communities

community software management

Community Software Solutions

jim wilde — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 12:38:16 +0000

Understanding online communities, social media, social media tools, and social commerce are 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 a project, reap the benefits.

Social media tools generate increasing value (online sales and productivity) as the number of participants expands. They offer benefits that traditional business strategies, rigid IT software, and static web sites fail to address. Stay connected - RSS Feeds/Site Map

Business Social Media Solutions:

Social Network Software - Expertise Locator - Collaboration Platform - Knowledge Management - Community Software - Interactive Portals - Content and User Management - Open Innovation Platform - Classification Bookmarking - Idea Management - Multi-site Platform.

Contact us for demo information or call 973.433.4007. The demo is of a comprehensive online business community software solution. One with a tightly integrated set of publishing, communication, and networking features that support and enable a new type of productivity. Members can connect, create, and share their content (video, text, images), spur mashups, in a multitude of ways to achieve greater performance.

Business Development Ideas -- Organizations of all sizes are using Social Media Tools - Community Solutions to leverage information in new ways and to discover new ways of doing business.

From IDC, "...self-service applications [social software] 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"

Give us a call, 973.433.4007, to learn how corporate social networking applications and community software solutions can help your business become more productive, connected, and engaging.

Image from Kathy Sierra,"User Community and ROI. Think about all the things a strong user community can do for you: tech support, user training, marketing (evangelism, word of mouth), third-party add-ons, even new product ideas. And that's not including any extra sales you might make on community/tribe items..."

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sharing

open innovation

communities

orchestrating resources

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community software applications

What Does the Future of Management Look Like to You?

The future of management?

jim wilde — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:48:32 +0000

As the need for knowledge workers increases, hopefully, business development managers will consider these innovative management ideas along with the new web 2.0 technologies (social networks and community applications) to implement them.

From Harvard Business review. "MANAGEMENT 2.0"Some of the ideas might be near to you... Lots of good comments.

Gary Hamel Looking twenty years out into the future, what one characteristic of the "modern" industrial organization will appear to be the most antiquated or anachronistic?"

Here are some of them.

Centralized management structure will seem most antiquated as the speed of business will continue to accelerate companies that thrive will be unencumbered with the command/control ways of the past."
"The need for large, expensive & highly trained information technology departments will have disappeared because reliable, robust & highly configurable solutions will be available via the Internet." [social web applications or consumer IT]
"Structural characteristics---already we are seeing the dissolution of almost any defined form (certainly any fixed form) reflected in network analyses that illuminate the real, or necessary, paths of process flows and communications, and the essential ongoing art of ad hoc organization."
"Hierarchies with people called superiors will be perceived as antiquated given that most of the connections that are important to business (ie customer contact...) are in the hands of what we today imply are inferiors!"
"The hierarchical pyramidal organizational structure."
"Organizational hierarchy and the concomitant organizational control mechanisms that have accrued over the centuries will fade from the scene. Although it is always true that "one man can make a difference," the perception of leadership as a one-man show will give way to the idea of distributed leadership throughout the organization."

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orchestrating resources

borderless world

future

centralized management

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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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Social networking and learning

jim wilde — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:45:19 +0000

"Social Networking Blurs Boundaries of Learning", from Chief Learning Officer

"...the effect social networks can have on employee development is fairly evident. Research has shown that when it comes to finding opportunities, individual's own attributes are less important than their relationships and ties with other people within various networks. And going back to the 70-20-10 rule, interaction with others produces about twice as much in the way of education as formal instruction.

The most interesting thing about social networks and their use in employee development is that the line between learning and interaction is starting to blur a little. Is there much of a difference between education and communication? Where does collaboration stop and learning begin?"

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chief learning officer

LMS

employee development

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Social Media Tools

Facebook mashups and marketing

jim wilde — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:14:04 +0000

"Comparing Wal-Mart and Target on Facebook", from Emergence Marketing.

"Target has over 7,000 members and mostly positive comments in a vibrant set of discussions. The Wal-Mart group on the other hand has a little over 1,200 members, no discussions are allowed, and the wall postings are mostly negative."

It appears Wal-mart has not learned much from their earlier endeavors on the net. These days customers are king and it is about abundance.

Anyway, we've been working on some Enterprise mashups - Creating Facebook applications (mashups) using a lot of the functionality, user management, authentication, content (images, video, text), groups we use in Drupal web applications.

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Social Media:

community software applications

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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Social Media:

E-comm and Social Network Sites

jim wilde — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 14:01:44 +0000

Creating Social Network Sites and Community Driven ones for E-comm.

Lately, we've been working with retailers on setting up community based sites, social networks, to help them engage customers. Although, the idea is not really new, think Amazon, the user marketing approach breaks new ground. What's interesting here is that the customers will be writing the product descriptions. But what's really cool is that customers, in some cases, will help set pricing. So, we'll have dynamic pricing on some products/services.

Stay tuned.

Here's a tidbit on Wal-mart's venture into social networks. "Wal-Mart Closes MySpace Clone 'The Hub'.

Shame, shame, shame. ""Soon after The Hub launched in July, visitors to the site were reportedly turned off by "user" comments that promoted the site and
Wal-Mart products, convincing some that the users were in fact hired spokespeople. Advertising Age called the site "highly sanitized and controlled"."

I'm amazed that consumers are still played as idiots. Any business thinking about blogging needs to follow womma guidelines (word of mouth marketing assoc.) to be accepted in the blogosphere.

Update 10/17/06 Hugh, gapingvoid has a little tiddy about the blow up of walmarts fake blog and edleman, the pr agency that advised them.

Hugh, "fake walmart blog". Check out Tris Hussey link in his post.

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Social Media:

The consumer as creator

jim wilde — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 17:37:09 +0000

Business 2.0, 50 people who matter.

"Rank: 1 - You! The consumer as creator

Why You Matter: They've long said the customer is always right. But they never really meant it. Now they have no choice. You -- or rather, the collaborative intelligence of tens of millions of people, the networked you -- continually create and filter new forms of content, anointing the useful, the relevant, and the amusing and rejecting the rest. You do it on websites like Amazon, Flickr, and YouTube, via podcasts and SMS polling, and on millions of self-published blogs. In every case, you've become an integral part of the action as a member of the aggregated, interactive, self-organizing, auto-entertaining audience. But the You Revolution goes well beyond user-generated content. Companies as diverse as Delta Air Lines and T-Mobile are turning to you to create their ad slogans. Procter & Gamble and Lego are incorporating your ideas into new products. You constructed open-source and are its customer and its caretaker. None of this should be a surprise, since it was you -- your crazy passions and hobbies and obsessions -- that built out the Web in the first place. And somewhere out there, you're building Web 3.0. We don't yet know what that is, but one thing's for sure: It will matter."

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corporate social networks

Crowdsourcing

jim wilde — Thu, 25 May 2006 12:36:19 +0000

"The Rise of Crowdsourcing" -

By Jeff Howe, Wired

"Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D."

The article starts out about a small company, iStockphoto and how they sell quality photos from "...amateur photographers Ã¢â‚¬ homemakers, students, engineers, dancers" at one percent of the costs of professional ones. It goes on to other industries but the idea is the same - crowdsourcing - or using the wisdom of crowds to get things done.

"Technological advances in everything from product design software to digital video cameras are breaking down the cost barriers that once separated amateurs from professionals. Hobbyists, part-timers, and dabblers suddenly have a market for their efforts, as smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd. The labor isn't always free, but it costs a lot less than paying traditional employees. It's not outsourcing; it's crowdsourcing."

Follow the longtail.

iStockphoto was/is disrupting the stock image space so much that Getty images bought them. What industires are next? As social network sites evolve and grow on the net there will be many more business models that get turned upside down. I posted yesterday about the lending industry, here. I know, it won't happen to your business, job, organization. I'm ok, you're biased.

So, what industry is next? Are we becoming a nation of freelancers? How many creation nets can one person participate in? What about workflow and coordinatng activites as well as business process management (BPM)? These are all valid points to consider as we move forward on getting work done in the 21st century.

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Social Media:

Realistic Customer Feedback

jim wilde — Mon, 22 May 2006 14:43:02 +0000

Social network software (Ideascape) pushes customer feedbabck further than was possible with traditional focus groups and surveys. Users submit product development ideas into an ongoing contest for approval by their peers. Ideas rated highly by other users bubble up to the top of the list, providing submitters with notoriety as well as reward incentives. Corporate marketers can take the highest-potential ideas into their own product development process. Your marketing team is empowered with thousands of scored ideas, which they can then move into more traditional research methods.

Although you don't necessarily reach a different customer, you do get a different response from a customer at 3 a.m. in their underwear than you would if they were in a room with twelve other people. What's more, there are so many new ways to communicate via the net. Your new mantra should be about connecting the best ideas and most relevant information to people, places and things. Besides, openning the door, you never know who will show up.

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Making Meaning in the Organization

jim wilde — Fri, 19 May 2006 12:24:55 +0000

If you know our site, you know our mantra is "ideas are everywhere". With this in mind, making meaning constantly evolves. We use our own tools to connect, engage, and share ideas and information. So everybody - meaning scales - is tied into the concentric circles (individual, team, group, department, division, organization, and outside) of emergent thinking to make meaning. Through this connectedness of meaning the organization performs better and leaves little doubt about what needs to be done.

"Finding Meaning in the Organization"

By Joe Raelin, MIT Sloan Management Review, Summer 2006

"There is an alternative to top-down vision creation. An organization's vision should preferably arise out of the group as it accomplishes its work. The leader doesn't walk away to create the vision; the vision is often already present. It just needs articulation in the form of"meaning-making"

Within an organization, a meaning-maker is someone who gives expression to what members of the group or organization seek to accomplish in their work together. He or she articulates a collective sense of what the group stands for. Meaning-making can come from anyone in the group, though usually the meaning is voiced by someone who listens well, is close to the rhythm of the team and is expressive. He or she may use a variety of techniques to articulate the group's meaning, whether by portraying an image or using an example to depict what the group is doing or not doing, by identifying what is missing or isn't happening, by using humor to describe a situation, by synthesizing the facts, by looking for patterns in a situation or by turning a problem upside down and looking at it from a new perspective.

A former student of mine, a CFO, was able to distinguish the difference between traditional top-down visioning and meaning making in a project in which, after an acquisition, he was trying to integrate the financial structures of the bank's new subsidiaries. This would require an in-house financial management training program, frequent visits to the subsidiaries and a business leadership forum. As he was working through his project, he noted the following in his journal: "I had originally thought that meaning making was all about providing vision. I came to find out that it was more directed at drawing out thoughts and ideas that already existed from individuals and groups. My project proposals are not new ideas. I am simply trying to change the current business focus in order to draw upon and leverage the knowledge and information that currently resides at the subsidiaries but have never been fully utilized to make informed business decisions. As a meaning maker, I am focused on what Margaret Wheatlef refers to as _..creating meaning from work, meaning that transcends present organizational circumstances. As long as we keep purpose in focus, we are able to wander through the realms of chaos:"

The meaning-maker (who, incidentally, need not be the authority figure) requires no special intrinsic powers other than his or her own awareness. After the fact, we might have a tendency to ascribe special powers to the meaning-maker for having identified a unique vision, but the meaning is often there for the taking. What has been lacking is often the courage necessary to detect and then act upon it. In the field of strategic management, there is a so-called deterministic approach suggesting that the role of the leader is not so much to establish a vision as it is to reflect an organization's cultural predispositions. According to this view, determining the strategy of the firm does not arise from a single-minded enunciation of a vision as much as from an understanding of organizational actions."

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Open Innovation - Committee for Economic Development

jim wilde — Sun, 14 May 2006 11:57:47 +0000

Committee for Economic Development

"CED Releases Report on Openness in the Digital Economy"

"On April 17, CED released Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness. The new report details the benefits of openness in three areas Ã¢â‚¬ open standards, open-source software, and open innovation Ã¢â‚¬ and examines the major issues in the debate over whether openness should be encouraged or not. The report explains each of these three kinds of openness, details the public policy issues involved with each, and provides policy recommendations for dealing with these issues."

Check out, Global Process Networks - Creation Nets.

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"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."

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vertical social networks

socialization

intelligently filtered

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