Enterprise 2.0

Andrew McAfee writes:

I met yesterday with David Deal, Ray Velez, and Amy Vickers from Avenue A | Razorfish, a 1000 person, $190 million interactive services firm headquartered in Seattle. AARF helps clients with digital marketing and advertising, with their customer-facing websites, and also with their Intranets and Extranets.

What I found most interesting about the company was its own Intranet. To hear David, Ray, and Amy tell it, the company's traditional static Intranet -- the place where an employee would go to look up benefits information or peruse the latest press releases -- still exists, but has been marginalized by a suite of Enterprise 2.0 tools.

Personal Recommendation Engines

Fortune writes:

Recommender systems like Whattorent.com are sprouting on the Web like mushrooms after a hard rain. Dozens of companies have unveiled recommenders recently to introduce consumers to Web sites, TV shows, other people - whatever they can think of.

The idea isn't new, of course. In a time of impersonal big-box stores and self-checkout stations, independent shopkeepers compete by doing this sort of thing every day.

Yahoo Stories

WSJ broke the story about an internal Yahoo memo: "An internal document by Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo senior vice president, says Yahoo is spreading its resources too thinly, like peanut butter on a slice of bread."

NYTimes had more on Yahoo. Eric Jackson wrote an open letter to the Yahoo founders.

Forbes Fictional 15

A nice, somewhat-funny story from Forbes on the assumed riches of fictional people:

The rich may be different than you and me--but not nearly as different as the characters that comprise the Forbes Fictional 15, our annual listing of fiction's very wealthiest. This year's selection includes a duck, a wizard, a Nigerian prince and even a plumber. Aggregate (fictional) net worth? $111 billion.

The biggest change to this year's list comes at the very top. For the first time in the Fictional 15's history, Santa Claus has been unseated from the number-one spot, replaced by defense contractor Oliver ''Daddy'' Warbucks.

Richie Rich is at No. 4 and Mr. Monopoly at No. 6.

StumbleUpon

Jeremy Wagstaff recommends StumbleUpon.com as a "more personal way to search the web."

It happens through a service that allows users to recommend Web sites to others who then "stumble upon" them according to their interest. Think of StumbleUpon as a community of foodies passing suggestions to each other about which restaurant to visit. If I find a Web site -- a restaurant in my analogy -- that I like, I'll make a note of it, tag it with a category or two (history, film, railways) and post it to my StumbleUpon collection of bookmarks so others can find it. When I'm browsing (going out for dinner) and I need some suggestions, I'll click on a button marked 'Stumble!' in the special toolbar that StumbleUpon installs on my browser and be taken off to a page selected by another member of the community; the choice is random, but narrowed down by my interests. This is itself a useful guide, since I'm leveraging the shared interests of thousands of other people.

TECH TALK: Cyworld: India

Danah Boyd recently put forth a definition of a social networking site:

A "social network site" is a category of websites with profiles, semi-persistent public commentary on the profile, and a traversable publicly articulated social network displayed in relation to the profile.

To clarify:

1.Profile. A profile includes an identifiable handle (either the person's name or nick), information about that person (e.g. age, sex, location, interests, etc.). Most profiles also include a photograph and information about last login. Profiles have unique URLs that can be visited directly.

2.Traversable, publicly articulated social network. Participants have the ability to list other profiles as "friends" or "contacts" or some equivalent. This generates a social network graph which may be directed ("attention network" type of social network where friendship does not have to be confirmed) or undirected (where the other person must accept friendship). This articulated social network is displayed on an individual's profile for all other users to view. Each node contains a link to the profile of the other person so that individuals can traverse the network through friends of friends of friends....

3.Semi-persistent public comments. Participants can leave comments (or testimonials, guestbook messages, etc.) on others' profiles for everyone to see. These comments are semi-persistent in that they are not ephemeral but they may disappear over some period of time or upon removal. These comments are typically reverse-chronological in display. Because of these comments, profiles are a combination of an individuals' self-expression and what others say about that individual.

The definition is relevant in the Indian context. Social Networking sites in India are starting to happen. Google's Orkut has the early advantage, but there are many others which have been launched or are in the pipeline. One factor that needs to be taken into account in India is that PC and Internet usage, though high in numbers, is not free and always available. Much of the Internet access happens from cybercafes for which users have to pay by the minute. This tends to limit the potential of social networking via a computer.

In India, I think mobiles will have to be the primary device for social networking because they are with us all the time. But mobiles too have their inherent limitations. Data networks are still quite expensive to use. Getting applications on phones is hard. SMS and voice are the only two universal interaction modes available on all phones. The challenge – and opportunity – lies in leveraging the mobile as a social networking platform keeping in mind the future. Phones are becoming multimedia computers, data networks will become more affordable, and the mobile internet will become much more of a reality. Japan and South Korea have demonstrated early successes in combining mobiles and social networking. India too can do the same in the next 12-18 months. In that context, we have to more to learn from a Cyworld than a MySpace or a Facebook. Keeping in mind Danah Boyd's definition and translating it for India is what will create India's Cyworld. The jigsaw puzzle is waiting to be solved.

Related Entries:  [All]
TECH TALK: Cyworld: Success (Part 2) [November 23, 2006]
TECH TALK: Cyworld: Success [November 22, 2006]
TECH TALK: Cyworld: Key Features [November 21, 2006]
TECH TALK: Cyworld: Overview [November 20, 2006]