At What Scale Can Web Services Survive?
One more data point in line of my Whither Web 2.0 Social Networking Discussion which questions the revenue models of web services (with web social networking as a focal point): An on-line service the scale and scope of Microsoft's Online Services is running into red ink of proportional scale. It lost $471 Million per last quarter. The clear and present issue is not whether a profit may be turned at some even-large scale, but what will change about the business model and how will that affect users?
Reinventing the Web
John Markoff wrote a really good Jan 11 2009 New York Times profile, In Venting, a Computer Visionary Educates on Ted Nelson and his new book, Geeks Bearing Gifts: How the Computer World Got This Way (available on Lulu.com). Markoff notes that Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, but: "Lost in the process was Mr. Nelson’s two-way link concept that simultaneously pointed to the content in any two connected documents, protecting, he has argued in vain, the original intellectual lineage of any object... His two-way links might have avoided the Web’s tornado-like destruction of the economic value of the printed word, he has contended, by incorporating a system of micropayments."
I was one of the skeptics who thought that the World Wide Web with its fragile one-way links would never take off as a global hypertext platform. Classic hypertext systems (from HES and Augment though Xanadu, Plato, Intermedia, Lotus Notes, and Dynatext) went to great lengths to preserve the integrity of links, relationships, and content.
Searching Content for People
By moving communication and knowledge exchange to web pages, social software breaks down the walls that traditionally divide e-mail communication and traditional folder based document sharing. As discussed at the conclusion of So, What About Enterprise Social Networking?, this style of interacting online opens avenues for content enrichment and exploitation.
So, What About Enterprise Social Networking?
Last week's post, Wither Web 2.0 Social Networking? and My 2 Cents., offers my perspective on the murky future of web facing personal social networking, as well as a recipe for its survival. The Enterprise Social Networking market, meanwhile, is growing up more steadily in the wake of its Web 2.0 sibling and, despite some commonalities, faces a different value equation, use cases and market forces.
Wither Web 2.0 Social Networking? and My 2 Cents.
Michael Fitzgerald's MIT Tech Review column Are Social Networks Sinking? summarizes the inevitable deflation (though not all-out devastation) of the Web 2.0 Social Networking market (not to be mixed with the Enterprise 2.0 market - which is growing more steadily in-the-wake-of, rather than in-step-with, the Web 2.0 market) bubble.
re: Tuesday Dec 9, 2008 | Forty years after the Mother of All Demos
See also Dylan Tweeny's Wired summary Dec 9, 1968: The Mother of All Demos, including this video clip. Doug hasn't lost his enthusiasm and motivation!
Tuesday Dec 9, 2008 | Forty years after the Mother of All Demos
On Dec 9, 1968 Doug Engelbart stepped onto a stage in front of about 2,000 people. He adjusted his headset and sat down before his mouse, chord key set, and twenty-two foot TV projection screen. His NLS/Augment system prefigured the Web, shared screen teleconferencing, much of what we know as hypertext, in what's often called the Mother of All Demos. Read this authorized clip from John Markoff's excellent book What the Dormouse Said or see the video of the Demo.
Doug Engelbart Video Archive: 1968 Demo - FJCC Conference Presentation Reel Dec 9, 1968 Internet Archive, the so called Mother of All Demos. See also From Pranksters to PCs chapter about Engelbart's 1968 FJCC demo from John Markoff's book What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, authorized excerpt.
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Wikis and Blogs vs. Suites | Forrester vs. CMS Watch | Where is the gloom and doom?
There seem to be conflicting views on what kinds of IT applications and vendors will get hit the hardest in an economic downturn. Will it be point applications like Wikis and Blogs, or Enterprise 2.0 Suites? Or will it be big ticket collaboration platforms from vendors like Microsoft, OpenText and Documentum?
Do Something Differently - Spend less for better results
JP Rangaswami offers typically sound advice for businesses looking at how to cope with hard times in his October 19th post Invented Here. He says when times are hard, a firm has four choices:
Live blog with Traction TeamPage
from Michael Angeles, Traction Software Director of User Experience: Live Blog is a new plug-in for TeamPage 4.0. The new Live Blog interface works like Twitter or IM. It creates an automatically updating browser window you can park on your desktop (or iPhone). You type a brief note and everyone with access to that Live Blog sees their window update in seconds. But unlike Twitter or IM, Live Blog is backed by Traction's TeamPage platform that provides scalable storage, security, integrated search and all of the other capabilities that make TeamPage the leading best platform for Enterprise 2.0. For a video introduction see below. If you don't have Traction yet, remember that Traction is free for up to five project spaces and five users. Get a free Traction TeamPage/5 license and start Live Blogging now!
Record 2008 Results and End of Year Discount
We're happy to announce that 2008 marks the sixth year of consecutive revenue and customer growth at Traction Software. With the support of our growing customer base, thousands of TeamPage deployments, and a product that consistently earns reviews that put TeamPage at the top of the pack, we're able to continue our product and market leadership despite challenging economic times for competitors who charge more and deliver less.
Reviewers and Customers Praise TeamPage 4.0 - Cite breakthroughs in Enterprise 2.0 collaboration
Since Traction® TeamPage 4.0 was released in June 2008 we're happy to report that reviewers and customers have consistently applauded the innovation TeamPage 4.0 brings to the market. When you want to be able to use wiki-style collaboration on products, plans and projects - as well as free-form encyclopedia pages - it quickly becomes obvious that you need to be able to distinguish between the 'latest stable version' of a constellation of pages and the 'work in progress cloud' created through collaborative editing.
What Web 2.0 and E2.0 Security Means to Me
E2.0 technologies must manage a delicate balance between collaborative freedoms they promise with the security, dependability and audit trail requirements that any enterprise has to have to let them in the door.
Sweet Tweet
At the age of 12 (or so), I tried board-sailing and totally failed. I had no sense for how the mechanics of the sail and the wind worked together to point my board in any given direction. Then I got in a sailboat which, for whatever combination of reasons, made sense of the whole sailing process.
I Love My iPhone
I don't often get enthusiastic about software (except for Traction TeamPage!) or a device, but my iPhone caught me off guard.
Light up some classrooms! DonorsChoose.org Challenge
On Oct 1 DonorsChoose opened their Blogger Challenge 2008 to help spread the word about a great model for charitable giving. It's simple: Teachers ask. You choose, Students learn. Click the badge below to learn more and bring some light to classrooms where any contribution can make a difference. You'll feel good on a person-to-person level, and help children succeed in life.
Avast Ye Enterprise 2.0 Seekers!
If ye be seeking Enterprise 2.0 Skills, click Traction Software or prepare to be Boarded, Pillaged and Sunk by thy Competition! If thou knowes't not how Enterprise 2.0 Skills canst Protect thy Treasure - Unto thy very Corporate Life - Profesaarh Andrew McAfee can set thee aright. Arrhh!
Ariadne | Information Overload Paper - 10 ways to cope
Sarah Houghton-Jan wrote and excellent paper, Being Wired or Being Tired: 10 Ways to Cope with Information Overload, in Ariadne (a Web Magazine for Information Professionals). It's actually ten general areas for coping, each with about 5 suggestions. Ever since Kid 1 and Kid 2 popped into my life, dealing with every kind of overload (e-mail overload, magazine overload, chores overload, poop overload...) has become a factor in my life!
Which Enterprise 2.0 Users Are Talking About What and Who, Now and Then?
On his blog, I'm Not Actually a Geek, Hutch from Connectbeam writes "How Are Enterprise 2.0 Vendors Pitching Web 2.0? Using Wordle to Find Out. Here's another great tool that transforms the problem of having "Too Much Information" to not having enough!
How (Not) To Fail
Euan Semple breaks with tradition with a Top 8 list rather than a Top 10, and by explaining Most Companies Who Try to do Enterprise 2.0 will Fail (worst practices) vs. why they will succeed (best practices). From both sides of the IT fence (as a consultant and sales person at a VAR, an operations manager and product manager at a global content delivery service, and in marketing and consulting roles here at Traction Software) I've seen my share of internal failures and customer or prospect failures too. I've commented here on 3 of Euan's Top 8.
Aberdeen Survey | Getting Social About Selling
Smart enterprises are deploying blogs and wikis to power the Enterprise front line: Sales. Use cases may involve using Enterprise 2.0 technology to distribute timely market information, maintain a continuous loop of customer feedback, or maintain a wiki to manage selling points, FAQs, and collateral.
Multi-Tasking Turtles Beat Focused Hares
Fast access to new information and multi-tasking (to a point) can both contribute to overall performance. A pair of studies appear in an MIT Sloan Management Review profile, What Makes Information Workers Productive. The studies authored by Sinan Aral (Leonard N. Stern School of Business) and Erik Brynjolfsson (MIT Sloan School of Management) look at productivity at a recruiting business, and find some surprising results.
Collaborating Across "Boundaries" - Searching People for Answers
Mike Gotta points to new research published in HBS Working Knowledge analyzing which groups in an organization are most likely to communicate, crossing social and physical boundaries. The study, Communication (and Coordination?) in a Modern, Complex Organization, reports that "women, mid- to high-level executives and members of executive management, sales and marketing functions are most likely to participate in cross-group communications." It is these people who bridge groups in social structure.
NHS integrates Intranet 1.0 with Enterprise 2.0 to get Social with TeamPage 4.0
The UK's National Health Service's Orkney region deployed Traction with great success in 2005 to address an unfavorable report about the state of internal communications. The original NHS Orkney Customer Story details how they used Traction for everything from wiki collaboration on policies and procedures to action tracking and even an internal blog to announce "stuff for sale." Since then, usage has only improved and Traction has also been deployed at the NHS Camden region. In June, David Rendall upgraded to the recently announced TeamPage 4.0 Release. I'm pleased to be able to share some of his notes and screen shots - to offer a glimpse into how an organization facing major Internal Communications deficiencies just three years ago is an Enterprise 2.0 leader today.
23 July 2008 | Virtual E2.0 Conference - Traction Sponsors Forrester Keynote
Register Now (free admission) to join in on the Enterprise 2.0 Virtual Conference on the 23rd of July. The Agenda kicks off at 12:00 with Gartner Analyst David Mitchell Smith's Keynote Innovating the Enterprise with Web 2.0 and ends with a Forrester Analyst Rob Koplowitz's Keynote Control vs. Chaos: The Enterprise Web 2.0 Effect.
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Tim Berners-Lee The next Web of open, linked data
TED.com Feb 2009, Published Mar 2009