes.
Granular permissions and role based privilegeson all posts for view/edit/change functions
Forums - Archives - Surveys - Polls - Webforms
Support for a diverse range of projects, from simple blogs and wikis to large community-driven meeting places with hundreds of blogs and e-commerce.

Note: Some of these features/functions we have developed.

The beauty of Drupal is that it is open source, which means you can do whatever you want with it. So depending on what your goals are, Drupal might be perfect for you. For us, it serves as an excellent platform to help companies connect people, places, and things, to ideas and information, which leads to improved individual and business performance. As with any enterprise application, implementation, that is, getting people to use it for the intended purposes is always a challenge. If you choose to go it alone, there are plenty of ideas and information here on non-technical issues and loads of technical information on the Drupal forums.

Note: We support e-commerce in our enterprise blogging platform not so much to sell external products (you can), but as a way for organizations to hold auctions for internal resources. Ross Mayfield has an interesting post from the Collaborative Technologies Conference in NYC that covers ideas from Thomas Malone, author of "The Future of Work". ("Intel Scenario: internal market for manufacturing capacity. Plan managers sell futures for producs they could produce at specific times in the future, Sales people trade it to be able to sell to external customers, prices fluctuate as knowledge of supply and demand changes, prices determine which products actually get produced in the factories and who gets to sell them. Could this let them produce faster, cheaper and better matched to demand? Enable greater profitability and innovation?" ...read more about Malone.

Corporate Blogging Gaining Momentum from CIO.

"Blogs are starting to become a business phenomenon," said Charlene Li, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, in her recent report called Blogging: Bubble Or Big Deal?

Tags:

orchestrating resources

knowledge

Social Media:

social information management

Information Culture and Enterprise Collaboration - mesh up

jim wilde — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 19:22:39 +0000

Fred Wilson from A VC has a post "Posting, Subscribing, and Tagging" that describes individual blogging. I wrote a post Empathetic Customer Service vs Sucky Customer Service yesterday that looks at blogging from a corporate perspective but dovetails Fred's post.

The BIG MESH UPÂ

Everything Fred says about blogging, tagging, feeds, etc, is right on target and can be applied on a much greater scale within organizations to improve collaboration and open innovation. The big mashup so to speak. Although the biggest problem there is the lack of information culture. Heck, some people, many in orgs, still do not "get" email. One more thing, someone commented on Fred's post that they thought blogs would eventually replace email, I think so too!

From Fred's post...Â

First there's self tagging. That is when the person making the post contributes some descriptive tags to the post.

Second, when they are aggregated like Technorati does, they provide a much better way to search the blog world.

The second kind of tagging is user tagging. That's what del.icio.us and others offer. This is when the person consuming the content contributes a tag.

But there are other reasons for user tagging that are developing quickly. One that I like to talk about is tagging mp3s that are available on the Internet so that they are delivered to your friend's iPod.

Or tagging a recipe that I find on the Internet so that they are delivered to the Gotham Gal's MyYahoo page in hopes that she'll make it for dinner.

Tagging describes the content so it can be found, shared, delivered, and consumed.

Tagging extends the notion of subscribing because in addition to subscribing to a blog, you can subscribe to a tag.

When the posts get categorized via tags (whether self tagged or user tagged), the tags themselves become RSS feeds. That's how I get the mp3s delivered to my friend's iPod.

I believe that together posting, subscribing, and tagging will profoundly change the worlds of media, entertainment, commerce, and communication.

We are five years into the posting revolution, two to three years into the subscribing revolution, and maybe one year into the tagging revolution. We are just looking at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what can be done with these techniques.

So join the blogging revolution and get busy posting, subscribing, and tagging.

Bonus: Productivity Tips For Avid Blog Readers from ToDone.

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