August 10th, 2007

BlogHer07: A 2.0 human community

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 8:27 am

Categories: BlogHer07, Blogs, Social communities, Social media, Web 2.0

Tags: Web, Women, Blog, Maurene Caplan Grey

About a year ago, I was a neophyte blogger. My first few posts were force-fed into my blog. They were a “should” chore — I should be blogging. I approached “the blog” as unfamiliar technology. I didn’t yet realize that blog posts are born from passion, and that ”should blog” is an oxymoron.

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In late July, I attended BlogHer07. I was sipping my morning coffee, waiting for the keynote, when I experienced an epiphany: My “should blog” baggage was long gone. A collective passion and energy permeated the room. It wasn’t just me; others said that they felt it as well. BlogHer was an educational and networking event focused on the human effect of blogging — a viral revival meeting.

The conference included sessions on self-branding, storytelling, advocacy, politics, fundraising and the momosphere. At the same time, BlogHer was being held in Second Life. (A panelist shares her BlogHer Second Life experience.)

Many of the trade floor vendors left their tchotchkes at home. I got a laptop bag from AOL and an Essentials Renew kit from General Motors. Why such nice take-aways? Women generate revenue.

Women are the primary decision makers for the majority of household spend. According to BlogHer research:

• Women spend $5 trillion a year (U.S.) and control 83% of household spending.

• Women who blog are 30% more likely than average female Internet users to shop online–and spend more when they buy.  

Bloggers are influencers. Read the rest of this entry »

July 5th, 2007

Confessions of a social community subscribe-aholic

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 1:50 pm

Categories: PIM, Social communities, Social media, Web 2.0

Tags: Plaxo Inc., Community, Maurene Caplan Grey

I have subscribed to more social communities than I can keep up with … and yet I keep clicking subscribe links. Some I bookmark, and some I don’t. Most are clutter in my cyber-closet. My name is Maurene, and I’m a social community subscribe-aholic.  

In my reality, each one is important — with bits and bytes of information to be discovered. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve subscribed to. I play with each for a while, then get bored and subscribe to a new community. However, there are a few that I use regularly: LinkedIn and del.icio.us (for business) and Flickr (for fun). I have a folder of mainly unread RSS feeds. The blogs that I really want to read are subscribed to through Feedblitz, which delivers an RSS-generated aggregation of new posts contained within an email message. I use Feed Crier to alert me via IM for posts “hot off the cyber-press.”

My old buddy Plaxo 2.0 has been ousted by Plaxo 3.0 (PIM extraordinaire). The Plaxo 3.0 sync-platform is built on SyncML, a platform-independent, sync open standard. As my ZDNet Between the Lines colleagues point out: 

It’s an opportunity for Plaxo to become a kind [of] data synching hub of contact and calendar data between all the services a person uses.

I consider Plaxo to be socially aware, because Read the rest of this entry »

June 27th, 2007

Web 2.0: Where "low-fi is the next high-fi"

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 7:57 am

Categories: Blogs, Digital media, E-communications, Social media, Web 2.0, Wiki

Tags: Web, Web 2.0, IP, Maurene Caplan Grey

My audience [will] live a happier, easier life here on the web!

Well, you’re gonna be a rock star with this!

Simple, entertaining, funny, and informative!

… and my personal favorite

You made it so simple, even my parents could understand it.

These are a sampling of comments received by the folk at CommonCraft.

CommonCraft has mastered the art of simplifying the complicated. They call it paperworks, and “believe lo-fi is the new hi-fi.”

Let’s say that tomorrow you need to give a presentation to your non-technical boss on the value of wikis. You could start with the Wikipedia definition of “wiki” — or you could start your presentation with this video.

Human communication fails when people speak different languages and do not have a translator or a common goal — for example, when the IT system engineer talks about IP (Internet Protocol) with the marketing design team responsible for IP (intellectual property).

I rarely gush over vendor products or services… but gosh darn it, this type of “2.0″ tutorial was just so easy to understand.

June 25th, 2007

Reality television leads to "unreality" communications

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 10:54 am

Categories: Digital media, E-communications, Social media

Tags: Internet, TV, Reality Television, Maurene Caplan Grey

I’m not a fan of today’s reality television.  I don’t really want to know that Sharon Osbourne likes to flash her son’s friends. However, there is a certain amount of voyeurism in all of us, which today’s reality television exploits and numbs us to the reality of unreality.

We now have the e-communicative tools to expose much of our private lives to anyone with access to the Internet, including Grandma Frieda. In fact, it’s common practice for future employers and college admission officers to check YouTube and MySpace for your possible transgressions - à la Paris Hilton.  

Discussing privacy and Twitter, eWeek.com writer, Jim Rapoza, says, “Obviously there are different levels of privacy, and the point at which it becomes an issue is different for everyone,” to which a reader commented:

But it still comes down to a matter of choice and control, and privacy advocates would be well to emphasize these aspects and insist that laws, regulations, and systems be constructed to allow the power to decide to stay in the hands of the individual.

Let’s say that I choose to post a photo of myself as a Las Vegas showgirl on the Internet. That’s my constitutional right. A month from now, I say to myself “What was I thinking!” Has the boldness of today’s reality television numbed our sensibilities in how we communicate on the Internet? Has the virtual reality of Internet communications (video, audio, Twitter, blogs and so on) dumbed down our thinking to the potential ”unreality” exposed on the Internet for perpetuity?

April 27th, 2007

Enterprise communication: Flexibility trumps security

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 6:50 am

Categories: Collaboration, Email, Messaging, Security, Social communities, Web 2.0

Tags: Security, Electronic Communication, Knowledge Worker, IM, Messaging, E-mail, Maurene Caplan Grey

Before wireless email became commonplace, executive management would often forward their most important email messages from their corporate account to their free, consumer email account (e.g., hotmail) – so that they could access them at a public kiosk while traveling.

Consumer instant messaging (IM), and the plethora of free "2.0" e-communication systems, are today's traffickers of business information. No longer the primary domain of executive management, everyone can participate in the risk of exposing private information on public networks. Tools that are free, easy and fun, while serving some business purpose, will be used by the average knowledge worker. Witness consumer instant messaging. 

As the knowledge worker decides how best to communicate, flexibility trumps security.

• Let me (the knowledge worker) choose the method by which I communicate, and I'll be more productive. 
• Business units and IT, sanction my choice of e-communication tools and the organization will be flatter and more productive.

The need for flexibility drove the executive to forward business messages to her consumer email account. However, today the traveling executive normally accesses her business messages through a secured Web or mobile session to the corporate email server. As consumer IM became a near staple of enterprise communications, enterprise-level, third-party "connectors" arrived to secure those IM sessions.

With the current explosion of new consumer e-communication media, an unending parade of enterprise-level (i.e., secure) unified communication suites are surfacing — with the supply-side vendors are one-upping each other, near daily. View Microsoft's announcement of the Microsoft-Nortel alliance, followed by Marguerite Reardon's (CNET News.com) report.

[Cisco] has been pursuing several new markets, such as telephony and video, over the past few years to find new growth markets. So far, Unified Communications is proving to be a winner. During the company's second-quarter earnings call in February, executives said that sales of its Unified Communications products had increased 38 percent compared with a year ago. … Even though sales seem to be strong for this product line, Cisco will likely continue to compete against some tough competitors, including Microsoft, which is working with voice veteran Nortel Networks.

Freedom of choice and data security need not be mutually exclusive. Nonetheless, the average Enterprise is wary to spend money on emerging e-communication technologies, or securing those already on-site – even as the average Enterprise User downloads any tool that provides him with the greatest communicative flexibility. 

March 22nd, 2007

Capturing the Elusive Record

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 9:48 am

Categories: Collaboration, Email, Messaging, Records management, Social media

Tags:

Last week I delivered a Webcast (Collaboration: New Challenges for Electronic Records Management) on behalf of ARMA International (industry organization dedicated to the record management discipline). Historically, record managers have focused on paper-based records. Today, most records start as electronic-based and new paper-based records are scanned and digitized.

I became interested in records management about seven years ago when the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) decided to enforce record-keeping audits of financial institutions. Because the majority of business communication occurs through email, information found in email messages and message attachments often became the "smoking gun" – potentially bringing down a firm. (Enron comes to mind.) In 2003, the SEC included instant messaging (IM) messages as an auditable source of potentially damaging evidence. As an IT industry analyst covering the messaging space, I soon found myself becoming compliance-savvy.

The tenent of records management is "a record is a record" — based on the content and context of the information. The media which holds the information is irrelevant. However, each type of electronic information has unique characteristics. For example, an email takes a different path across the Internet than does an IM. Information may change electronic formats at different junctures in its travels.

In doing research for the ARMA Webcast, I started to think about the growing variety of new communicative, collaborative and social media toolsets that are being used in organizations. Often the toolset is a free, beta downloaded from the Internet, which gets circulated in the office and soon becomes the core of a business process. This is exactly how consumer IM (e.g., AIM and MSN Messenger) entered businesses and why the SEC said, and I paraphrase, "Thou shall manage IM as thou manages email and other document types."

The mundane certainties of business are glitz clouds judgment and history repeats itself. Blogs and wikis are "all the rage," much like IM was a few years ago. Can the business embrace the inherent social nature of ways to communicate and collaborate without breaking the business rules of records management that protect the organization? I believe that the answer is "yes," but that means cultural change in the business; new (or modifications to existing) technologies to manage new forms of electronic information and, most importantly, promoting workforce innovation while protecting workplace records. 

Sounds like utopia, but there is time to chart a path. Companies need to be aware that a serious risk is brewing. Record managers need to become more new technology savvy. IT needs to become more business savvy. Product and services vendors need to "get" these relationships, before they market themselves as experts. 

March 20th, 2007

Phishing for Bloggers

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 10:53 am

Categories: Blogs, Phishing, Security, Social communities, Social media

Tags:

The proverbial "big fish that got away" has been found on Google's Blogger. Last week, Fortinet reported that cyber-criminals are using blogs for phishing expeditions — users that access such blogs are redirected to fraudulent sites. Phishing is the cyber-version of the classic "bait and switch." 

The word “phishing” comes from the analogy that Internet scammers are using e-mail bait to fish for passwords and financial data from the sea of Internet users. The term was coined in 1996 by hackers who were stealing America Online (AOL) accounts by scamming passwords from unsuspecting AOL users. Since hackers have a tendency to replacing “f” with “ph,” the term phishing was derived. The term has evolved over the years to include not only obtaining user account details but access to all personal and financial data.

January 26th, 2007

Lotus grabs onto social media, but can they convert the naysayers?

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 7:50 am

Categories: Social communities, Social media

Tags:

From its Iris Associates roots, Lotus has rallied the "connectiveness" banner — through the industry's latest labels: groupware, collaboration and, now, community. Lotusphere 2007 rallied around social computing. New entrants, Lotus Quickr (code-named Geneva) and Lotus Connections (code-named Ventura), renewed the rally.

Lotus Quickr is a "TeamSpace" (aka team room) in which member content is created. Check-in/check-out library services and connectors to other applications, significantly Microsoft Office, provide content transfer services between TeamSpace members.

In IBM-speak:

Lotus Quickr is designed to empower grassroots, bottoms-up adoption by letting users invite and encourage others to participate and to bring about change in the way the organization manages information and works together.

In Maurene-speak, Lotus Quickr is a collaborative content manager. Conceptually, content is created by Quickr TeamSpace  members. The members may use a variety of media to create the content – such as, a project plan using a Quickr template, transcripts of persistent chat sessions or Webcam .wav files. Members may edit the context of the content. Members may change  the format of the content — for example, turning a spreadsheet into a graph that is placed in a blog post. Content can be syndicated using RSS. 

If you want more information on Lotus Quickr, check out the 1,943 links (as of the time of this writing) on Technorati. 

I was not at Lotusphere, rather I'm blogging from New York. I missed the excitement, glitter and, most importantly, the vendor's freebies. However, being on the outside (of Lotusphere) looking in allows for crystal ball perspectives. 

Reasonably, Quickr includes a connector to Sametime. Think how useful it would be for Quickr-created content to be "availability" presence aware. If you use any instant messaging network, no doubt you think of presence as the online (or availability) status of your contact (aka buddy). Availability can also be assigned to content. For example, a project team member is preparing a report. You need to know immediately when it becomes available. The report is completed, and a trigger changes the report's online status from "unavailable" to "available."

Presence, similar to RSS, serves as a notification mechanism.

The other new entrant, Lotus Connections, is the cornerstone of Lotus's social networking venture. The Connections platform groups five social media components: Profiles, Communities, Blogs, Bookmarks (called Dogear) and Activities. Lotus is betting Connections on the "wisdom of crowds" theory — that is, the aggregation of information from all participants results in better decision making. 

In Lotus-speak:

Lotus Connections speeds growth and unlocks the collective knowledge base within an organization. Through an integrated set of social software components, Lotus Connections delivers critical new capabilities to users while helping enterprises become more productive.

In Maurene-speak, Lotus Connections is a "come as you are" party — hosted by aggregator toolsets. The goal is to port the successes of social media in the consumer space into the business space. If you want more information on Lotus Connections, check out the 2024 links (as of the time of this writing) on Technorati. 

In reference to Lotus Connections, my crystal ball tells me that content derived from Connections social media could also be captured into and treated as Quickr content. Social media tools merely take a different approach at gathering information.  

Lotus's progressive stance has been their strength and their weakness. Post-Lotusphere, the viability of Quickr and Connections will rest upon perception.

As Donna Bogatin points out in Social enterprise: Oxymoron or business logic?

Can software really break down organizational barriers to unlock “hidden” enterprise knowledge assets and foster intra-company sharing? OR  Is the organization destined– doomed–to reflect a “me first” modus operandi?

In addition to the "me first" mindset, in True Believers and Naysayers: Exploring the World of Social Media Karen Christensen looks at the social media world through the the eyes of evangelists and skeptics. The evangelists are:

… almost fanatical about (social media). … the tent-meeting atmosphere of a lot of conference keynotes … a future dominated by online interaction.

Where as, the skeptics are:

… the detractors. I'm thinking of the senior business development person who said, "Social what?" when I asked what her company … was doing to incorporate social media into its online platform.

Not everyone knows the difference between a wiki and a blog.

and why should they? Social media is widely considered to be "soft," which is another way of saying "where's the hard-dollar return on investment?" When an investment in social media can be tangibly shown to improve revenue, then the naysayers will take notice.