40 Years On: The History & Evolution of Social Media

November 4, 2009 at 5:37 pm · Filed under Web 2.0

This post began as a response  (unpublished) to @DesignerDepot ’s popular The History & Evolution of Social Media post.

Discovering I was reflecting on  the evolution of social media and projecting forward on October 29, 2009,  the 4oth Anniversary of ARPANET and the beginning of the Internet,  I was inspired to share more widely and honor the occasion.

I wonder as you look back at the evolution of social media and then forecast forward what do you see?

For me that landscape scan focuses on sociologist Moreno’s sociograms and social network analysis dating from the 1930’s. 7 decades on social network analysis is an evolved discipline, as evidenced in the work of Mark Granovetter, Ron Burt, David Krackhardt, Valdis Krebs, Steve Borgatti, Duncan Watts, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Rob Cross, Patti Anklam, FAS Research, Doris Spielthenner, recent books by Christakis and Fowler, Easly & Kleinberg and more.

It’s my experience that the real value for enterprises comes when you apply a social network analysis lens to understanding if, and how, value is created through social network platforms. To me the missing functionality from the platforms we call  “social networks” like Facebook and LinkedIn  is the ability to make the networks visible,  analyze the evolving ties and work them.

In 2008 a group of 10 Facebook owners came together for the  Facebook Groups in Business Investigation (FGIBI). Our original plan was to map the  relationships that  new group members joining had to existing members.

I’d learned from  Valdis Krebs,  (in analyzing results of the Online Communities in Business Study 2004 with Joe Cothrel),  that 1st degree ties are interesting but for understanding influence 2nd degree ties are more important. Hence in our Facebook Groups Investigation we wanted to track  the relationships of new people joining. Were they first degree ties to the group owner or potentially more valuable distant ties? Study member Kimberly Samaha, owner of our participating Bordeaux Colloquium Group  persevered manually tracking ties but for large groups this is impossible.

I welcome dissenting views but make the case that the real value and potential of online  social networking in the next 40 years will come when platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn integrate network analysis.  IBM Atlas and Trampoline Systems are working to deliver this knowledge  inside enterprises.

November 6 I’ll be in Chicago for a Collective Intelligence Summit.  As I investigate the platform providers sponsoring the event I’ll be looking to see if network visualization and analysis is included.

Please take a moment to share what you see will be most impactful in the Internet’s next 40 years.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Enterprise 2.0 Adoption: Chat with @ITSinsider Susan Scupski

October 19, 2009 at 6:01 pm · Filed under Web 2.0

The Enterprise 2.0 Summit Frankfurt (1) takes place November 11-12.

Ahead of that conference Susan Scrupski, an  Advisory Board member and founder of the 2.0 Adoption Council chatted about the state of Enterprise 2.0.

2.0 Adoption Council members represent more than a 100 leading global companies striving to maximize the potential of 2.0 tools.  (Membership is invitation only to organizations with 10k+ employees but you can follow their work through an open Facebook page.)

The Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Council will be visible at the forthcoming Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco November 2-5 when the Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist of the Year will be announced.

Here  are key points from the chat with Susan Scrupski that drew on 2.0 Adoption Council research projects in progress as captured by organizer Bjoern Negelmann

1. Start small
2. Spread the word virally if successful
3. Get an internal champion to promote the project internally
4. Get management awareness
5. Set up an E2.0 strategy
6. Deploy top-down a lot of bottom-up projects with a strong community management and
7. Measure/control your outcome.

Susan Scrupski highlighted “Get an internal champion” and said more will come on the perennial  measurement issue from 2.0 Adoption Council research.

Bjorn’s post was titled “Cookbook for Enterprise 2.0 success“.  In your experience are there any missing ingredients in this Enterprise 2.0 recipe for success?

Another Bjorn Negelmann post proposing a Classification of Enterprise 2.0 Use Cases has driven conversation on Twitter and attracted 48 comments. It builds on  posts by Larry Hawes and  Sameer Patel and will provide context to the Enterprise 2.0 Frankfurt program where the focus is use cases.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

(1) Disclosure:  I am an Enterprise  2.0 Summit Advisory Board member.

How long before “Collective Intelligence Specialist” Becomes a Job Description?

October 3, 2009 at 5:17 pm · Filed under Web 2.0

If you missed the post by Emile Servan Schreiber, CEO of Newsfutures, advising President Obama how to better harness the wisdom of the Federal crowd to produce the best idea for saving Government money and improving bureaucratic efficiency, it is a must read.

In addition to the  explanation of a more effective  collective wisdom approach what caught my attention was mention of  “collective intelligence specialists”.

If the array of sponsors for the Prediction Markets Cluster, Chicago November 6 is any indicator,  the technology is burgeoning to help enterprises  go deep into and beyond their organizations to improve forecasts, filter ideas for solving business challenges and innovating.

At what point I wonder will the value of crowdsourcing organizational wisdom be recognized in a new “Collective Intelligence Specialist” job title?

What do you predict?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

TAP THE COLLECTIVE: From Output to Contribution

September 18, 2009 at 3:35 pm · Filed under Web 2.0

“Has recognition of the power of openness, mass collaboration, crowdsourcing and “collaboratories” to solve problems and innovate become just the way we work?”

This was the question I posed prior to the TAP the Collective event in this TheAppGap post.

Melody Hildebrandt, TAP Conference organizer, spoke with me about the 3 themes emerging from the event presentations and discussions:

1.  Success tapping collective intelligence depends on how people employ tools and organizational culture change is vital to pursuing new innovative paths

Intellipedia doyen Don Burke drives home this point in his presentation talking about “institutional scar tissue” and the OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual 1944.

The sabotage theme is reiterated by Ryan Hahn, a knowledge management consultant to the World Bank. He describes the challenge of channeling information from people on the ground, around the world, back into the organization and,  more important, getting senior management’s attention to what’s important.

Hahn describes using a prediction market, (on the Inkling platform) to help the World Bank address the financial crisis. Lessons learned start with asking good, non-political questions. His assessment– after running the prediction market for 8 months– is mixed success.  While the prediction market produced reliable forecasts the challenge is persuading senior management to value the source. Persistence is key.

2.    Don’t be afraid to fail

Many initiatives failed at first before succeeding.

Emma Antunes, Spacebook , NASA’s social network for collaboration speaks to the practicalities of ensuring “what’s in it for me”, the house rules for responsible participation and sharing, and providing reasons for people to keep coming back

3.    Move from Output to Contribution

Melody made the point that a mindset change is needed,  moving from focus on output (status reports, official meeting minutes) to contribution and reputation. This change requires having people participating as their real selves, not as avatars or anonymous names.

Other Recommended Watching

The following TAP event videos may also interest TheAppGap readers focused on how  emerging technologies will impact the future of work:

i.  David Resseguie, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s  Sensorpedia, a Wikipedia for sensors speaks about using a wiki to increase public data sharing

ii. Shyam Sankar, Palantir, describes “augmented intelligence” and their software, built from efforts to reduce fraud at PayPal, and power of bringing diverse talent to solve challenging problems.

iii. Robin Hanson-  George Mason University economist and Chief Scientist, Consensus Point (a prediction market platform) explains how prediction markets work for making sense of unverifiable and subjective data in organizations.

He warns however to be prepared for organizational disruption. Hanson echoes the World Bank experience that having management interested in the prediction market data is essential for successful adoption. Best Buy’s approach is offered as a model.

Melody Hildebrandt has written about the conference highlights and also posted the video so you can benefit from the presentations. Individual speaker videos are searchable through Youtube. The Twitter exchanges around the event are available through #taptc.

What do you think?

What is the promise, and prospects, for widespread adoption of collective intelligence approaches in organizations?

Is your enterprise using technologies like NASA’s Spacebook,  Intellipedia and Sensorpedia, or prediction markets?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Tap the Collective: An Open Innovation Turning Point?

August 29, 2009 at 1:01 pm · Filed under Distributed Work, Web 2.0

Is anyone planning to attend the Tap the Collective event in Washington DC this coming Wednesday, September 2?  There’s an impressive presenter list:

• Don Burke, Intellipedia, Central Intelligence Agency
• Ryan Hahn, The World Bank
• Robin Hanson, George Mason University, Chief Scientist of ConsensusPoint
• Shyam Sankar, Palantir Technologies
• David Resseguie, Sensorpedia, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Emma Antunes, Spacebook, NASA

Sensorpedia, “a program initiated by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to utilize Web 2.0 social networking principles to organize and provide access to online sensor network data and related data sets” particularly interests me.   If I’m correctly understanding the next generation Web,  as promoted through Tim  Berners Lee “Linked Data“  and the new “Web Squared” O’Reilly white paper,  Sensorpedia gives us a glimpse into the future.  The site description explains:

“Instead of networking users based on mutual personal interests, Sensorpedia networks users based on mutual information interests. It provides near-real-time collaboration among communities with requirements to share sensor information.”

From my summer reading including papers:

“Harnessing Crowds: Mapping the Genome of Collective Intelligence” from Tom Malone et al at MIT

“The New, Faster Face of Innovation” by Erick Brynjolfsson &  Michael Schrage in MIT Sloan Review

“Open innovation: where do french companies stand” by Thierry Weil

and recent business press stories including

“The Corporate Lab As Ringmaster” (New York Times)

“Big Blue’s Global Lab“  the Business Week story about IBM’s “collaboratories” about which Patti Anklam writes in her post here,

I’m wondering if we’ve reached an open innovation tipping point?

It’s 36 years since Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet and laid the foundations for always-on global connectivity and the power of computer connected minds.  Has recognition of the power of openness, mass collaboration, crowdsourcing and “collaboratories” to solve problems and innovate become just the way we work?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

The promise and reality of Web 3.0 & the Semantic Web: A conversation with Steve Ardire

August 7, 2009 at 4:29 pm · Filed under Web 2.0

Did anyone read The McKinsey Quarterly conversation starter by Donna L. Hoffman, (a professor of marketing at the University of California, Riverside) on “Managing Beyond Web 2.0: Companies should prepare now for the day when Web 2.0 morphs into Web 3.0“?  Tweetmeme results show the article received wide attention.

I’m interested in your take on the article. I admit ending with more questions than I began about the state of Web 3.0 and when the technology will significantly impact businesses. A recent post by colleague Victoria Axelrod had focused my attention on Tim Berners Lee’s “Linked Data“  initiative and needing to better understand where the Semantic Web is headed.

This Google Trends search indicates how far  Linked Data, the Semantic Web and Web 3.0 have to travel to compete with interest in Web 2.0.

Note: Visit Google Trends to see the key news stories A-F

To learn more I reached out to Steve Ardire, who’s been attending Semantic Technology conferences for 5 years and  is the smartest person I know about what to expect from the next generation Web.  The following are highlights from  my phone conversation with Steve.

JA Question: Web 3.0 versus Semantic Web? Are they the same or different,  and where does Tim Berners Lee Linked Data initiative fit?

Steve A: “Tim Berners Lee’s vision of the Semantic Web is where computers become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers.

Web 3.0 adds open data, real-time, real-world objects, personalization, mobile and probably most Linked Data, which in a nutshell is the Semantic Web interlinked with enterprise information repositories.”

JA Question: What is the promise of the Semantic Web for business and when will the benefits be widely available to enterprises?

Steve A: “Linked Data is a big part of Web 3.0 but with a bias of using OWL (web ontology language).  This may be OK for the Semantic Web but a much tougher sell for the semantic enterprise where:

1. There’s a much more difficult data integration problem with greater degree of heterogeneity of application and content repositories (structured to unstructured ) and data types
2. Moreover current solutions exist in the semantic enterprise that already provide ‘Linked Data’ (using MDM, EII with metadata management and semantic data integration) but most of which don’t use OWL and RDF like on the semantic web.

More innovative enterprises are also using semantics for unified information access  (enterprise and web)  including  collaboration, content processing, and BI/ predictive analytics for better decision making, competitive advantages, and fulfillment of strategic initiatives. However, persistent context with perpetual analytics remains the most significant hurdle to delivering next generation intelligent systems.”

After speaking with Steve it became clear my effort to understand the next generation Web was just beginning. He pointed out that Wikipedia is a good example of Linked Data and more innovative enterprises are beginning to apply semantics.

Please share your understanding of Linked Data, the Semantic Web and Web 3.0.  What’s your prognosis for  these technologies significantly impacting business productivity and the way we work?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Enterprise 2.0 2009:Twitter’s Influence Everywhere & A New Realism

June 27, 2009 at 10:14 am · Filed under Web 2.0

My Enterprise 2.0 Boston visit this year was abbreviated but here are some takeaways based on attending selected sessions, the Expo floor and invaluable exchanges and learning from people I follow including (with thanks)  Mark Masterson, Jessica Lipnack, Patti Anklam,  Bill Ives, Clara Shih, Marcia Conner, Stowe Boyd,  Chris Brogan, Luis Suarez, Christoph Schmaltz and Gil Yehuda.

1. Twitter’s Influence is Everywhere

As  forecast TheAppGap bloggers  Bill Ives and Patti Anklam contributed to a session on “How Twitter Changes Everything” hosted by Jessica Lipnack and including “The Facebook Era” author Clara Shih and Central Desktop CEO Isaac Gaarcia. ( Find Bill & Patti’s essential panel reports here and here.)

Enterprise 2.0 organizers created hashtags for every session so you can read the discussion  highlights using #e2conf37. The room buzzed following Isaac Garcia’s comment that he regarded ReTweets as Spam. Alex Howard’s Digiphile blog post captures the exchange and offers an alternate view.

Twitter’s influence pervaded the Expo floor with micro-blogging/social messaging functionality being demoed at booths  from Lotus Connections through the latest release of Atlassian’s Confluence Wiki to Thoughtfarmer.

2. A New Enterprise 2.0 Realism

To me this year’s Enterprise 2.0 Conference had– not surprisingly given the challenging economy– a more somber, practical and business results focus.  There were  fewer vendors in the Expo hall and  I met too many people in career transition after being downsized from leading technology and consulting companies.

The measurable results orientation was reflected in youcalc’s emergence as  Launchpad winner.

Youcalc offers “On-Demand Analytics Apps”  described by @dinag as:

“YouCalc uses crowdsourcung to provide analytics on Everything! Excellent!”

You can read more from the Launchpad session at #e2conf16

3. New Performance Benchmark- “It doesn’t suck”

Mark Masterson (@mastermark) is one of the savviest people I know and  a conversation with Mark and his colleagues about the state of Enterprise 2.0 tools was a conference highlight.  After several attempts at implementing new collaboration tools internally they’ve found a platform that is being accepted because “It doesn’t suck?”  I’m curious if this level of changed expectations resonates with other TheAppGap readers?

I’m still trying to interpret Chris Brogan’s nugget captured on the Expo floor:

“Depressing that E20Tech has finally caught up to 2007″

but suspect it relates.

4. Adapting Organizations to be More Open Remains a Challenge

Issues around being more open for effective collaborative work was a recurring theme in conference presentations,  participant comments and the Twitter stream.  It is reflected in this Tweet from Stowe Boyd who presented first findings from his Open Enterprise Research:

@stoweboyd I want to scream when moving toward openness as a ‘tough problem’. Why does it seem that the enterprise hates people? #e2conf

in a multi ReTweeted comment from Marcia Conner (@marciamarcia)

LindaAtV3: RT @elsuacon #e2conf Major take from @marciamarcia participation-make more people centric org’s.That’s what matters-People practices FTW!

and by Jessica Lipnack speaking during #e2conf40

@jlipnack We can’t solve 21st century problems with 19th century organizations

If you attended Enterprise 2.0 in Boston live or virtually please share your impression, provide  pointers to must read Tweets and blog posts and alert me to what I missed.

~ Jenny Ambrozek