Review: Flock 2.0 Browser

November 14, 2008 at 2:26 pm · Filed under Reviews, social tools

The web is getting much more interactive with Web 2.0, but are the browsers keeping up? I recently came across one that tries to, and after giving it a go, I was left wishing I found it sooner. Flock is appropriately dubbed as a “social browser”, as it seamlessly integrates some of the more popular social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Gmail, Digg, and Flickr into the browsing experience.

Flock was founded in 2005, and the current version is their second major release. According to their site, the company is based in Redwood City, CA, and funded by several prominent angel investors. It’s actually based on the Firefox 3.0 engine, which means it’s fast, powerful, secure, and compatible with Firefox add-ons. As someone who uses a lot of extensions, this was welcome news. However, I had mixed results after installing some. Most worked fine, but Google Gears didn’t, along with a couple of others. This is unfortunate as I really need Gears for Google Docs.

This is what the Flock 2.0 browser looks like, with its start-up page:

At first, it felt a little cluttered with icons on the upper left-hand side, but learning about the functions of each made me appreciate what they’re there for. I particularly liked the well thought-out native feed reader, the built-in blog editor (compatible withWordPress, TypePad, and other blog engines), and the media bar (streams feeds of pictures and video from Flickr , YouTube, etc). The email and feed notifiers are also very handy, informing you at a glance if you have new messages. Meanwhile, the My World icon opens a tab that shows the latest on your favorite feeds, media, and friends.

It was easy to navigate around Flock’s menus, thanks to its faithfulness to Firefox’s scheme.  The only thing that I wasn’t too happy about was that the default search box for Flock is Yahoo! instead of Google, which I prefer for in-depth research. Of course, there are many workarounds to this, and only a matter of preference. Yahoo! is fine for the average user.

Unlike my experience with Google Chrome, using Flock exclusively for almost a week was virtually problem-free. Videos played smoothly, pages loaded fast, and web applications worked fine - no doubt thanks to the stability of the coreFirefox 3.0 engine. To be fair, Chrome was a new, experimental platform, and it had its own charms. Things can only get better.

In Flock’s future releases, I would suggest expanding support for more social networks, particularly those that are strong in certain regions like Friendster, hi5, Hyves, Bebo, and Orkut. Another feature to consider is IM support, to make the browser truly an all-in-one online communications hub. For now, Flock 2.0 has proven to be quite impressive, and I would consider making it my default browser, if only there wasn’t these add-on compatibility issues. Anyone who is into social media and don’t mind its quirks should give Flock a try.

Small Biz Sees Value in Social Media — Says Survey

October 29, 2008 at 12:00 am · Filed under social networks, social tools

The majority of small business owners say there’s gold in them there social media sites. Well, maybe not gold, but at least something to look into that’s potentially valuable to businesses.

SurePayroll, the online payroll service, conducted a survey asking small business owners if they believe social networking has business value. A majority, 55%, said yes. What’s more, the survey indicates that one out of every five of the small business owners polled had actually obtained at least one new customer as a direct result of using social media.

When asked which social media sites they have heard of, it’s no surprise that the 3 largest social media sites (here in the U.S.) are the ones most have heard of.  Over 80% had heard of  Myspace, YouTube and Facebook.  This chart of survey data shows that brand recognition is high for those 3 sites among the small business people surveyed.

Interestingly, though, when asked which social sites they actually use for their businesses, the picture looked different.  LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace were the top 3, with YouTube and Yahoo Groups tying for 4th place, as this chart of survey results shows:

What’s the bottom line?   Notice that LinkedIn is the hands-down favorite for small business owners to actually use.  Digg is none too popular with the small biz crowd despite being the “poster child” of social media sites.

SurePayroll’s Online Marketing Manager, David Rohrer, says small businesses need social media to stay competitive.

“It is no longer just an outlet for personal use — it’s rapidly becoming a must for business success,” says Rohrer. “Big business is tapping into the blogosphere and posting their company profile pages in online communities. Small business owners need to do the same. What’s so great about the online world is you don’t need a million-dollar marketing budget. In fact, the most effective online connections are free personal communications from a business owner to their community.”

The SurePayroll press release on this topic is here.

A Master List of Big Brand Social Media Uses

October 28, 2008 at 8:58 pm · Filed under Collaboration, Collective intelligence, social tools

Here’s an example of crowd-sourced intelligence in action, when it comes to social media:

Peter Kim put together a big list of business uses of social media.  Then with the input of his readers, he’s expanded the original list and as of this writing there are 279 brands listed, with references to how they are using social media. 

The list includes everything from Daimler’s Slideshare account, to Intuit’s Tax Almanac wiki, to the Progressive Insurance traffic widget on Yahoo.  There are non-profits, media, government and military organizations represented too.

Now you might wonder, “what’s so unusual about a list that readers have contributed to?”  Nothing, actually.  Happens all the time on blogs and wikis.

But it did not stop with one list. 

Then another blogger sliced and diced his list.  You see, Peter had divided his list according to brands/organizations.  Then Ray Schiel of the Global Social Media Network divided the list according to applications and functionality.  Thus, if you want to see which big brands are podcasting, for instance, it’s easy to see at a glance.  Want to know which big brands have a YouTube channel?  You can find that out too, with the list of organizations involved in online video.

Help! I’m being social-networked to death

September 26, 2008 at 4:11 pm · Filed under Collaboration, Collective intelligence, Communities, Reviews, social networks, social tools

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a recluse, and not ready to become an “Island, entire unto myself” (to quote John Dunne).

But I’m getting more than a little overwhelmed by all these different social networking websites - LinkedIn, PlaxoPulse, Facebook, and there must be a couple of others that I’ve somehow been dragged into joining (though the fact that I can’t remember what they are says something about how (un)important they are to my life and work).

Seriously, though, I know many people find one or more of these networks meaningful and even helpful in their life and their work. And I’ve followed the recent research on “the tribalization of organizations” by Beeline Labs with genuine interest.

But for me right now these network sites seem more peripheral than central to my daily routine. I mean, it’s occasionally nice to find out something about one of my colleagues/associates/friends. But it really feels like most of my interaction with these networks is when someone reaches out and wants to become my “friend” or Linked to me - and about 90% of the time I literally don’t them from Adam. What I find really frustrating is that these folks who either don’t know me at all, or in many cases are a friend of a friend, send me the canned/impersonal Invitation Request - no effort to personalize it or tell me why they want to link up with m, or what’s in it for me.

Again, don’t get me wrong - I do see plenty of potential value in these networks for some people (though I get the sense that many of the folks who are actively using the networking sites are in the job market and are just blasting the linking invitation to everyone in their address book).

So what am I missing? Which of these networks is good for what? Help me - I’m really curious, and for a self-proclaimed futurist, more than a little embarrassed at what a neophyte I am about what is obviously one of the most important stories about collaborative technologies and their impact on both business and life in 2008.

Tags: LinkedIn PlaxoPulse FaceBook socialnetworking futureofwork

Tim O’Reilly & Co Come to New York: Web 2.0 Gets Real

September 20, 2008 at 2:35 pm · Filed under Collaboration, Economic Development, Enterprise 2.0, Management, Web 2.0, social networks, social tools

CNet’s Caroline McCarthy has captured the essence of the Web 2.0 Expo in New York this week that was underway as Wall Street events and corporate failures hurricaned through global financial markets, the economy and prompted urgent actions by Hank Paulson and company in Washington. We all lived a week that I couldn’t imagine a script writer envisioing.

With 2 decades experience  in the technology world being part of,  and watching, technology companies both aspire and fall, (starting with PRODIGY the online service), I couldn’t help but wonder as I walked the Web 2.0 Expo halls how many of these companies will be around this time next year? 

I counted 150 plus Web 2.0 Expo booths including the Long Tail Pavilion.  Among them were  a handful of the now global brands and companies that through decades have both created the computers and applications that laid the foundation for the Web, and impress by adapting and sustaining through changing economic and technology times:  Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Intuit, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems.  Then there were the next generation companies–Amazon, eBay and Salesforce– who drove new business models leveraging the Web, and continue to do so in the case of Amazon and Salesforce by promoting utility computing via the cloud. What lessons they all offer the Long Tail pavilion participants if only their management will take a moment to look around and back.

In retrospect I wish I had tallied the number of times I saw “social” plastered on banners and product feature lists. Given the themes in a recent piece colleague Victoria Axelrod and I published  about “Open Net∞WORKing Organizations” (for India based Effective Executive Magazine), CNET writer Caroline  McCarthy captured my observation that labelling your product “social” in this environment is not enough.  Priority one is business models and technology solutions that deliver demonstrable results to enterprises:

“Indeed, most of the buzzed-about companies at the Web 2.0 Expo, as with the Demo and TechCrunch50 events earlier this month, were enterprise-oriented services rather than free consumer applications. There’s a real question as to whether companies will spring for these products in a time of tightening budgets, but ultimately, it’s a positive sign: business models, not cute fads, are at the forefront.” 

Tim O’Reilly, in his Thursday morning “Web Meets World” keynote,  translated this message into a call for individual action, specifically that people in the room “build technology that solves real problems and makes a difference.” 

Next year,  2009 it will be 20 years since Tim Berner’s Lee invented the World Wide Web,  transforming the way we work and business is conducted. Connsidering the technology themes emerging from Web 2.0 Expo, in the context of financial industry crises and reorganization, and Tim O”Reilly’s call to code to good purpose, it seems we have indeed entered both a new, more grown up,  eyes wide open and wiser world for the technology business.  Have we?  I wonder what you think.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Around the Networking Table

September 15, 2008 at 7:29 am · Filed under Collaboration, Distributed Work, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, social networks, social tools

The UVA’s Network Roundtable’s semi-annual meeting (held Sptember 8-9, at the Hyatt Dulles for the first time) was, as always, a rich couple of days for learning how companies are applying the tools of social/organizational network analysis. Led by Rob Cross (who was my ONA teacher), this 80+ member consortium has worked with Rob to fulfill a vision that he has of a relational view of the workplace. The first three years of the Roundtable focused on method: getting the survey tool right, practicing and honing the methodology, developing a research program, building the member base.

An ONA (organizational network analysis) provides a visual map of how people in an organization (or collection of organizations) relate to each other along a specific set of dimensions (frequency of communication, liklihood to seek out for problem-solving, source of innovative ideas, and so on). The map is accompanied by a set of data that provide more detailed types of analysis.

The focus now shifts, as Rob says, to the “now what?” that occurs after a map is presented. What are the most effective interventions for specific types of patterns? What else can you do with the data? Zeke Wolfberg at the DIA has used network data to pair people in a “smart mentoring” program (I wrote this up in an article I co-authored with Zeke a few years ago). The Roundtable will soon be producing a field guide containing cases of practical interventions that use network data.

Rob’s research program model (similar to that of the Institute for Knowledge Management, which supported Rob’s early research) is to sketch out some broad research areas and let consortium members guide the research by working with the Rob and his research team as they work to solve real-time problems in their workplaces. One new research area (that I am most interested in) is in the area of technology — social tools and applications. You only need to read a little of The AppGap to know that there is still a lot we don’t know about social software. But to put social software in the context of understanding social networks means asking questions like:

• Are people who use social tools (blogs, wikis, collaboration platforms with status updates, and so on) more productive?
• Are they more productive than they were before they started using these tools?
• Or is it that people who were already high performers have been early adopters of the tools?
• How can existing social networks be leveraged for change management in bringing new tools into the workplace?
• Can we know enough about the structure of networks and quality of relationships from email mining or are we stuck with surveys?

I spent a morning session with consortium members represent manufacturing, business consulting, and financial services companies and the DoD and global nonprofits.  This research area is being led by Peter Gray. The most energy in the discussion was around the issues of adoption, the best places to start building internal networks (communities of practice), and how to work around problems with people using both internal and external social platforms. Lots of meat for research, not all necessarily specific to the domain of interest of the Network Roundtable, but there are a lot of committed and enthusiastic folks rolling up their sleeves on these topics.

Social software: a vendor taxonomy

September 4, 2008 at 9:04 am · Filed under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, social tools

I’ve been talking to a couple of software vendors about “socializing” their applications. As part of those conversations I started clarifying the difference between the vendors like IBM and Microsoft that have collaboration platforms (Lotus, SharePoint) and the vendors that are offering unique “suites” (Jive, Awareness, and others). This month there is a great article in KMWorld Magazine by Tony Byrne, “Enterprise social Software technology” that does a fair amount of the work for me. I agree with Tony that the market is still very fragmented as indicated by the categories:

• Platform vendors
• Social software suites
• Wiki software
• White-label community services (e.g. Ning, Lithium)
• Public networks (e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook)

He also describes eleven scenarios for the use of social software, seven of which pertain to internal organizational use and four of which are external scenarios.

The framework is a good starting point, and I’m interested in delving more deeply with my clients on expanding and detailing the scenarios, and also understanding the implications of platform or suite use outside of enterprises.  In my previous post, I described how the use of wikis supports emergent communities. These communities can quickly cobble together  “home grown” solutions that use free (or almost-free) tools. For example Ning does provide white-label community services, but it also has a free version that is showing great traction in the nonprofit community.  Note that in addition to the Wiki I referenced in the Gustav post, the hurricane community also used Ning to create its Hurricane Information Center, which is of course expanding to look at Hanna, Ike, and perhaps grow into a permanent community. Actually, for a pretty impressive list of all the vehicles set up for Gustav, see Nancy White’s Tracking Hurrican Gustav on Social Media blog post.

The challenge for enterprise social media is to learn from these naturally occuring networks  what is needed with respect to integration. It is also a challenge for the players in the social software marketplace to understand how to work with niche software application vendors to learn how to bring them into the internal social network.