Looking to the Future

Is it really that time again? The year is drawing to a close and this'll probably be the last post I do for another week or so. I actually love doing this kind of stuff. It's a great way to channel your thoughts and why not eh?

So what's coming up in the future? We should definitely look to Google Open Social to see what happens there. Recommended reading? If you're into this stuff, there's Mashable if you want a brief general overview or if you want something a little bit more opinionated I recommended 3by9.

What's going to happen now? Who freaking knows? You can never fully predict the future. And even if you did somehow predict that future, the time you spent predicting it probably prevented you from taking advantage of that future, jinxing yourself out of opportunity. Have a great winter break.

New Media Videos Check it Out

Useful and entertaining.
http://www.geekentertainment.tv/2007/11/17/newteevee-live-old-media-and-new-talent/
http://www.geekentertainment.tv/2007/11/17/newteevee-live-pleats-and-a-long-tail/
http://www.geekentertainment.tv/2006/03/22/sxsw2006-now-that-its-1997/

People Want to Create UGC

Websites like Wikipedia and Yelp don't create content for themselves. People take the time out of their workday/life to post reviews/articles without receiving any pay.

So why do it? People are passionate about the subject that they write about. That is for sure, there were a couple of articles I read about this way back and the author came to the conclusion that bloggers/reviewers did it because they were intrinsically motivated.

Intrinsic motivation literally means that you are doing something for the "right" reason. Of course it is more complicated then that but if you think about it, a person who is writing not for a paycheck but for himself will be able to write more freely.

There's a saying in writing that you should write for yourself. Go into an endeavor trying to predict what your audience wants and the quality of the piece goes down.

Blogs Are the New First Impression

Joshua Porter, wrote a stimulating post on his blog about blogs being the new Resume. I completely agree with his post. And I do think that people in the tech industry would be foolish not to start their own blog. Let's face it, employers will probably try to Google your name so you might as well have something to show for it.

A well developed blog can encapsulate the personality of a person. Integrated Flickr photos, delicious links and Last.fm tracks can show a lot about a person. In my case I have a creative banner plus an informative/unique about page that will give the potential employer an impression of what I'm like.

Writing styles can be picked apart and analyzed, delicious link can be compare and people can be pretty judgmental when it comes to music. So yes in a way your blog can serve as a comprehensive first impression to a person who's never met you.

The YouTube Effect: Creating the Means

One of the cool things about making website is that once you actually create a super awesome mechanism, the creators of that website loose the ability to make major change.

Website creators need to create websites that almost anyone can find useful. And as much as the creators would want to influence the tastes of the users, chances are that they won't. I mean who listens to the Amazon.com editor recommendations anyway?

The YouTube Effect refers to the idea that anyone in the world can create a video about a politician/political issue and get a potential audience thanks to the power of the web. Now chances are that you or I will never have anything funny enough nor important enough to make it past the 500 page view mark but YouTube is there waiting.

P.S. the article that speaks of the "Next Cultural Revolution". Wasn't original Cultural Revolution the one where children under the direction of Mao beat and tortured their teachers. Sickening. I hope the Internet doesn't do something similar...

Skill vs. Mojo: How Technology is Making the Job Market More Competitive

There are a number of articles on the Six Degrees website that talk about the future of online networking and whatnot. Some of the articles are cautious and question the value in online networking when applying to a job.

When wizard Draco Malfoy was set to take his job examination, he said this: "It's not what you know, it's who you know." Surprisingly he is not far from the truth, or rather that technology not magic is making it easier for employers to asses and judge potential employees.

Picture this, you apply for a position for a new company, it can even be an internet based company. Fine, you send in your resume, link to your blog and friend him on facebook.

What do employers do with that information? They judge you. If on your blog you complain about life or use bad grammar, your employer might think "man this guy is going to be a real downer and he uses bad grammar." But is it wise for an employer to base such decision off of "fun" rather than skill?

My answer is that: they can now. In the olden days, people weren't as smart, for gods sake look how fast I can order shoes online. So you have a ton of educated people ready to pounce the job market and then you have the Internet.

In the olden days if you wanted a PHP/Assembler developer you would use the people you could get a hold of in the area and the person you found was probably the person you use, because Assembler is a hard language to learn and the chances of someone knowing both PHP and Assembler were pretty rare.

In today's world a potential employer can, look someone up on facebook then pick and choose between multiple candidates. He will send out interview requests to the person he likes the most. Because there are multiple people with the same skill level Technology makes the job market more competitive, it really then becomes who you know and also if that person likes you.

Maybe Draco Malfoy was right?

Update: Whoops this is a good article that adds to my post.

Small Creative Teams Equal Greater Collaberation in Basecamp

Don't try to get your 100 person company to switch to Basecamp at the drop of a hat but if you are lucky enough to own a small business then Basecamp might be the perfect product for you. Collaboration is good for small independent teams like this but not everyone has the luxury to work in an environment where in which employees have a great deal of creative control.

If you look at the Basecamp customer success videos on the Basecamp website you will see that all of their showcased customers are someway involved with the creative end of things.

• R.Bird is a branding company.
• Elsewares sells and makes creative products.
  
• NYSE Transaction Tools are created by software developers.
• and the list could go on.

The tough thing here is that I can see tool like Basecamp being very ineffective when it comes to larger organizations that aren't necessarily involved with the creativity business.

Work for an IT department and I suspect that Basecamp would be an awful way to manage helpdesk requests because management has a product that is more effective at doing the job for a larger group of employees.

Relationships within a large corporation are also different. Small independent companies have less corporate hierarchy while large companies do. Yes, Basecamp does allow for hierarchical restrictions but more often than not a piece of software does not change the fact that large companies like to restrict information internally and small companies are less likely to do that.

If you have your own business, more power to you but if you work for a large company the chances of you needing Basecamp are probably less so. What do you guys think? Does any of you have any experience with these collaboration tools cause I know I don't.

Online Fame: Reputation as a Motivating Factor

The admiration or even hatred of celebrity status is what drives people to invest their time, money and mindshare. In real life, celebrities influence us into buying, cloths, support political causes or even influence our lifestyle choices.


Robert Scoble and Shel Israel authors of Naked Conversations. Don't ask me how I found it.

In the online world, reputation has a habit of pushing a business forward. Communities like digg.com were pushed forward by former TV host Kevin Rose, colossus business failures like Seth Godin's Squidoo, or Mike Arrington's Edgeio were all given ampule amounts of leeway thanks to the creators reputation.

I personally follow an online community called 9rules simply because I think the founder has a great sense of humor and is a real stud but how does that relate to the rest of my online activities? It probably doesn't affect my buying habits nor does the profile on 9rules transfer over to site's like Amazon.com or Zappos. And while I don't invest any money into the business, I do invest a significant amount of time and mindshare.

So maybe there is value to online web celebs and the businesses that they run. I think when we look at a website like digg.com we not only look at the stories but we also look at the users/leaders involved and we want it to succeed. Digg a story on digg, and visit an article that talks about Kevin Rose and you're already helping him make his dollars.

I think that there is a valid business in supporting the chase of success. The Internet is such an effective/cheap tool for distribution that a single charismatic person could probably create his/her own successful website and in some cases a business. Not everyone would have to support him nor like him. Even the controversy surrounding a person could be enough to fuel the publicity and thus sustain attention around that person's product/business/service...just like the celebrities of old.

Sidenote: There's a really good podcast interview that might give you a better perspective on things. The internet is diverse and sometimes hard to understand. Click through and listen to the mp3.

Also sorry for the late post. The weekends are intense.

Direct Access, The Hybrid Between Journalism and PR

When a company starts a blog, that business takes on inherent risks. In the case of GM's Fast Lane blog, was meant to replace coverage lost when GM pulled advertising from the LA Times. The reason? Because, there was no specific reason but Lutz (a GM executive) criticized the media for unbalanced and inaccurate reporting.

Blogs according to Lutz are great because they "can be...an equalizing factor." Basically what he is saying is that a blog can allow a company to control what types of information flows in an out of the company.

And if you think about it, he's absolutely right. Blogs can potentially compete with newspapers due to the fact that they can release information faster than any reporter. So in a sense you have the corporate blog, defeating the slightly out of control but nonetheless important watchdog and companies can instead use their blogs as a sort of hybrid of press PR and press coverage. And if the company pulls away money from advertising or PR (strangely enough PR is a huge part of getting press coverage), then it's a win for the company and a loss for the newsmedia.

Second Life: The Legitimization of Online Activity

There is nothing revolutionary about Second Life. The technology to build such a system has existed for a while now, the concept of an online market place for fake goods has existed since the early days of 2000 and the people who would frequent these places has always existed. Gaia Online is a perfect example of such a phenomena.

Communities like Second Life are unique in the sense that they are far from private. The users of Second Life are not embarrassed or quiet about the fact that they participate in a fake online world. What has changed and can this mean that online communities can have a legitimate use for business?

There was an article a while back asking if World of Warcraft was the new golf (aka a place for businessmen to interact and strike deals) for web startups. And so we have the same situation here with Second Life. Is it a viable business solution? The people in charge of web/technology startups are the mostly likely to participate in these communities so I would have to say yes.

Word of Mouth Marketing Limitations

A company doesn't need to have a large advertising firm to "sell" a product to a specialized demographic of people. Software is used by people who use computers a lot. And people who use the computer a lot frequent areas of the internet that are essential for mass mouth marketing campaigns.

Webmasters or regulars in area were primarily responsible for the extravagant growth of programs used in the book. Firefox, ICQ and Skype , if you read into the history, were all valuable tools for webmasters thus motivating them to promote the product through their websites.

The book Naked Conversations talks about passion and motivation as a determining factor when promoting a word of mouth software. Webmasters who ran smaller enthusiast sites on the web were frustrated with the Microsoft browser because it hindered them from building their own sites without purchasing expensive Microsoft Software.

Because of this frustration, webmasters built their sites around the new browser firefox and promoted the software on their sites. Like this one.



Web regulars visited their favorite community sites and upgraded their browsers accordingly. But because Firefox only initially appealed to the webmaster demographic, the browser was adopted by a closed community of people.

Several years later, most students at this University did not hear of Firefox until their IT department encouraged them to make the upgrade. Cross community fertilization is this case, is the limiting factor to mass adoption of a product.

Joe Khedouri

Check out Joe's blog. I highly recommend it. And Mike's blog is not too shabby. Read every single word.

Will All Companies Adopt Blogs in the Same Way?

Employees at technical corporations, like Microsoft, were the first to adopt blogging practices. Many years later, web companies like Technorati have blogs and in recent times, news corporations like the NY Times have allow column like blogs to roam out there in the wild.

The problem with corporations and weblogs is that the term weblog is very vague and while corporations would do to follow the rules of conduct, (Being polite, responding to comments and being honest.) that does not mean that all corporations will use blogs to the same end.

In Robert Scoble's/Shel Israel's book, Naked Coversation, the authors postulate that blogs will be used in the future by corporations to enter conversations with their conversation as a way of extending PR. In the example of Microsoft's Channel 9 weblog was used as a genuine tool to communicate with experts in the field. (If you watch the videos and posts, it's pretty technical stuff.)

But let's look at the Comedy Central Insider Blog for the Sarah Silverman Program and we can soon see that the style of blogging is very different from that of a blogger like Scoble and his camera.

The blogs main purpose isn't to enter a conversation with customers but rather to promote future shows and provide bonus materials to the viewer. I also suspect that such sites are used to provoke/attract an audience. Users can make comments and link to blog content but the Sarah Silverman doesn't even appear in the comments. (Probably a smart P.R. move.)

The NY Times has a whole slew of column blogs like this one, the Screen and Arts blog by Virginia Heffernan. The blog doesn't represent the company but rather serves as a way to increase traffic and attract reader attention. More commenting means more user interaction and more hits. The blog doesn't in any way resemble Microsoft's Channel 9 nor Comedy Centrals Silverman (hilarious comic btw) blog.

• Microsoft (Control public image, put a human face on a hugely successful company.)
• Comedy Central (Promote content, provide fan extras, invite negative comments. Stir up the pot. Aka be provocative.)
• NY Times (Use comments in blogs to better engage reader, blog as a source of revenue, not used as a form of PR in any way.)
  

Not all corporate blog scenarios are like Microsoft and I doubt that all companies will react to constructive criticism in the same way. Nor do companies use blogs to the same objective.

A Network of Mistrust: Decision Makers Interact With Peers But Trust Themselves

Karen Stephenson, in a lecture for IT Conversations, refers to a network as a group of people who she can trust enough to talk about her "crazy" ideas that she came up with in the shower. Groups of people who think, talk and walk the same.




[source - Creating Passionate Users Blog]

All inclusive groups, according to Kathy Sierra, are responsible for poor decision making when the group does not value an individual's point of view. Social networks aka cliques are different and do not necessarily responsible for actual decision making.

Let's use Karen's shower idea as an example. When she walks out of that shower, her mind is made up and only she can see her own thoughts. Thinking is a private affair. Another thing to consider is that social cliques are rarely based on hierarchy so if a person in the group disagrees, that member will rarely force a compromise.

When Karen does eventually bring her idea to the All Inclusive Table (aka department meeting) people who are part of this decision making process have the power and the will to force a compromise or if the idea is completely successful, actually implement the plan.

So you see in this situation, a social network did nothing to affect the outcome of the greater plan. It was probably entertaining. What do you think? Are social networks insignificant when it comes to decision making.

The Accademic Paper on The Six Myths on Information Networks

The focus of the two readings, myths and people by Robert Cross, Nitin Nohria, Andrew Parker and Andrew Parker focused mainly on the social aspects surrounding the workplace. Team building, the distribution of information, social patterns and how to properly identify what works and what doesn't work.

The paper took a very academic approach to the subject but was nonetheless useful. What however does surprise me is that the this sort of information is the sort of thing that you find out on your own. Or rather that the information gathered in this study is something that anyone, who runs any sort of competitive organization, would gather.

Let me give you an example. In the business social structure, there are people called "central people". Okay so we don't always call them that but that is the name that was given to them by the people in this study.

These are people who are key decision makers in any social business setting. The person who can make these critical decisions is usually in that position because he or she has built important relationships with other people in other departments.

However, since that person is critical for decision making and contacts, if you give that person unnecessary contact and busywork, then the decision making end of the work process is bottlenecked.

Anyway, point being that this is a no brainier if you've worked in a situation like this. Social connections are very essential in getting information, tips because frankly you trust them more. People work like this and the smart adept people catch on to this stuff and it makes them successful businesspeople.

The Academia Confirmation and Businesses are Already One Step Ahead:

Business is like real life. If you don't keep up with the trend you tend not to be competitive. In fact this paper: "The Six Myths on Information Networks" is probably designed to up to speed people in the business world who did not have the keen insight to discover these business trends earlier. People in academic circles research successful firms and then write about them while the hot businesses are already on to the newest next thing.

I think I once heard it referred to as corporate culture and it is surprisingly similar to regular popular culture. I have someone I know who works for Corporate Hollister and he says that they make him do a lot of weird things like wear certain cloths when they go to work in the office.

I'm not a marketing/PR major but apparently it has something to do with promoting your own brand within the corporate structure. Weird? Outlandish? Maybe but it may be the next great thing that businesses at the bottom struggle to adapt to and someone in the academic world will have to write a piece entitled: "Six Myths on Promoting From Within".

Welcome to my Blog

Hello world, my name is Michael. I am a student from American University in the ITEC 333 Social Networking and Business class. I enjoy long walks on the beach because I grew up in Hawaii and my favorite thing about AU is the people, the food and the classes.