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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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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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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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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Have just spent a couple of weeks on vacation – without broadband access at my fingertips.  Continued to monitor email and SMS – from my phone.  Probably online three times over the fortnight – had to make an effort.  Posted a few photos to facebook from the phone.

Real difference was not interacting with twitter and other social networks on a regular basis throughout the day.  Also – listened to the radio for news and read a few newspapers.

Just watched Kevin Kelly video/ presentation on future of the web.  KK (of Wired) sees the internet as one computer.  We use various devices to access the one computer.  ‘Things’ e.g. cars, clothes, devices which incorporate chips (e.g. RFID) are effectively part of the one computer.  And, indeed, we are in many respects sensors for this one computer – as more and more information ends up in the one computer.

This is enough to scare off a lot of people.  In the Q&A session KK fields a number of interesting questions, including what are the opt out options, is the one computer and the human race in conflict?  Interestingly seems that most people are happy to go along with what’s happening.  He has a great line ‘No personalisation without transparency’.  Effectively you have to open up, provide information about yourself, your business, whatever, if you want a personalised experience.

This morning read a posting about Gordon Bell – a Microsoft researcher who is attempting to record everything in his life digitally.

Interesting line in this from GB: ‘By using e-memory as a surrogate for meat-based memory, he argues, we free our minds to engage in more creativity, learning, and innovation (sort of like Getting Things Done without all those darn Post-its)’.

I have often thought that this is the case.  An example being that sometimes overprep for a meeting (reading all the material, anticipating the questions, etc) results in a less creative, open discussion.  Another example would be whether examinations are still bogged down in being largely tests of memory rather than tests of reasoning.

All of this relates closely to one of my own areas of primary interest – linked data and the semantic web.  Linked data requires entities to share more data – for the benefit of being able to correlate this with other shared data.  The semantic web aims to enable ‘intelligent’ processing of data by computers – ie the one computer referenced by KK.

I think KK is right.  The one computer is more and more a fact of life.  There are many benefits – and a number of threats.  While there are opt outs – and ways to escape e.g. go and live on a deserted island off the west coast of Ireland – inevitably the internet continues to be more pervasive (and invasive).

Looking forward to another few days of restricted broadband access.  And then back to life interacting with the one computer.

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Completing a series of three articles re twitter – why, what how?

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 – How does twitter fit in with web site, blogging, facebook, linkedin, other social networks?

I see my website as my anchor on the internet. My website says I am who I am, sets out my stall, explains how to contact me. I want my website to be found – by people looking for solutions which I can provide. Periodically I will update my website to describe additional solutions, new partnerships, new references/ endorsements.

My blog is where I provide my thoughts – hopefully my insights to emerging social, business, technical issues – as they occur to me and and I develop/ refine my thinking. I expect the blog to incorporate feedback from readers. Over a period of time my blog accumulates an amount of my thinking re the issues of the day.

So there does twitter fit in with all of this – and with the other networks in which I participate?

Twitter is the medium through which I develop interactive dialog with people of mutual interest (I am interested in their thoughts, they follow me – so presumably are interested in my thoughts). Through those contacts I am also looking to expand my network – attracting attention to my competencies and learning from other experts.

With this in mind I automatically notify twitter of any new blog postings. I post questions to twitter, I respond to queries from others on twitter. I use twitter to draw people’s attention to information which I think may be of interest to them.

Both linkedin and facebook are also important to my social and business networking. Initially I focused facebook on the social side and linkedin on the business side. Facebook now has a much broader role – and has an important business element to it. For now I have a range of contacts who may/may not use all of the solutions e.g. may be a member of facebook but not using twitter or linkedin, only use linkedin, etc.

All of these are being brought together. Many people are members of all of these (and many more) social networks. Initiatives such as SIOC are working to faciliate interoperability. Using tools such as Yoono with Firefox it has become very easy to update your presence/ status across mutiple environments. I cross post to facebook from twitter and using ‘company buzz’ on linkedin twitter references to me are published to linkedin.

So what’s twitter, at the end of the day? As one of my twitter friends (@rbconsulting) says, flippantly – ‘hard to belive it took them that long to get SMS working on the PC’. And that captures the essence of the microblogging limits. Twitter is that and more. Most importantly it’s a platform which makes it very easy to establish relationships with people all over the internet – for business, social, educational, recreational, whatever purpose. The value of the relationships flows from the level of interaction, quality of contributions, responsiveness.

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Contributed to a case study in the Innovation section (pp42 – 44, Experts’ Advice – P44) of  today’s Irish Times  – looking at how a ski adventure company could use social networking to market their business.

Text of my advice in the case study:

BlackRun: Online for off piste

This is a typical 2009 scenario in Irish business – someone from the Facebook generation (‘gen f’) bringing ideas about social networking to the owners. The concerns are classic: fad or not, geeky or not? Simone is right – at least half BackRun’s target audience is social network friendly. So it’s a ‘no brainer’ – need to get on board. The good news: with some upfront planning this can be achieved, without swamping the team.

BlackRun needs a basic web site, optimised for search – integrated with a blog (could use software such as WordPress). Ruth & Simone need to set targets for blog posting frequency e.g. 3 times per week. Team members should be profiled in the blog and encouraged to post. Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts should be established – using auto notification of postings on the BlackRun blog. Worthwhile Twitter accounts should be identified and ‘followed’. BlackRun should aim to tweat daily – ask questions, answer queries, use hashtags. Facebook advertising should be considered.

There are great tools available to assist in managing online presence e.g. google webmaster, WordPress utilities, Tweetdeck, Nexus (Facebook). BlackRun needs to avail of these.

Finally, management should commit to measuring the effectivess of these initiatives on a weekly basis.

Barry O’Gorman consults in social networking, collaboration and semantic web.

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