Social Networking Archives - Page 5 of 18

Wiki: the Beauty & the Beast. Usability & Functionality (Event)

Posted on September 25, 2007 ·

Silicon Valley Web Builder will host a wiki-focused event tomorrow, Wednesday. While their first wiki event almost a year ago with JotSpot, Socialtext , Atlassian and WetPaint was more introductory, this time the focus will be on – surprise! – the contrast or harmony of Beauty- i.e. attractive UI, vs. the Beast – functional robustness.

The Moderator for tomorrow is Luke Wroblewski, Yahoo’s design guru who has authored a book on Web interface design principles titled “Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability” and is working on thee next one: “Web Form Design Best Practices”.

The Panelists are:

Kevin Flaherty of Wetpaint
Ryan Lukehart of BrainKeeper
Aaron Fulkerson of Mindtouch
Raju Vegesna of Zoho
Joshua Wold of Atlassian

It’s definitely an interesting mix. Playing a bit with the metaphor, I’d say market leader Atlassian is known as the “beast”: whatever enterprise wiki functionality you can think of, their Confluence will likely have it.

Wetpaint got popular for the “beauty” – that’s why I called it the wiki-less wiki. It’s a most user-friendly self-publishing tool that allows anyone to create a site and transform it into an online community. Incidentally, the SV Web Builder site is built on Wetpaint.

Brainkeeper, a user-friendly enterprise wiki startup took me by surprise when they launched in January. Totally out of left field, they aim to be the beast like Confluence and the beauty like Wetpaint, with twists not seen in wikis, like workflow. I’m really looking forward to seeing how far they’ve got since launch.

“MindTouch is transforming the Wiki from the Web’s best collaborative authoring tool into an open source service platform with a Wiki heart. Their Deki Wiki Hayes release is perhaps the most extendable Wiki tool available today.” I had to steal that line from Read/WriteWeb, I couldn’t have said it any bettr – oh, and congrat’s on reaching the 100,000 user mark!

Zoho is not a pure-play wiki player. Their wiki is just a part of a productivity/collaboration suite, and it shows. Beauty? The UI needs improvement, but this is the only wiki with not just simple a WYSIWYG editor, but a full word processor that writes true html, not wiki syntax. Beast? I think the emphasis here will not be on the standalone product, but how well it integrates with other Zoho offerings, supporting a flow-oriented world that matches how we think.

It will no doubt be an interesting event, so please check out the site details, and remember, admission is free if you register online, but $10 at the door. See you tomorrow.

Filed Under: Bay Area, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, Social Networking, Startups · Tagged: atlassian, brainkeeper, confluence, deki wiki, design, mindtouch, silicon valley web builder, Social Networking, svwb, usabiility, wetpaint, wiki, wikis, zoho

How Apple Sc****d their Most Loyal Customer

Posted on September 5, 2007 ·

Today was supposed to be Office 2.0 day, with the conference starting tomorrow, pre-conference reception tonight, and the Unconference today. Yet Apple decided to steal the day, and with the flurry of announcement it’s hard to find anything but Apple news on TechMeme. But that’s not the worst.

This years Office 2.0 conference will be an Apple Lovers’s geek-feast. I guess the official version is focusing on mobility, proving that the iPhone is business-ready. Either way, this year all conference attendees receive an iPhone which will be actively used throughout the 2-day event. It’s hardly a gift, considering that the individual registration fee tripled from last year, but it doesn’t change the fact: we’re talking about 500 iPhones.

Conference-organizer Ismael Ghalimi did not receive a special deal from Apple, in fact he was not even allowed to buy the gadgets in batch, he had to do it one-by-one, which created its own logistical nightmare. The ‘default’ was the 4G model, which is now being discontinued, but attendees could pay an extra $100 to receive the 8G model – which today just saw its price dropped from $599 to $399. Of course this is great news for consumers, but I wonder what attendees will think. Will they ask for refunds?

Oh, before I forget, Ismael also purchased 60 iMacs (!) as demo units for the conference. It’s hard to find a more loyal fan/customer – yet today he may feel somewhat inconvenienced (if he even had time to follow the news) by Apple.

Some of the (many) post on the subject: Techdirt, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Apple, Computerworld, dslreports.com, Epicenter, Ars Technica, WebProNews, Digital Noise, IP Democracy, Between the Lines, Guardian Unlimited, Macworld, bub.blicio.us, Digital Daily, Live Coverage …, MacRumors, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, The Utility Belt, BloggingStocks, jkOnTheRun, Techomical, Channel 9, and of course Fake Steve himself.

Update (9/7): Ismael strikes back.

Filed Under: Collaboration, Personal Productivity, Social Networking, Technology · Tagged: Apple, imac, iPhone, ipod, o20con, office 2.0 conference, Office20con

Enterprise 3.0: Where Is It Headed? – Interesting Panel with the Wrong Title

Posted on August 13, 2007 ·

I’m not a big fan of the whole 2.0 /3.0 theme, but I have to accept the fact that Web 2.0 and related concepts have become commonplace, everyday terms that today we’re taking for granted. Enterprise 2.0, on the other hand is far more debated. Definitions range from loosely saying “Web 2.0 tools in the Enterprise” through Harvard Prof Andrew McAfee’s “Use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers” to MR Rangaswami’s much broader “ synergy of a new set of technologies , development models and delivery methods that are used to develop business software and deliver it to users.” Then we have a set of attempts to simply “get to the point”, without long academic debate, like lightweight software, or Meet Charlie, a simple yet effective slideshow that personalizes the story.

One thing there is agreement about is that there is no agreement – in terms of a definition, that is… but that does not prevent us from attending conferences like Enterprise 2.0 or Office 2.0, and more importantly, businesses from embracing Enterprise 2.0 to varying degrees. It is happening, whether we have a “final” definition or not.

However, I really don’t think we’re ready for Enterprise 3.0 – not now, not ever. There are quite a few articles on the subject, but they all come from the same author, Sramana Mitra (except for two old ZDNet articles quoting Shai Agassi and JP Rangaswami). Sramana has certainly “cornered” the market – except there really is no “market” if she’s the only one using the term. Her definition: Enterprise 3.0 = SaaS + EE. What’s EE? Extended Enterprise:

The modern enterprise is no longer one, monolithic organization. Customers, Partners, Suppliers, Outsourcers, Distributors, Resellers, … all kinds of entities extend and expand the boundaries of the enterprise, and make “collaboration” and “sharing” important.

Let’s take some examples. The Salesforce needs to share leads with distributors and resellers. The Product Design team needs to share CAD files with parts suppliers. Customers and Vendors need to share workspace often. Consultants, Contractors, Outsourcers often need to seamlessly participate in the workflow of a project, share files, upload information. All this, across a secure, seamlessly authenticated system.

Sounds familiar? Of course, back in the 90’s this is what we called (Extended) Supply Chain. I’m not sure we need to create another label just yet. But if and when something is so significant that it deserves a new name, let’s get a bit more creative … I’m with fellow Enterprise Irregular Thomas Otter, who humorously ranted:

The car isn’t called horse 2.0.

The lightbulb isn’t called candle 2.0

Fax (Facsimile) isn’t called letter 2.0

If we are so innovative in the 21st century, the least we can do is to think of some new terms that inspire. Think ROBOT, Television, Velcro, Radio, even scuba (Self-Contained Underwater-Breathing Apparatus) … If this stuff is really that innovative then it deserves a proper word.

Back to Sramana and “Enterprise 3.0”: next week she will be moderating a panel discussion of the MIT Club of Northern California, with the ambitious title: Enterprise 3.0: Where Is It Headed?. Excerpt from the event description:

Collaboration, wikis, blogs and social networking are new tools igniting the enterprise market. Service based models are emerging as alternates to desktop software and enterprise servers. In March 2007, Cisco acquired WebEx for $3.2 billion, stepping in with a splash in the enterprise collaboration space. Meanwhile, Google has assembled a whole suite of word processing, presentation, and spreadsheet tools and just acquired Postini, an email management company. Microsoft has been adding collaboration and knowledge management capabilities to its Windows Platform and just announced plans to offer Web-based versions of its applications. Then, there are exciting startups that are offering alternatives.

This panel will explore the impact of Web 2.0 on the prosumer i.e. the individual user in the enterprise and the evolution and integration of office tools, communication and collaboration technologies.

Sounds vintage Enterprise 2.0, if you ask me. That said, I think it’s an exciting subject, and they will certainly have a first-rate panel:

Tom Cole, General Partner, Trinity Ventures
Cliff Reeves, GM, Emerging Business Unit Team, Microsoft
Jonathan Rochelle, Product Manager, Google Docs and Spreadsheets
~~Sridhar Vembu, Founder, CEO, Zoho / Adventnet~~ last minute change: the event site now lists Tim Harvey, VP Planning, Webex, Cisco Systems instead of Sridhar Vembu.

Whatever we call it, I plan to be there. If you are reading this blog, chances are you’re also interested in these subjects, so if you happen to be in the Bay Area Wednesday evening, perhaps I’ll see you there. Here’s the registration page. (Warning: the form is way too long, asking for way too much information – vintage 1.0 style)

Additional reading: Open Gardens, Portals and KM, Anne Zelenka, Luis Suarez, the FASTForward Blog, Read/WriteWeb, Chris Pirillo, Fake Steve Jobs , just to name a few…

Update (8/21): as much as I hate this 2.0-3.0 labeling, I like Don Dodge’s new formula: Web 2.0 = web app + 2 founders + 0 revenue

Filed Under: Bay Area, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, SaaS, Social Networking · Tagged: Collaboration, emergent enterprise, enterprise 2.0, enterprise 3.0, Extended Enterprise, Google, microsoft, MIT, MIT Club, SaaS, Social Networking, Social Software, Supply Chain, web 2.0, web 3.0, zoho

Digging Into What it Takes to get Dugg up to the Digg Homepage

Posted on August 7, 2007 ·

(I could not stuff that title with more digg & dugg…). Anyway, Clickalite did some digging into how often the Technorati 100 gets dugg up to the Digg homepage. 92 of the Technorati 100 are English-language blogs, and 76 of them made it to the homepage (you know, dugg up on Digg). The leader of the pack , Ars Technica made it a whopping 1350 times! TechCrunch only got dugg up 533 times, and Mike has said before he only gets about 10% of his traffic from Digg – no wonder, with over half a million subscribers.

Well, I’m just a little rookie blogger compared to Mike, but even I’ve made it into the Top 100, and I did not need the “digg effect” – only made it to the home page about 3 times, if memory serves me well.

In fact, I am #1 on Technorati! But wait… is was Aaron, Brownbaron, Sizlopedia, Matt, Shaun, Eclectic Life, Grokdotcom,* and a number other blogs I’ve never heard of before. Hm… quite a few to share my throne with. Turns out this Saturday was “Everybody No 1 on Technorati Day”. Good for Clickalite not having done his (manual) research on Saturday….

Btw, there was more trouble with T’rati that day. If you look at the pic here, I seem to have 0 (yes, zero) blog reactions to my blog. Now, I know my “authority” has been in a free-fall (lost about 30% so far) since moving to WordPress recently, but how did I make it to even 484 with 0 links?

Oh, well… still waiting for that White Knight.

Related posts: Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim and CenterNetworks

* Groktodcom on the messed up Technorati authority:

If rank meant everything, every blogger who’s had even one link documented by Technorati could rejoice more than they already are after being accidentally ranked #1 today — thanks to a glitch. f rank meant everything, you wouldn’t have to create fresh, original content. If rank meant everything, blogs wouldn’t be worth reading. Everyone would be baiting links (like I am). Like money, when rank means everything, it means nothing. Do blog readers really care about rank? 😉

Tags: technorati authority, technorati, technorati 100, digg, digging, dugg, social networking, social bookmarking

Filed Under: Blogging, Humor, Social Networking ·

The Wikipedia Enterprise 2.0 Debate – Again

Posted on August 3, 2007 ·

If you’re in business, have some interest in collaboration, software, workplace dynamics, it’s hard to imagine you haven’t heard the term Enterprise 2.0. Especially so after the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston.

Quite a difference from last year, when the term was intensely debated and the very existence of the relevant Wikipedia entry questioned. I learned a lot about the workings of Wikipedia, and chronicled the debate, but in the end concluded that it was irrelevant:

“Enterprise 2.0 as a term my be relatively knew, but it’s not some theoretical concept a bored professor is trying to sell to the world. It’s disruptive change, a confluence of technological, social and business changes in how corporations conduct business using new IT tools. No Wikipedia gatekeepers can prevent this seismic shift. Let’s move on, do our work, and in less than 6 months Enterprise 2.0 will find its way back to Wikipedia.”

And it did. The Wikipedia entry on Enterprise 2.0 was allowed to stay. Of course as Enterprise 2.0 became “fashionable”, new players claimed ownership, the entry barely resembled the original, and at some point Harvard Professor Andrew McAfee, whose April 2006 article in the MIT Sloan Management Review started it all was relegated to just a footnote. (He probably cared more about practical adoption in business then about turf-wars.). But none of these changes are comparable to what just happened.

Ironically, not long after the publication of a HBS Case Study on Wikipedia (largely based on the debate-experience), a Wikipedia administrator heavily edited the Enterprise 2.0 entry – in fact he almost completely wiped it out and rewrote it. Here are Professor McAfee’s notes on the change, and the key part of the edited article:

“Enterprise 2.0 is a term used at least since 2001 to describe a second-generation approach to online knowledge within a business…

The term Enterprise 2.0 was coined in 2001 by Participate Systems, Inc. CEO Alan Warms^[5] and grew through its use in business and in industry conferences…

So supposedly Enterprise 2.0, which just in 2006 was not noteworthy or original enough to be mentioned in Wikipedia, has been used for half a decade. In that case, there sure is a lot of evidence – why didn’t Andy McAfee’s search on the joint terms “Alan Warms” and “Enterprise 2.0.” bring any meaningful results? Nowadays, “if it’s not on Google, it does not exist“…

Alan Warms’s company, Participate Systems no longer exists, having been acquired in 2004, but thanks to the Wayback Machine we can find some information on their products from several years between 2001 and 2004:

Participate Enterprise is a software solution that takes the collective expertise of your organization and puts it to work on every sales call.

Our software solution, Participate Enterprise 2.0, is built on an open architecture technology that provides our clients with unmatched community functionality that features the industry’s most robust question-and-answer natural language querying engine.

Participate Systems combines best-of-breed Self-Help, Expertise and Community management systems in one comprehensive collaboration platform, Participate Enterprise 3.

Hm… it sure looks like they had a software product named Participate Enterprise, which had subsequent releases, including 2 .. and 3, by the time they got acquired. Yes, they used the term, but not to describe a concept, which would belong in Wikipedia, rather as part of a product name. (I suspect if we look long enough, we might dig up a Microsoft/other vendor product that has an Enterprise version and has/had a release 2.0).

That said, I don’t know all the facts, and I may be wrong in my conclusion. However, what’s really disturbing here ins the process of how this Wikipedia admin got so dramatically changed by one single administrator. All the discussion, the references, the very concept of Enterprise 2.0 is gone – instead we have a history of facts somewhat related (?) to the term. 2006, the year of Enterprise 2.0 is gone – but perhaps that’s not so surprising, given that the Wikipedia admin who wiped it all out, only discovered Wikipedia in 2006, after the Enterprise 2.0 debate:

“I first encountered Wikipedia on the web when I was doing some research. Wikipedia seemed to come up first on my Google searches, so I decided to check it out. I first posted on October 12, 2006. By December 2006, I realized that Consensus and Assume Good Faith were behind Wikipedia’s success.”

Hm… single-handedly wiping out what dozens of experts edited does not exactly indicate respect for Consensus to me. I guess it does not matter, when you’re an administrator. Time to update the Harvard Case Study on Wikipedia.

Update (8/4): There’s a lively discussion going on in the Enterprise Irregulars group right now (and it’s 6am on Saturday!). We’re wondering how to properly fix the bungled Wikipedia entry. Jreferee’s handywork would normally amount to Vandalism, and vandalism is best dealt with by restoring the previous “correct” version, then editing from there. But when vandalism is committed by an Administrator, is it still vandalism?

Update #2 (8/4): Finally! A Wikipedia Admin with common sense . From the Enterprise 2.0 entry’s History record:

00:46, 5 August 2007 Ruud Koot (Talk | contribs) (11,391 bytes) (some of these product have a version 3.0 (and likely a version 1.0) as well. they have nothing to do with enterprise 2.0.)

00:56, 5 August 2007 Ruud Koot (Talk | contribs) (40 bytes) (this article is fatally flawed, restoring redirect to Enterprise social software) (undo)

The interesting but completely irrelevant blurb about software products that include the term “Enterprise” and a release number is gone, the Enterprise 2.0 entry is now redirected to Enterprise social software. I tend to think it would deserve its own entry, but let’s be real, it’s difficult to restore a vandalized entry, and this one is a lot closer to the subject matter than the previous version.

Update (8/23): “It’s over. The Deletionists won.” – says Nick Carr in the “Rise of the wikicrats“. A story worth reading… I’m not about to spoil it. Here’s just the conclusion:

Maybe the time has come for Wikipedia to amend its famous slogan. Maybe it should call itself “the encyclopedia that anyone can edit on the condition that said person meets the requirements laid out in Wikipedia Code 234.56, subsections A34-A58, A65, B7 (codicil 5674), and follows the procedures specified in Wikipedia Statutes 31 – 1007 as well as Secret Wikipedia Scroll SC72 (Wikipedia Decoder Ring required).”

Tags: wikipedia, enterprise 2.0, wikipedia debate, deletionists, inclusionists, harvard business school, hbs, harvard case study, wikipedia vandalism

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Social Networking ·

TechCrunch 9(00) at August Capital

Posted on July 29, 2007 ·

The wait is over: what was first dubbed as the Second Annual TechCrunch Meet-up at August Capital is now officially TechCrunch 9. If you attended TechCrunch 7 at August Capital last year, and are wondering what you may have missed… relax: # 8 was the New York Party – proof that there is entrepreneurial life outside Silicon Valley. (is there? )

When Mike Arrington published the participant list, I dropped it in a spreadsheet to get a quick count: it was 809! Considering that last year with 500 on the list we were 700 , I figured 1000 would be a safe bet.. and started to wonder if August Capital’s huge terrace is strong enough to hold 1000 people. Security was stronger than last year, so perhaps that explains why the final turnout was around 900. Here’s a snapshot of the TechCrunch 900, courtesy of Jeremiah Owyang.

I’ve made a strategic mistake: got “stuck” with some long-not-seen friends in a corner, and before I realized it, the party was already winding down. As I browse through the photos by Mike Arrington, Scott Beale, Jeremiah, Thomas Hawk, Dan Farber, Brian Solis and others, I’m surprised to see many familiar faces of friends I haven’t bumped into at the party.

I actually wonder if the best-informed “attendees” were those who were not even present. UStream.tv as well as competitor Kyte.tv broadcasted the event to the World, along with a chat room, so the total number was definitely in the thousands. Centernetwork’s Allen Stern liveblogged the party – from 2958 miles away, based on the Ustream.tv feed and chat room.

What a difference a year makes! Sarah Myers got thrown out last year as party-crasher; this year she was officially invited (hey I like the new hair-style) what’s more, if anyone is interested in not just the party details, but the (mostly) startups demo-ing their ware, there’s hardly a better summary than Sarah’s video:

Wow, that’s 16 companies in 2 minutes. Congrat’s to Sarah and the interviewees, almost all were concise, delivered the message. If I may give some advice, when you have 10 seconds, don’t waste it on phrases like “revolutionary product”. It may very well be, but it does not tell me what you do…

But I don’t want to be the judge – much rather have you, dear reader pick the best and worst pitch. Please do it in the poll below – you’ll need to scroll down to get the full list, and if you read this in your feed, you may have to click through.

Update (7/30): Please vote based on the video pitch above, not what you’ve seen at the party, if you were there.

Last, but not least, this was the first TechCrunch party where tickets were “sold” for a nominal fee of $10 – the proceeds were matched by TechCrunch and a total of $10,000 was donated to Kipp Bayview Academy towards the purchase of new computer equipment.

See you at TechCrunch 10

Update (7/30): I’ve just noticed a trend:

TechCrunch 3: approaching 300 participants

TechCrunch 5: 500

TechCrunch 7: 700

TechCrunch 9: 900

Tags: TechCrunch, TechCrunch Party, blogging, startups, entrepreneurship, Web 2.0, August Capital, techcrunch9, techcrunchaugust2007, zoho polls

Filed Under: Bay Area, Blogging, Social Networking, Startups, Technology · Tagged: TechCrunch Party

TechCrunch: from 5K to 500K

Posted on July 27, 2007 ·

My first TechCrunch party was in October 2005 – back than it was called the 3rd TechCrunch BBQ. The first two, which I had missed were (almost) impromptu backyard BBQ’s with a dozen or so entrepreneurs at Mike Arrington’s house. I’m not sure how I discovered these events, but it may have been Ethan’s blog, which led to a wiki with open signup. I started to monitor the wiki for the next one, and a month or so later signed up for the 3rd event.

The first parking spot I found was half a mile away from Mike’s Atherton house. Wow! This was no longer a cozy BBQ, the pace was cramped with about 200 people. Lots of food in the backyard, a keg that the geek squad could not force to produce beer, and lots of startup product demos inside. It was a great event – probably the last one right-sized for the house. The next one grew to about 300 people, the 5th, and the last at Mike’s place, the “Naked Party” was a crowd of 500. Oh, and Atherton police got smart, setting up a sobriety checkpoint just around the corner from TechCrunch HQ…

The Party is not all that grew… after the 3rd BBQ I wrote about what I considered phenomenal growth back then:

Mike Arrington started a blog in June with the mission of “ obsessively profiling and reviewing every newly launched web 2.0 business, product and service”. Since June, the blog has grown to close to 5,500 Feedburner readers, a Technorati rank of 566, and made it to the CNET Top 100 list.

Yes, that five thousand is not a typo, that really was the readership in October 2005. The next stop is at 50k, in May 2006 – 53,651 to be exact, as so famously called by Josh Kopelman. Fast forward to summer of 2007, and TechCrunch has 450K feedburner subscribers – well, at least last I looked at it. Until this morning, when I saw this:

Yes, TechCrunch has reached the half a million mark. Congratulations, Mike! That’s quite a milestone, and a reason to celebrate tonight at the TechCrunch Party hosted by August Capital.

Tags: TechCrunch, TechCrunch Party, blogging, startups, entrepreneurship, Web 2.0, August Capital, techcrunch9, techcrunchaugust2007