barryjogorman

The social network tools and platforms are everywhere. Largely they have improved, become easier to use and their reach has increased hugely e.g. facebook with > 500m users.

But making the tools really work for you continues to require professionalism and creativity.

Was privileged to see Deanna Lee of the New York Public Library present at the BlogTalk 2010 conference in Galway, Ireland last week. Deanna brought wide experience in jouranlism to her role. But the key skills were the thinking, the creativity and the professionalism of the productions and the campaigns.

Worth taking the time to watch her talk – to understand the background to what she was trying to ahcieve and then to see how she achieved her objectives. The videos referenced may also be seen on YouTube e.g. Who You Gonna Call?

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Back to the subject of privacy I was recently away on vacation with the family. I was asked (by my spouse) not to post anything in the first five days which would identify my location – on the basis that given the context (summer time, kids on holidays, etc) people would also most likely deduct that my spouse was abroad on vacation. I have thought previously about the security issues arising by publishing the fact that I am away on vacation – but I had not thought through the social privacy issues associated with potentially revealing someone else’s likely location by revealing my own.

Many discussions on this and related subjects at today’s conference BlogTalk 2010 in Galway, Ireland. In particular much focus on developments in facebook re location – and the likely impact in terms of location based/ centric advertising. But what about the ‘social privacy’ issues?

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Interesting to see the Irish Times editorial re Internet privacy. I commented previously re my own concerns on the level of surveillance which is now omnipresent. The editorial references comments made recently by Eric Schmidt. Schmidt somewhat controversially has suggested a notion whereby people might wipe the slate clean and start with a new identity at some instant in their lives. He has also been keen to emphasise the difference between privacy and anonymity.

There are no easy answers here. You cannot have much of the desired localisation of services without providing personal information – but there is always a balance between what you are willing to reveal and what you will accept as personalised service. Facebook’s latest expansion of its service to support specification of your location is another example of this.

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I’ve been using facebook actively for a couple of years now. Initially saw it as a tool to stay in touch with overseas friends. But since then seems to have become a way to organise events, share photos, promote business expertise, find answers to questions, reconnect with old friends.

Interesting piece published in Forbes by Fred Wilson emphasising the same point – and the threat to google ( and the rest) posed by facebook.

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So – looks like end of the road for google Wave. Easy to knock google for this (and other initiatives that have not worked). Seemed like Google were in too much of a hurry to get the incomplete product out in the marketplace. Then seemed like they made some mistakes around security.

At the time I had a concern that in trying to develop a collaboration/ enhanced instant messaging et al tool they were going to build a monster. And I think that was a major part of the problem – user adoption failed because it was not clear which problem google wave was solving.

Anyway the technology is there for others to access and seek to incorporate into other products.

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Great piece in today’s Irish Times – interview with Lucian Tarnowski.

I’ve been committed to the social networking paradigm for the last three years – because I do not believe I can stay in touch with the innovators and the new thinkers in any other effective way. Social networking is part of the way we work – in particular how generation Y works.

Tarnowski has demonstrated a clear understanding of the paradigm and has now developed a business around this. He’s one of many.

I would strongly recommend to corporates who are not embracing the technology to get on board – if you want to be relevant for new recruits. Why should people use products like facebook and twitter to organise their own lives and then come to work to be locked down in a traditional ERP solution? It’s not the fault of the ERP solutions or vendors – there are plenty of ways to integrate. But I would suggest that many of those in middle on senior management now need to get involved in a two way process – learning from the new joiners may be every bit as important as what they learn from the veterans. Challenging but the way forward.

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Like many others I struggle to get out and take exercise on a regular basis. I have many false starts (or false dawns). May target to walk four times a week – or run twice a week; generally do well for a week or two, then let it slip (early morning meeting, bad weather, travelling for work, any excuse will do…).

Was thinking about some application which would (1) assist me in tracking my efforts and (2) put me in touch with similar ‘athletes’ or ‘would be athletes’.

And then, via a contact on facebook, I come across dailymile

Have to say – looks like a close fit to what I think I need. Some nice features including (1) setting out routes and measuring them and (2) summary analytics.

Will report back after a few weeks of use of the site – looking to use this social network (connected to facebook and twitter) to assist me in becoming more healthy.

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It’s already been quite a year on the semantic web front.  Clearly RDFa is a big winner.  And just when we thought we were getting a handle on the standards and protocols now we have RIF to learn.

When you see facebook adopting a version of RDFa then you can assume you are onto something.  And now we’ve seen this.

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Excellent piece by James Hendler.  Would be difficult to argue with: ‘the Web continues to increase in its importance to society and to science, and we now realize that the Web is a critical infrastructure on which we as a society, and a world, fundamentally rely’.

On the downside mentions some negatives e.g.’ to radically redefine individual privacy, and to expose our children to unprecedented levels of violence and pornography – disincentives to innovation’.

Have to say as someone who grew up in a time of far less surveillance this does worry me a lot for the kids of today.  Many’s the stupid things that we did when we were growing up – which were better not being video’d and posted to the world.  To be honest the prevalence of digital cameras and similar devices are probably more of the problem than the web itself.  But I’m not sure hor w this will work itself out – potentially a nightmare version of Orwell’s 1984 is playing itself out – where Big Brother is now a combination of ‘citizens’ snooping on people and the web as Big Brother processing and forwarding the data.

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Have recently signed up to new newish sites:

worky: http://www.worky.com/barryjogorman
weedle: http://weedle.com/barryjogorman

I have been a committed user of linked in for the last couple of years – as evidenced by approx. 600 connections.

I have to say I think there is plenty of room in the market for either worky or weedle to make a real impression. Linkedin did a good job of establishing a ‘serious’ social network – targeting business users. However I think both weedle and worky, incoming later to the market, are doing a superior job in being truer examples of social networking.

My initial impression is that the worky model is easier to understand. But perhaps weedle is something different.

Just shows you – cannot stand still in this market place.

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