wired.com has a pointer to an article in Le Monde regarding which social network sites are popular around the world. Part of the article has this great chart:
There is much written about Facebook in North America, including questions on whether or not it has peaked. Looking at this chart, I could argue that Facebook has room to grow in other markets like Asia and South America. You could also say that there may be a resurgence of other social networking sites like Orkut or Friendster.
There is alot of potential for change and growth, regardless. Social networking will only get more interesting.
The Who’s Who of Social Networks Around the Globe | Compiler from Wired.com
I had a client ask me if I could share IBM’s blogging guidelines. I am happy to say I can! You can find them here:
IBM Blogroll | IBM blogging policy and guidelines
And how did I find them? By blogging about them internally. (There were other ways I could find them, but I included the question as part of a longer post and another IBM employee read it and pointed me to this link).
The thing to remember here is that a wiki starts with a lack of structure so that its users can define the structure that best serves their needs. That’s what makes it so successful. People don’t have to learn a new structure, and fit their work into that structure, which is automatically limiting. Instead, they can focus on their work, and build a structure as they go - one that evolves with their information and doesn’t get in the way!
- Stewart Mader, “The nine-letter word that determines wiki success”, Wikipatterns blog
A few weeks ago, I would have agreed whole-heartedly with Stewart Mader, whose Wikipatterns site and book have taught me a lot about wiki adoption. But working on getting a wiki off the ground has made me wonder if I need to learn more about information architecture in this Web 2.0 world. I want to make it easy for people to browse through resources and contribute their own. As a wiki gardener, I’m not trying to make the wiki follow the clean, formal lines of an English garden, but I do want to encourage it to grow and make sure the good parts get enough exposure.
I’m building scaffolds and seeding the wiki with content, but I’m still figuring out how to balance making the wiki useful and making it rough enough to invite participation. I’ve started reading about information design and information architecture, but the hyperlinked, organic nature of wikis makes it an interesting challenge. When is it better to break things up into lots of small, addressable bits, and when is it better to combine pages so that someone can edit everything at the same time? How do you balance people’s desires for sophisticated interfaces with the ease of modification of simple markup? How do you create enough structure to make it easy for people to navigate, but not so much structure that people feel restricted?
Here’s how I’m dealing with those challenges:
- Focus on getting lots of content into the wiki. Comfortable page length will depend on whether your wiki engine supports section editing. If you can’t edit sections, break pages apart into sections that you can edit easily. Don’t think too much about the level of detail, though, as you can always refactor pages. I started with pages of about 500 words, and then I combined or separated chunks as I needed them.
- Optimize for input. Make it easy for casual wiki readers to add to the content. Whether that’s an inbox page that they can add to if they don’t know where else to put things, section editors so that they can quickly find the part they want to update, or an e-mail address they can send wiki content to, help people just get the information into the wiki.
- Build multiple paths through the content. People can come to a wiki page from anywhere, so provide plenty of links to related content and context. Create pages for navigation, too.
I’m looking forward to learning more about the topic!
I love checking out other people’s bookshelves to get an idea of their reading habits and to find out about interesting books. It’s like that with RSS and Atom feeds too. People’s feed readers and blog rolls help me discover other interesting blogs. Here are 8 Enterprise 2.0 blogs I enjoy reading:
The FASTForward Blog (http://www.fastforwardblog.com)
Bill Ives and Jevon MacDonald are always great reads, and this group blog is a good place to find out about everything that’s going on.
Column 2 by Sandy Kemsley (http://www.column2.com)
Sandy Kemsley is amazing. I love reading her conference reports, and she’s just as insightful in real life as she is on the Web. When I grow up, I’m going to be like her.
Blog on Wiki Patterns (http://www.ikiw.org)
Stewart Mader’s Wikipatterns website and book are must-reads for enterprise social computing evangelists. He’s currently running a video series called "21 Days of Wiki Adoption". Make sure you check those out! I want to do similar patterns and tips for other social computing technologies.
Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog (http://web2.socialcomputingmagazine.com/)
Content-rich, well-written, and easy to read, too–what’s there not to like about Dion Hinchcliffe’s blog? Go here for lots of original analysis.
E L S U A ~ A KM Blog by Luis Suarez (http://www.elsua.net)
Luis Suarez is one of my favorite people within IBM. He’s an amazing social computing evangelist who brings together Web 2.0 and knowledge management. Read his blog to get all fired up about the possibilities.
Portals and KM (http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/)
Bill Ives posts interesting things on his own blog, too.
The Shed 2.0 (http://theshed2.wordpress.com)
theshed gives me an entertaining glimpse into another Enterprise 2.0 evangelist’s life. Nice writing voice - conversational, down-to-earth, friendly.
The Orange Chair (http://theorangechair.com)
And of course, The Orange Chair is in my feed reader too. I’m a big fan of my team members (Aaron Kim, Bernie Michalik, and Jennifer Nolan), and this blog is a great way to find out what else they’re reading and thinking about.
I’m always looking for Enterprise 2.0 recommendations. What’s in your feed reader?
The Nytimes.com has a great story about how to blog. It’s not a tech article. Rather, it is about Phil Hughes of the New York Yankees and the blog he has. I was going to highlight some points from it, but there are so many great pointers on how to blog –and in comparison to Derek Jeter, how NOT to blog – that I think you should just read the artlcle.
He may be talented with a ball and glove, but he is also talented with a blog.
See Blog Helps a Yankee Connect With Fans. Or just go to his blog at philhughes.wordpress.com.
If you are looking to develop widgets or gadgets for personalized homepages (e.g., iGoogle), it helps to know who the players are. After all, there are a number of different players, and they have different platforms. To reach the biggest audience, it helps to know who is biggest.
Over at TechCrunch is a rundown of who they are and what their numbers are. Surprisingly to me, MyYahoo still leads with over 50% of market share and over twice the market share of iGoogle. Also surprising is that Netvibes and Pageflakes — two sites that get alot of press — are relatively smaller players.
See the January 2008 numbers at The Personalized Homepage War: Who Matters
There are two interesting messages in this article from businessweek.com.
First, as they say, social media and web 2.0 will change your business and you need to learn this now. The article has LOTS of great advices on this.
Second, the article is a study in how web 2.0 is affecting businessweek.com. As the editor points out:
“Editor’s note: When we published “Blogs Will Change Your Business” in May, 2005, Twittering was an activity dominated by small birds. Truth is, we didn’t see MySpace coming. Facebook was still an Ivy League sensation. Despite the onrush of technology, however, thousands of visitors are still downloading the original cover story. So we decided to update it. Over the past month, we’ve been calling many of the original sources and asking the Blogspotting community to help revise the 2005 report. We’ve placed fixes and updates into more than 20 notes; to view them, click on the blue icons. If you see more details to fix, please leave comments. The role of blogs in business is clearly an ongoing story. First, the headline. Blogs were the heart of the story in 2005. But they’re just one of the tools millions can use today to lift their voices in electronic communities and create their own media. Social networks like Facebook and MySpace, video sites like YouTube, mini blog engines like Twitter—they’ve all emerged in the last three years, and all are nourished by users. Social Media: It’s clunkier language than blogs, but we’re not putting it on the cover anyway. We’re just fixing it.”
See Social Media Will Change Your Business.
It’s a must-read.
Dustin Wax shares these tips in Building Relationships: 10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Social Networking Sites - Lifehack.org :
- Have a clear purpose
- Complete your profile
- Don’t follow the leader
- Accept everyone
- Add everyone you know, no matter how little
- Pick one or two networks and work them
- Send messages
- Have something to say
- Avoid clutter
- Firewall your personal with [sic] business lives
Dustin Wax, Building Relationships: 10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Social Networking Sites - Lifehack.org
I agree with most of his list, except for Accept everyone and Firewall your personal and business lives. Here’s why:
I don’t accept everyone. At least, not until I’ve had a good conversation with them. Many people on social networking sites seem to think that it’s all about collecting connections. The only time you’ll ever hear from them is when they send you a form-letter invite, and that’s it. I don’t mind connecting with people out of the blue, but I want to make at least a little effort to establish a connection first. I want to know more about my connections than just what’s on their profile. What’s the point of social networking if I can’t make a personal introduction? After all, if people are in my network, I should be able to vouch for them, or at least say something that people wouldn’t get if they just search the Net. So if people want to collect connections, but they don’t want to engage in at least one e-mail conversation about why they want to connect and what their personal goals are, if they’ve never checked out my blog or told me about theirs, if they’ve never even made an effort to find things we have in common and how we can help each other… I won’t connect. I’d rather limit my already-large contact list to people I feel comfortable reaching out to. Similarly, I don’t add people en-masse, just people I would like to keep in touch with. And (gasp!) I prune the contact list once in a while. After all, if people just want to keep an eye on me, they can read my blog or use lots of other asymmetric ways to keep in touch. My contact list should be a list of people who would read my e-mail or take my call if I needed help, and who are willing to spend some time helping me get to know them.
I don’t separate my business and personal life. People who do this miss out on such rich interactions. The truth is, you need that personal touch to make business relationships sparkle. I can’t tell you how many times my personal blog has led to interesting conversations with my clients and colleagues. Granted, there are some things I don’t blog (mainly because I don’t have the time to write about everything I do want to blog). But I won’t try to build barriers between my personal and business life. This is who I am: all of it, all my blog posts and sketches and rants. It is possible to have both integrity of self and honesty of self-expression.
How about you? How do you feel about open networking or work-life separation?
Technorati Tags: networking
(Originally posted on my personal blog.)
Over at businessweek.com is a good article by Sharon Allen from Deloitte on The Death of Groupthink . Allen’s article is diversity, and how diversity…
isn’t just the best way to guard against the proliferation of Groupthink—it’s also good for the bottom line.
Allen has some great examples of how diversity is good for your bottom line.
One great way to introduce more diversity in your organization is to use Web 2.0 tools and techniques to tap into your social networks and get their thoughts and ideas about you, your organization and your products and services.
Reading this, you may worry: what if they complain about my products and services?
This is an understandable fear. However, if their complaints are unwarranted, they are relatively straightforward to deal with. But if they are warranted, it is likely that if they took the trouble to provide you this feedback, they are likely providing the same feedback in other places as well. Places you may not know about. Places you cannot respond to.
By capturing and (more importantly) responding in a positive way to their feedback, you not only address the issue with them, but you send a powerful message to others who are taking the time to read what you say and do. You get a great opportunity to take a negative situation and turn it into a positive one.
Tapping into your community can yield many benefits for you and your customers. Better still, the technology to do this is easily accessible to you now.
I just added the Jobster facebook application and this great image had me laughing.
It shows how businesses are finding ways of providing value in facebook other than entertainment. However, then I noticed that they only had 110 active daily users! The reason = they don’t provide much of a reason to return to their application. Job alerts are emailed, and most of the links take you out of facebook. So I don’t really consider it a true facebook application.