Webify.Us

I’ve setup my accounts on a number of social networking sites. I’m adding friends and slowly building up my networks. But, I have not yet commented here on the likes of MySpace or Facebook for business use.

Tonight, thanks to Robert Scoble’s Link Blog, I found an interesting post on how Cisco is using Facebook. Check out “Cisco System Is Using Facebook To Let Folks Get to Know Their Top Employees Better” - by Garrett Smith.

My last several posts have all been about Twitter. It is certain there will be more in the future. But, let’s move on for now. We have a lot of technology and tools to cover. I was just contemplating what to cover next, when I came across a tweet from master blogger Robert Scoble. In today’s post “Steve Ballmer still doesn’t understand social networking,“ Robert discusses Microsoft’s apparent disregard for social trends, specifically pertaining to social networking in this case.

Read through Robert’s post and the comments that others have left, and you’ll understand why there will not likely be many Microsoft products reviewed on this site (unless they release a product that is open and relevant). My take is that Microsoft tends to dismiss the relevance of anything they can’t make proprietary. So here is why Steve Ballmer doesn’t ‘choose’ to see the relevance of Web 2.0:

1) Web 2.0 is about collaboration.
2) Collaboration is reliant upon interoperability.
3) Proprietary and Interoperable are antonyms

Over the next few years, Microsoft will be trying to force themselves upon the business communications market. Business communications are becoming more collaborative thanks to Web 2.0 technologies. If they take a proprietary approach, their business communications customers will be taking a step backward. Industry standards are a good thing. Standards mean interoperability. I have yet to see any business value in walking backwards.

So, there are some skeptics out there. I have received comments questioning how Twitter could really be used for any legitimate business purpose.

Let’s take another shot at this. If you take look at the Public Timeline, you’ll see plenty of messages with no apparent value at all, and others with some potential social value. The business value doesn’t come from sending messages like “at home”, or “is drinking coffee”.

Now, think about messages that have real value to a group. Here are a couple of examples that I have thought of:

1) A teacher sending out an assignment. Students would just need to “follow” the instructor to receive the tweets. The fact that PARENTS could also follow the instructor could add some value.

2) Any business with a mobile collaborative workforce. Think about the potential value of the following messages being delivered to any number of mobile employees, all at once:

“conference call at 7:30 am”
“who has the crimp-tool?”
“who’s the contact at XYZ Co.?”

Remember this is one-to-many communications. These messages could literally go to thousands of followers with one quick tweet. Any of the followers could reply from their cellular phone, IM, web browser, or desktop widget.

I have also seen Twitter effectively used as a mini blog. Whatever a blogger might want to say, in 140 characters or less, can be entered on the spot, as it comes to mind, right from their cell phone. OK, so the push-back here might be that it’s all text, and ONLY 140 characters. Bloggers like to reference other sites, blogs, or images. Well, that’s fine, just include a link to the supporting material in the tweet.

Let’s show the skeptics the light. If you have an idea for how a business might use Twitter, please submit a “comment”.

The “Leave a comment” link is at the bottom of every entry on Webify.Us. Your comments are always welcome!

It just occurred to me what Twitter reminds me of. I’ve been a voice communications guy for more than 24 years. So, comparing Twitter to an equivalent traditional voice solution… Twitter is a Hoot-n-Holler system. Twitter does use text rather than voice, but is available to anyone, is more scaleable than typical hoot-n-holler, and allows you to receive the message via web interface, instant messaging, and SMS text messaging. How powerful is that?

Business Relevance…
Many organizations are using instant messaging as a communication tool today. It is faster and more conversational than email. With Twitter’s one-to-many capabilities, it adds an additional dimension to this common form of digital communication.

There is no cost for using Twitter. Privacy and direct messaging are standard features. This tool could definitely be used in many business environments.

Tonight I found a nice little article that does a great job of explaining the whole point of Twitter. It’s a quick and informative read, for those of you that ‘don’t get it’.

Here’s the link:
Twitter for business, defined for those who don’t get it

-Enjoy

Well here it is, my first video demonstration. I really like Delicious. Hopefully, this will give you an idea of the power of this tool, and get you thinking about the collaborative opportunities it can open up for you and your team.

I am a little disappointed in the finished quality of the video. The screen capture utility that I used produced crisp text. But, after finalization and upload to the video sharing site, the quality has definitely degraded. If any of you have suggestions for software that will produce a quality screen capture based demo, PLEASE post a comment to this article.

I have registered accounts on a few more sites.

WebEx
Bloglines
Wikipedia
Newsvine
StumbleUpon
Backflip
Wink
Twitter
Jaiku

At the time of this writing, it’s halftime in the USC vs. NU football game. I just finished setting up my account on Jaiku. Wouldn’t you know it, the first post I see is “Fight On, Trojans!!.” Needless to say, I had to leave a comment.
(Go Big Red!!!)

Streamy looks like a useful site. This evening I requested an invitation to their private beta that is now underway. I’ll let you know what happens.

Here is a YouTube video of the site’s functionality:

Del.icio.us is the first of the new tools that I have really started to use. This thing is awesome. Imagine being able to get to all of your personal bookmarks…from any machine on the Internet. Imagine being able to share your bookmarks with others.

A Del.icio.us account provides you with a personal URL to get to your bookmarks. That’s cool, but the real power comes from being able to TAG those bookmarks with whatever keywords are relevant. The individual TAGs can then be appended to your URL, like sub-directories, to group related bookmarks.

Business Relevance? Sharing/Collaboration. This is a great way to share a group of related links (bookmarks) with a team. The team could be provided with a URL for all shared links. The end of the URL could be the team name (the TAG). As new websites or documents (any media with a URL) need to be shared with the group, simply TAG them with the name of the team. Everyone on the team is using the same URL. So, everyone is sure to be using the same version of all documents.

This verbiage may not be the easiest to follow. I think this would be a good topic for a video demonstration. …stay tuned for that Planned Project!

I will be examining many different WEB 2.0 enabled tools as we proceed, always looking for some form of business relevance. Of course, as I use these tools, I’ll be posting my findings on this site. Here are the sites that I have established accounts for thus far:

YouTube
Second Life
facebook
MySpace
Technorati
Digg
Mojiti
Del.icio.us
flickr
LittleWiki
LinkedIn

I will be maintaining my blog here at Webify.Us. If you would like to start your own blog, you might try Blogger or WordPress.

There is a ton of information out there that attempts to describe the concept of WEB 2.0. This video has been around for some time. But, for those that have had little or no exposure to the term, I think it does a very good job of illustrating the progression of the Web, from a fairly static medium, to the dynamic and highly collaborative tool that it has become today. This collaboration by the users of the Web is a key component of WEB 2.0. Enjoy…