Archive for social media
by Bill Ives
January 11, 2011 at 3:12 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, KM, Web 2.0, social media
Operating in real time, the Darwin Awareness Engine™ allows for the efficient scanning of content to find both breaking news and underlying casual patterns in the topics of your interest. Rather than using semantic technology to attempt to enable understanding by a computer, their approach to awareness is based on Chaos Theory and allows the content to self organize. This approach eliminates the need for a predetermined taxonomy or the ability to use SEO techniques. It provides a visualization of results that enables a person to make more informed decisions about where to look next.
Darwin Ecosystem has recently announced a series of themed Darwin Editions™ powered by the Awareness Engine™ that focus on specific topics to better demonstrate its capabilities and as a service to our readers. These can each be accessed at no cost through a brief registration process. As a disclosure I am part of the Darwin Ecosystem team.
The initial themes for the Darwin Edition include: general news, social media on the web, social media in the enterprise, and oil and gas industry news. There is also another free version through their partner, Twortex, which uses aspects of the Darwin Awareness Engine to provide a Twitter search tool.
These Darwin Editions provide a way to monitor the conversations within several focused areas. They offer many of the user capabilities that come with the complete Darwin Awareness Engine. Darwin looks at targeted content rather than spidering the whole Web. This targeted content approach provides greater control to define relevant content and can be focused within the Web or within the enterprise through such applications as SharePoint, Domino, and many of the other collaboration and content management platforms.
Determining and curating the target content is an administration function that comes with the commercial versions. In this free Darwin Edition series Darwin Ecosystem has picked the content sources and will continue to refine them.
As a user you have a number of capabilities for looking at this content and making adjustments to your discovery process. First, there are the two visualizations: the Buzz Tape™ and the Scan Cloud™. The Buzz Tape runs across the top of the screen as seen below and displays themes of rising (green) or falling (red) interest within the target content. The Scan Cloud shows the top themes within the target content. Running the mouse over one theme highlights the others that are related to it. In the right column the actual content connected with themes is displayed. Clicking on this content will take you directly to the source.
The photos come through two sources. Some RSS feeds provide pictures. We also link to relevant Flickr images. You can also choose to collect videos through YouTube by choosing videos when you select sources as described below. The YouTube videos are listed under the informal sources in the right column.
You can either simply look at the general buzz within the targeted content or create attractors, that serve as queries, to further refine you content discovery. For example, you can look at how your brand or some other topic of interest is being discussed. To create a new attractor, you fill in the attractor field in the top right. For example, I put in Boston, my hometown, in the attractor field and received these results shown below.
Then you can further edit your attractor by clicking in the edit space next to where it appears in the upper left. An edit field appears, such as the one shown below. You can adjust the time period for content collection up to 200 hours by using the slider. You can select which feeds to use by choosing from the drop down or simply allow for everything by not making a selection. It is best to start this way. You can also select if you want to only see more formal (traditional news sources) or less formal sources (bloggers). Not selecting either provides all content sources.
Once you have refined your attractor you can save it in the lower right corner of the edit field. Then when you click on the plus sign in the upper left all of your saved attractors will appear for you selection.
The Awareness Engine is a Web browser application (Scan Cloud™) or it can become a custom solution through API access. It is delivered through a Web server with services and a database correlating the different Web 2.0 sources. For the enterprise there is an on-premise solution running on Ruby on Rails and making use of RSS feeds. Its Virtual Cortex™ database can be set on Oracle, MS-SQL or mySQL according to scalability needs.
by Bill Ives
January 8, 2011 at 1:05 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, social media
According to a recent survey by The Amanda Group over 60 percent of respondents in the mid-size business space say they are ready to look to the cloud. Many are already using virtualization but only 4 percent are using the cloud now to back up data. In addition, 63% say they are using 10% or less of their applications on a SaaS platform. So this projects a major shift in the mid-size business IT architecture.
Are these companies prepared? It seems that there is work to be done as 79% do not have a plan for their move into the cloud. Many see the advantages as 63% feel that the cloud offers cost savings and 29% feel that the cloud offers more flexibility. At the same time, only 8% believe there is no advantage to the cloud.
Many of the vendors reviewed on this blog operate on SaaS platforms so there is challenge here for them to further penetrate the mid-size market. The good news is that the desire for the cloud is there, the caution is the lack of strategic planning in place.
Social media is generally operates on a cloud platform. In the large company space I have seen studies that indicate over 80% of companies plan to use social media in 2011 but in other studies less than half have a strategy for social media use. This parallel between social media and the cloud is not surprising. In both cases vendors need to avoid prompting tools and services because they are the latest thing and help clients address planning and strategy requirements to make sure their applications are kept for the long run.
by Matthew Hodgson
September 20, 2009 at 2:42 am · Filed under
Talent Management, Web 2.0, social media, social tools
Social media holds great advantages, whether for improving internal collaboration, communication and social learning, or for building and enhancing trust through more responsive communications with key stakeholders and clients. Unfortunately, some organisations still hold onto a number of fears that hold them back from utilising these tools:
1. Employees will waste time
- Fear: Employees will waste time regardless of whether social computing tools are available to them or not.
- Fact: Research from MIT notes that 40% of employees productivity is directly explained by the amoung of communication they have with others to discover, gather and internalise information. Employees with the most extensive digital networks are 7% more productive than their colleagues. [1]
2. Social media is for kids
- Fear: Social media is used by a lot of kids, therefore it is only a toy and not to be taken seriously for assessment as a business tool.
- Fact: Use of internet technologies has its highest penetration rates in the 15-17 y.o. demographic — 83.9% in Australia. The next highest usage is by 35-44 y.o.’s with 74.1% penetration, followed by 18-24 at 72.8% and 25-34 at 71%. Overall, 76% of Australian adults use social media at least monthly [2]. Age demographics from the world’s hottest social media platforms also support this finding.
Overall, the use of Web 2.0 technologies internationally has grown rapidly in the last few years with an increase in from approximately 0.5 billion to 0.67 billion participants between 2007 and 2008. Research by Nielsen in 2009 [3] showed that use of Web 2.0 websites is now more popular than email with an estimated growth three times as fast as the pace of general online growth. Importantly, the survey shows that rather than the province of the young, the biggest increase in use of Web 2.0 websites in 2009 comes from the 35-49 year old age group – an increase in 11.3 million people.The highlights from Nielsen’s report:
- Global share of time accounted for by people using social media increased by 38%.
- Men and women aged 65 and above moving to social media websites grew by 7 per cent
- The 17-and-under category dropped by 9 per cent
3. We will lose control to the ’nutters’
- Fear: If allowed to interact freely online, people will post spam and abuse online forums
- Fact: In the wiki forum FutureMelbourne, the Melbourne city council in Australia engaged citizens to discern their view of the city in order to contribute to planning for the future. Their results may surprise some:
“We received over 7000 individual visits to the site and several hundred edits to the plan by members of the public. Not a single instance of spam, offensive or off-topic content was recorded during the consultation period. We employed a process of direct community management, directly engaging with citizens as edits were made, answering questions, referring them to the appropriate area of expertise or correcting formatting errors should they occur.” [4]
Developing a clear social media strategy and plan is the best way to achieve success. Rather than automatically implementing a program on the four major social media avenues — blogs, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn — it’s important to first step back and see what makes sense to reach your stakeholders and customers. Ultimately, because social media is about relationships, it is important to thoroughly understand what matters to them, rather than what is easiest for you.
In the end, having good, simple, and easy-to-understand policies for managing online communities with dedicated, trained people, is key to ensuring control remains with you. The policy should also encompass how your employees should interact with clients. If everything has to be vetted by legal and corporate comms, though, before a conversation can take place, though, you’ll be dooming the venture before it begins.
4. Social media is a security risk
- Fear: Employees will share the organisations IP or say something that could land the company in legal trouble if they depart from their traditional editorial control processes. A study from Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law finds that 81% of companies believe social media is a corporate security risk. As a result, many organisations place a blanket ban on all social media platforms.
- Fact: [find the WW2 posters]Despite this fear from corporate heads, the study also found that 69 percent of those surveyed said they did not have a written social media policy in place. Of this group, 25 percent said they were unsure what the policy should include while 9 percent said it was unimportant.
5. There is no clear ROI
- Fear: What we’ve done has worked til now, there’s no reason to change!
- Fact: With Baby Boomers about to retire from the workforce that leaves Gen-Xs to move into senior management and Gen-Ys into positions of power. One thing we know for certain about these later two demographics is that they’re very technology literate. This, of course, has its consequences for the workplace and how organisations communicate with their stakeholders.The importance of the adoption of these tools within organisations is highlighted by a Telindus survey of more than 1,000 European office workers. The survey found that employees have begun to expect that the Web 2.0 tools they use at home will now be available in their workplace:
- 39% of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access sites like Facebook and YouTube
- A further 21% indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban
- The problem is less acute with 25 to 65 year-olds, of whom just 16% would consider leaving and 13% would be annoyed
These expectations are generated because individuals use these tools in their personal lives to help them process data effectively and reduce information overload [5]. This need is all the more important in a work context, therefore, where business silos and network drives make it all the more difficult to share knowledge, communicate information, and collaborate. Web 2.0 tools can help essentially because they are designed to enable people to collaborate more efficiently, preserve and share corporate knowledge, and thereby reduce expenses.
No ROI? What price do you put on keeping your workforce?
Proceeding from fear to managing these aspects of social computing as risks is the obvious next step.
M
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1. Bulleit, B. 2006. Effectively managing team conflict. Cary, NC: Global Knowledge Training LLC
2. Analysis of ABS cat no. 8146.0 and ABS cat no. 3201.0
3. The Nielsen Company, 2009. Social networks & blogs now 4th most popular online activity, ahead of personal email, News Release. New York, NY. 9 March.
4. Dale Bowerman comments to Atkins, D. 2008. Using a Wiki to Improve Town Governance, 9 Jan. Online at: blog.davewrites.com/index.php/2008/01/09/using_a_wiki_to_improve_town_governance#c886
5. Robert Half Technology, 2009. CIOs Weigh in on most popular communication tools at work, 7 Aug. Online at: http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/portal/site/rht-us/menuitem.8e8f9ba1fb1aaad656932a0202f3dfa0/?vgnextoid=368b9926053d8010VgnVCM1000002d3ffd0aRCRD&javax.portlet.prp_392cb099d6a955fd8bbe7a8902f3dfa0_request_type=RenderPressRelease&javax.portlet.prp_392cb099d6a955fd8bbe7a8902f3dfa0_releaseId=2301
by Patti Anklam
September 1, 2009 at 2:24 pm · Filed under
Culture, Learning, Management, social media
Today’s juxtaposition:
Fish (@nytimesfish) argues for the importance of teaching English composition as a vital requirement for success in any profession. Happe is thinking that it’s hard to fill senior positions because many people who are skilled in social media lack experience navigating large organizations.
One of the questions these both raise for me is the effect of social media practices on our ability to think and communicate, and especially the need to be able to construct models of thought. Dr. Fish provides a wonderful example of how he teaches the “neither/nor” construct, not as a “rule,” but as an experience of learning the pattern. Similarly, I think that the ability to navigate large organizations comes from time spent experiencing the territory.
What is the experience, what are the learning patterns being developed as laptop-toting students express themselves using shorthand? Yes, they (and we who tweet, blog, and befriend) are learning to cope with fragments and put those pieces together. Yes, I believe that the primarly new skill of management is the ability to manage complex sets of interactions and set up boundaries and spaces for possibility to emerge. And yes, I know that the trajectory of my own career experience is based fundamentally on my ability to write.
by Celine Roque
August 28, 2009 at 12:35 pm · Filed under
AppGap Tips, social media
A few months ago I wrote articles on how to store a backup of Google Docs and Gmail accounts – both quite helpful as these services sometimes go down when you need them most. These are great for saving documents, but you might ask, what about your other data stored online, say on social media sites?
Here are various ways in which to keep a local copy for the most popular services’ contents:
TWITTER
Why create a backup: Twitter only archives your latest 3,200 tweets, and past this limit your earlier tweets are automatically discarded. If you’re a heavy user it’s easy to exceed this in a few months.
RSS – Simplest method is to grab your own tweet feed via a locally installed RSS reader like Feed Demon or RSS Captor.
Tweetake – Allows backup of followers, friends, favorites, and of course your tweets by compiling them into a CSV file.
Backup My Tweets – A free web app that does what its name says. It’s main advantage is that it allows you to export a summary of your tweets in HTML, PDF, and JSON.
FACEBOOK
Why create a backup: Just for posterity, or just in case your account gets deactivated. Plus, who knows if Facebook will still be around after 10 years?
Social Safe – A powerful paid application (just $3) based on Adobe AIR that it backs up most of the things inside your Facebook account, including your profile, pictures, and friend list. One glaring limitations is that it doesn’t (yet) provide a mechanism to backup status messages and their accompanying comments.
Photo Download – Photo Download allows you to get both tagged photographs and photo albums that you and your friends have uploaded to Facebook on to your own computer. Compatible with both Windows and Mac OS X.
by Celine Roque
August 24, 2009 at 9:39 pm · Filed under
Culture, social media
What do people really tweet about? Is it what they had for breakfast? Is it the latest breaking news? corporate marketing? Do people talk to each other or do they just throw random stuff out there? Pear Analytics sought to answer these questions once and for all.
First, let’s look at the demographics. A previous study by Quantcast showed that Twitter reaches 27 million people every month in America. Of these, 55% are female, 43% are between 18 and 34, 78% Caucasian, and with an aaverage household income of $30K-$60K. A dedicated one percent of all users are responsible for 35% of the visits, 72% are passersby, while only 27% are regular users.
Pear’s methodology involved random sampling of the public timeline. Every weekday for two consecutive weeks from 11:00am-5:00pm, they took a look at 200 tweets – or a total of 2,000 tweets in 10 days. These were grouped into six different categories: News, Spam, Self-promotion, Pointless Babble, Conversational and Pass-along Value.
The result was that what they rather derisively defined as Pointless Babble comprised the biggest share of tweets at around 40%. This includes random musings and shares things without necessarily looking to get anyone engaged in a conversation. Coming in at a close second with 37.55% is actual Conversations. These are made up of @replies and questions that seek others to share their own thoughts. Pear Analytics says that if the sample size were bigger and the polling was held longer, these two categories would probably even out.
Pass-along Value, or retweets, came third with a far lower 8.7%, while Self-promotion (corporate marketing and the like) was at 5.85%. Spam came in at 3.75% and lastly 3.6% was mainstream-type News. According to the research firm, “We thought the News category would have more weight than dead last, since this seems to be contrary to Twitter’s new position of being the premier source of news and events. Self-promotion was also less than expected, [which] may be enlightening to some folks, as there appears to be a flurry of companies and businesses joining Twitter to promote products and services.”
Another interesting result from the study was that the best time to go viral with your tweet is to send it on Mondays, preferably at 11:30am CST. Meanwhile, news peaked around 2:00pm on Tuesdays. Conversations, on the other hand, really get going in the afternoon, and more so during Tuesdays. Pear surmises it may be due to people trying to catch up with work in the morning and on Mondays before freeing time to tweet for fun. Sadly, spam tweets are constant every hour of the day.
Pear Analytics will regularly repeat the study every quarter to spot emerging trends. I do hope that in the next iterations, they’ll be able to include weekends, expand the hours, as well as increase their sample size considerably.
by Matthew Hodgson
July 23, 2009 at 1:50 pm · Filed under
Communities, Web 2.0, social media, social networks
It’s been a great journey. The more I look into social media and report on its current use the more it seems that others, from corporates to government agencies, are starting to ‘get’ social media.
For those of you still lagging behind, here are some stats that might get you motivated to join in the conversation (… that means both listening and talking):
- 2/3 of the global internet population use social media [1]
- 3 in 4 Americans use social media [2]
- 4 in 5 Australians use social media at least monthly [3]
- People now visit social media websites more than they use personal email [1]
- Time spent on social media websites is growing 3x the speed of internet adoption [1]
What are they doing? In Australia, the statistics indicate:
- 39% – news feeds
- 29% – instant messaging
- 26% – social networking
- 22% – blogs
Hitwise reports that of all websites visited by Australians:
- 4.03% visit Facebook
- 1.44% visit YouTube
- 1.12% visit MySpace
- 0.81% visit Wikipedia
These are interesting numbers from a government information and communication perspective because of the 2,094 websites that Hitwise monitors the combined traffic only equates to 1.3% of which the Bureau of Meteorology attracts 0.36%. It suggests that people would rather go to YouTube and be one of the 100 million people who watch some of the 13 hours of video uploaded every minute. If you were to watch all the content on YouTube though make sure you’ve got lots of popcorn because it would take you about 412 years.
So what about other social media webistes? Some suggest that people arn’t engaged or maybe its only a small proportion, yet the statistics speak for themselves:
- 13 million articles in Wikipedia
- 3.6 billion photos on Flickr in June 2009 — roughly 1 photo for every 2 people on the planet (world population is est 6.7 billion by United States Census Bureau to be 6.7 billion)
- Twitter grew by 1382% from January to February 2009
- 3 million Tweets on Twitter per day
- 5 billion minutes spent on Facebook every day
- 1 billion pieces of content, from links and news to photos and blog posts, shared on Facebook each week
- If Facebook was a country it would be the 8th most populated in the world ahead of Japan which is 127.7 million according to the Japan Statistics Bureau
If you’re not part of this conversation, this collaboration, this community, then your stakeholders and your clients are obviously talking to other people.
M
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1. Nielsen, Global Faces & Networked Places, 2009
2. Forrester, The Growth of Social Technology Adoption, 2008
3. Internet World Stats, 2008. Internet Usage Stats and Telecommunications Market Report
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