::.. Timing ..::

:: 2003/05/10 ::

AIM Me

I took away the "I'm Online" thingie, and simply put an "AIM Me" capability in the header above. I'm always on AIM -- on my PC or PDA -- so it seems easier.

:: Stowe Boyd 5/10/2003 08:17:38 AM [link] ::
:: ::

BlogThreads from BlogMatrix

Added BlogThread capabilities courtesy of the nice people at BlogMatrix. A very neat text or graphical way to follow the blog threads. Check it out.

:: Stowe Boyd 5/10/2003 08:16:21 AM [link] ::
:: ::

More on LinkedIn

Well, I have finally hit the 1000+ network mark at LinkedIn, a few days later than I predicted but still pretty fast, since it only launched, what, Wednesday?

A lot of interesting mutterings about the service, like at Joi Ito's blog, where the founder of the service, Reid Hoffman, has answered some of the questions about the service.

Here's some of my beefs, so far:

• This one I posted at Joi Ito's blog as a comment, and it's the biggest one:

  "My headache with all of these sites -- LinkedIn, Ryze, and so on -- is that you have to go "there" to make it all work. You need to enter in your contacts (the import from Outlook is helpful, I guess).
  
  What I would like to see is a system that infers and extends the networks that already exist in blogland -- like these comments, blogrolls, and so on -- based on stuff like FOAF. And it would then present you with your 'network' -- readers, commenters, and those you read and comment on.
  
  Its too much work to try to operate in all of these worlds, just like it is too hard to stay logged in to more than one public IM network."

  
  
• Pictures of faces: Kevin Marks recommends the best solution to the stark anonymity of the service that satisfies Reid's concerns about LinkedIn become a dating meatmarket, which is to provide a small face shot once contact has been made or a request has been accepted.
  
• Marc Canter weighs in on the closed nature of the network, arguing that we need a trusted networking capability, but it needs to be linked in (cute, huh?) with other things, not a closed garden.
  
• Francois pointed out that its a pain that the system doen't let you create hyperlinks to other material -- blogs, websites, etc. Although I don't mind having to cut and paste a bio, not being able to thread to other contexts is limiting.
  

The folks at the Corante many-to-many blog have been fiddling with LinkedIn, and Clay Shirky and Ross Mayfeild are betting dinner on who will be the most connected person in the network, and why. A social software deathmatch.

Over at Mamamusings there is a largely negative reception to the whole phenom.

My hope is that LinkedIn, or someone else, will provide a service that does allow me to build and maintain a network of 'equiantances' (Gary Turner's term) and be able to work that network in productive but acceptable ways. I have found the 'request' system on LinkedIn workable, but the controls are too coarse grained -- I need more control about what or why I am trying to contact someone -- a person specifically -- or a set of people. For example, I may be trying to conduct research on a topic, and looking to form an ad hoc panel of experts on a topic. Where's the measure of expertise? Where are the mechanisms for judging whose opinion I should value? The entire social feedback mechanism (a la slashdot Karma or Doctorow's whuffie) is missing. The only social rating is whether people accept your invitation to network, and the gross number of contacts you have, which is just a measure of gregariousness, not value.

Its too much broadcast, and not enough conversation. I would like to see online presence threaded into the system. All this emailing -- after the initial contact anyway -- is offputting. If I am to get screwed into LinkedIn, shouldn't it be more like AOL AIM? Constantly open on my desktop? I added my AIM screenname to my profile there, but LinkedIn doesn't even provide IM as an option for 'best way to contact me'.

I really need to partition my network. It is not one homogeneous thing. While individuals can provide attributes about themselves -- name, companies, zip code, title -- I need to be able to attribute them. I need a personal address book, where I link to, for example, Michael O'Connor Clark, and add attributes, like "really knows content management space", "tone deaf", or "balmy". These form my personal attribution of Michael, and suitable for use when the network grows to thousands and I want to poll all those I know who know the content management space.

I want to be able to work the network through relevance, and to a great extent, I need to be able to -- at least qualitatively -- order or categorize contacts in this way, otherwise I will simply be drowning in names.

:: Stowe Boyd 5/10/2003 06:35:57 AM [link] ::
:: ::

The Message is the Medium

My new monthly column at Knowledge Management magazine's destinationKM is up, cleverly entitled The Message is the Medium.

"Steve Barth has asked me to undertake a close examination of new media and their impacts on society and business. I plan to dig into all manner of tools and technologies that are erupting and thereby disrupting the way that people communicate, coordinate, and collaborate. Over the next months I plan to zoom in on a diverse collection of media, sharing the common characteristic of adding new scale. The technologies I plan to turn over include blogging, instant messaging, social networking systems, team collaboration, web conferencing, and a host of others."

Read it right now!

:: Stowe Boyd 5/8/2003 02:10:32 PM [link] ::
:: ::

Ray Ozzie resurfaces

I see that Ray Ozzie is back on his blog after months away. I recently dissed him for falling off the world to the folks at AlwaysOn, who had him on the their 'blogs of the rich and famous' showcase, but I take it all back. Well, most of it.

:: Stowe Boyd 5/8/2003 01:57:59 PM [link] ::
:: ::

Trying Awasu

I have downloaded Awasu (see www.awasu.com) -- an RSS aggregator -- and it looks pretty good. I have tried others, but they either were bonky or annoying. But for some reason it dies on Joi Ito's RSS feed. I plan a more complete review next week, after fiddling with some of the plug-ins, and interviewing someone at the company.

:: Stowe Boyd 5/8/2003 10:48:22 AM [link] ::
:: ::

More on Social Software

David says some nice things at Joho about the low characters (me included) getting pulled into the social software argument.

My current thinking is that there are three things (and not all three have to be included) that make social software social:

• Support for conversational interaction between individuals or groups – including real time and “slow time” conversation, like instant messaging and collaborative team work spaces, respectively.
  
• Support for social feedback – which allows a group to rate the contributions of others, leading to the creation of digital reputation.
  
• Support for social networks – to explicitly create and manage a digital expression of people’s personal relationships, and to help them build new relationships. These usually involve some sort of “six degrees of separation” system.

I am elaborating these comments for a Darwin piece. Coming soon!

:: Stowe Boyd 5/8/2003 10:44:46 AM [link] ::
:: ::

Jon Udell's on "Blogs and PR"

Interesting commentary from Jon Udell re: PR flacks getting onto the use of Blogs. Part 3 in an ongoing series.

My $0.02: effective communication strategy is one of those core competencies that you cannot outsource. It's something we'll all need to internalize. Will PR agents become coaches and mentors, helping individuals within companies do that? Again, the best of them already are.

[Pointer from Johnny Angel]

:: Stowe Boyd 5/8/2003 10:23:28 AM [link] ::
:: ::

Fiddling with LinkedIn

Joi Ito mentioned the LinkedIn web project had gone live, so I signed up to kick the tires.

I am working on a piece for Darwin on social software, so it was timely, I guess.

I was struck by how little you could do until you have invited people -- its tough to evaluate whether its worth it or not. However, the import from Outlook button makes inviting folks relatively painless. I tested it out by inviting two folks -- Michael O'Connor Clark and Duncan Work -- and the next thing I know my network is 168 people, including most of the folks on my blogroll. I bet you tomorrow -- I have invited five or six more folks -- I will have more than 1000 folks in my network.

My sense of the service:

• Too coarse grained information -- Will need to create more detailed SIC industry codes and equivalents. Look like it searches agains personal profile information fairly well.
• The Request Contact capability is nifty -- shows the initial link on the (shortest?) path to a person in the network. I am trying to get to Hylton Joliffe (Publisher of Corante) who I already know in real life. The interface presents me with an ellipsis for the intervening steps and doesn't provide any info about the intervening connections. I will ask Micheal what he sees, since he was presented to me as my direct contact who stands first in the chain of associations tending toward Hylton.
• A lot of high-powered folks flocking to the beta, which will lead to a lot of buzz in Blogland.
• Clean user interfaces, more corporate/business feel than Ryze or Friendster (Friendster asks if you're in an open marriage, for crying out loud).

Anyway, LinkedIn is a promising entrant in a messy but intensely interesting social software niche.

:: Stowe Boyd 5/7/2003 03:47:36 PM [link] ::
:: ::

Stephen Fraser comments on "Blogs and PR"

Received email from Stephen Fraser of Lulu (the brainchild of Bob Young, formerly of RedHat).

"I go back a few years with blogging--I was a blogger before I became a PR guy (I may not qualify as a full-fledged PR guy even now)--and I think that you may be engaged in too much handwringing on this issue. Bloggers are not babes in the woods. They are publishers, and bloggers, like publishers in traditional media, are under an obligation to sort through what is press-worthy from what is not. If a blog grows in popularity, it is likely to become a target for PR people just as popular publications become targets for press releases.

In terms of my own experimentation with the 'walking the line,' I have tried to get bloggers to link to a couple of 'stunts' (a wacky press release that was itself a follow-up to a blog-created story and a satirical Photoshop competition) by emailing the blogger personally. In my defense, however, in all cases I knew something about the blog beforehand and, in my judgement as a former and sporadically-current blogger myself, the links were eminently blog-worthy. So I didn't feel too slimy.

The tensions here are the same tensions that go with any 'underground' technology or social phenomenon (in this case a combination of the two) that begins to go mainstream. But it's not a tragedy. It simply underlines the growing influence of blogging as a media form, don't you think?

Regards,
Stephen Fraser
sfraser@lulu.com
http://www.Lulu.com"

Well, maybe.

I think this thread is somehow related in its ethical murkiness to the current flap about Joi Ito's investment in SixApart after talking the compnay up on his blog. Some are suggsting this is similar to a wall street analyst touting a stock so he can capitalize on the rise. I commented at Joi's website:

"I may be late to the party, but... the autobiographical nature of blogging leads us down strange labyrinths.

Joi writes about what he is interested in, as a culture vulture, bon vivant, and VC, and gains a following. They are interested in what he is interested in, and in the gonzo world of blogland, come to associate his online persona with the living breathing Joi... who is evaluating various blog technologies for investment, behind the scenes, confidentially, for all sorts of sensible meatworld reasons.

This is another example of falling through the looking glass.

All writing is a form of autobiography, and all autobiography is fiction, since we can't explain all, fully. There is a latent ethical dilemma that arises from commenting on the world of blogging with a large readership, and investing in it. But, Joi never stated he was unbiased or impartial or disinterested.

I think we should create a new proviso sticker for blogs, "dangerous ideas inside," or an opt-in click box that asserts that "the information provided may influence your opinion, and any subsequent loss of capital is your own look out."

:: Stowe Boyd 5/7/2003 08:25:15 AM [link] ::
:: ::

IM Interoperability Emerging: One Supply Chain At A Time

Had a long and interesting talk today with Don Bergal, VP North America, for Antepo. We ran over a number of areas including IM interoperability, IM standards, and what's up with Antepo, a company I hadn't known much about until quite recently. The company started in Europe, but relocated to NYC in 2002, which was a pretty ballsy move considering the economy at the time.

Antepo occupies an interesting market position, as Don put it, "sitting at the boundaries of different technologies." The company started as a European partner of Jabber, Inc (the for profit Jabber operation, not the open source organization). Subsequently, the company developed its own presence and messaging technology that supports both the SIP/SIMPLE and XMPP standards. SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is a well-known and widely implemented protocol for telephony session management, which has been extended to support instant messaging, the SIMPLE standard (Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions).

The problem with SIMPLE is that the various IM vendors implementing it extend it to make it really usable, and as a result there are a variety of mutually unintelligible dialects of SIMPLE that don't interoperate. This is likely to be resolved over the next few years as the standard is refined, but in the meantime SIMPLE does not offer a turnkey solution to interoperating between different vendors' products, even when they use SIP/SIMPLE.

XMPP is a very tightly defined standard, and interoperability across all XMPP compliant technologies is a given. This means that Antepo, Jabber (both Inc and Org), and other Jabber-based solutions (like Winfessor, the .Net Jabber implementation) can all intercommunicate, on a federated basis. You could point your server at mine, and I to yours, and we could poll presence from each other's servers, cross message, and so on. Out of the box.

Antepo supports both SIP/SIMPLE and XMPP, and can serve as an interoperability gateway for a corporation supporting mutiple protocols and solutions, or across an entire ecosystem of companies. Consider the situation where a major automotive manufacturer might want to work with a telecom services provider to create a single IM and presence gatway for the entire supply chain of suppliers -- Antepo would have a good case to provide the core technologies to make that happen. On the telecom service providers' server, the Antepo technology natively manages presence and IM trafic in both XMPP and SIMP/SIMPLE, and Antepo technology could straddle the firewall/DMZ at the various participating companies who were using SIP/SIMPLE, since SIP does not cross firewalls well. Don also suggested that the swell of interest in SIP/SMPLE crested last year, and many players are starting to look harder at XMPP because of the needs for interoperability.

I recently wrote a piece on the imminent emergence of some sort of third party, trusted intermediary to act as a gateway and identity registrar in exactly this way (see The Coming Power Shift), and while I don't endorse Antepo's technology as the linchpin of such a gateway/registrar, I have to concur with Don's take on how it might emerge: bottom-up, one supply chain at a time, and the companies linked to various gateways that authenticate users across networks of companies.

The government has made no moves toward a global interoperability dictate -- remember the phone monopoly? -- even though it is clearly in the public interest, so we shouldn't hope for any sort of top-down initiative solving this problem for us. But bottom-up is probably a better model for this to emerge anyway. It will create more competition, and spark greater innovation.

No one has established market leadership in the nascent market for IM interoperability, although many seem to be moving sideways into it, like Antepo is doing.

:: Stowe Boyd 5/6/2003 12:14:21 PM [link] ::
:: ::

Blogs and PR: "What line? I didn't see any line."

My buddy Michael O'Connor Clark was muttering in blogform about the intersection of blogs and PR and he unearths a bunch of really dark, gooey, organic material. A number of firms are hiring PR flacks to get prominent bloggers to link to articles in more traditional venues. He cites the example of AlwaysOn, Tony Perkins new gig (formerly Red Herring), and Business 2.0 who have done so in recent memory.

So what's wrong with using PR agents to do this? It reminds me of the character Jake Spoon, in McMurty's Lonesome Dove series, who -- after being captured with a murderous group of renegades, and about to be hanged for crossing over the hard to see line between good and evil -- said, "What line? I didn't see any line."

The line is this: interaction in Blogland is personal, and in principle what is said -- or what links are created -- are a representation of your personal perspectives. As result, it would be suspect, if not immoral, to simply create a blog blurb about a Business 2.0 story because a PR flack asked you to do it, in exchange for a link back from Business 2.0. However, people bring things to others' attention all the time on the web, so what's wrong with it?

I maintain that it is a totally meaningful and arguably essential task for any marketing/PR agency to help their clients find the thought leaders that are critical for their product/service success, and to attempt to influence them. But the dynamics are all wrong if the PR agencies contact the thought leaders and request links from their blogs extolling the product, service, or article. However, I often write about products that interest me, and I often consult with companies in that category. Is that ok?

I think it has to be. But there is a line. No, the truly machiavellian approach is the reverse whammy. The PR agency should create a blog 'plaza' or online forum that

• exposes the leading throught leaders in some domain (for example, I hope someone might select me in any forum related to collaboration technologies)
• 2/ collates recent relevant snippets from their blogs, and
• intersperses these thought leaderish elements with the message and positioning of the sponsoring company.

Generating an online commuity can create real value -- I plan to launch several this year, and I am soliciting sponsorship from vendors to do so. At the same time, I am policing their contributions so the distinction between an 'article' is clearly distinct from a 'white paper'. And adding in the communitarian supports of comments, and feedback creates an environment where -- like at a tradeshow -- you know when you are talking to a corporate representative or another end user. But there is a way to do this, open and above board, that doesn't stink like the Raging Cow mess.

I have long argued that blogs are easy to write but hard to read -- meaning that the cross referencing, and meme tracing zipping around or through blogrolls is often read or impossible to bring to light. I believe that a next generation blog reader technology is implied here, and marketing -- specifically, gaining thought leadership -- may be the real driver for it.

I think there is a business lurking in there, Micheal, and you might just be the guy to figure it out. With my consulting assistance, of course.

:: Stowe Boyd 5/5/2003 11:16:20 AM [link] ::
:: ::

Masaaki Imai's Wet Blanket List

In the furor surrounding the social software meme, I thought it would be helpful to replay Masaaki Imai's (from KAIZEN) so-called “wet blanket” list, which management uses to put out the fire of improvement -- and which detractors often apply in some way or another.

The Wet Blanket List
1. I am too busy to study it.
2. It's a good idea, but the timing is premature.
3. It is not in the budget.
4. Theory is different from practice.
5. Isn't there something else for you to do?
6. I think it doesn't match corporate policy.
7. It isn't our business; let someone else think about it.
8. Are you dissatisfied with your work?
9. It's not improvement, it is common sense.
10. I know what the result will be, even if we don't do it.
11. I will not be held accountable for it.
12. Can't you think of a better idea?

While I actually don’t like the book I find this list a useful compendium of the knee jerk put-downs that people employ to stall productive discussions about improvement of any sort.


:: Stowe Boyd 5/5/2003 10:23:25 AM [link] ::
:: ::

More Stuff on Social Software: Mayfield versus spiked-IT

I only today got around to reading Ross Mayfield's Social Software is Real, in which he develops the theme of social software suporting the development and application of social capital, and argues that online systems make social participation less expensive, and therefore less exclusionary.

But the real thrust of the piece is to riff on the remarks of Martin Perks, who in a spiked-IT piece called Social software - get real(hey! That's the title of my book!) and he directly slams Mayfield and Harold Reingold for advocating social software: but unlike Dave Winer, not because it's old wine in new bottles, but because it cheapens actual social participation:

"The real consequence of the discussion around social software is a cheapening of participation. Ross Mayfield, who runs a weblog devoted to discussing social software, argues: 'as the cost for forming issue groups falls, expect similar groups and coalitions to form around otherwise less fundable issues.' For Mayfield, low-cost engagement brings more diversity to the table. But by reducing the meaning of political debate, we only reinforce the helpless feeling of being consumers first and foremost, and citizens second.

This problem is best summed up by the title of the latest book by Howard Rheingold, who writes about virtual communities and networks. His book, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution - Transforming Cultures and Communities in the Age of Internet Access, asks whether networked technology can make the 'mob' smart. The danger of such patronising thinking is that technology will have the final say, instead of us being smart enough to see otherwise.

Yikes.

This seems like a classic case of the 'enemies of the future' (to coopt Virginia Postrel's term) ranting about the evil inherent in the innovative.


:: Stowe Boyd 5/5/2003 10:16:42 AM [link] ::
:: ::

The Lines are Being Drawn: Is Social Software New?

I am happy to see a really ugly controversy starting up around the 'social software' meme. On one hand we have folks like David Weinberger, Clay Shirky, and the newly formed Many-to-Many group blog at Corrente asserting that social software is a new take on online interaction and communities.

Others, like Dave Winer brandishing his decades of experience in the biz, says its horse pucky.

"Social Software? I've been in the software biz for 2.5 decades, so I've seen this kind of hype over and over. Take something that exists, give it a fancy new name, and then blast at reporters and analysts about it. Every time around the loop it works less well. In the 80s it worked very well. In the early 21st Century, there aren't enough analysts with credibility to make such a pig fly.

P2P was the last gasp. I remember getting breathless invitations to keynotes where this or that luminary was going to finally tell us what it is. In the end it wasn't the technology that made a difference, but ironically, the people. Apparently the promoters of Social Software were listening.

It's wrong. We don't need this. Weblogs are about punching through the hype machine of idiot analysts and reporters who go for their BS. Social software has existed for years. What's the big news? A few people are looking for a pole to fly their flag on. Pfui!

Weinberger takes the tack that it doesn't matter if it's new or old: it still an important distinction from the wide spectrum of other group communication technologies:

"First, I consider social software actually to be emergent social software. That narrows the field to software that enables groups to form and organize themselves. Yes, it's still broad but at least it's not coextensive with any software that has a user interface.

Second, it doesn't much matter to me whether the software is new or old. I'm excited about the fact that that type of software is now being recognized (i.e., "hyped") as important.

(Note that Clay Shirky and others are a bit too broad, including even the 'cc:' line in email in this category, which is perhaps the sort of over generalization that arouses Winer's easily-aroused ire.)

I commented on David's piece earlier today, and I reproduce in toto what I said there:

Social software" as a term of art is likely to come to mean the flip-flop of what groupware, and other project- or organization-oriented tools, were intended to do.

Social software is based on the person first, and the social group second -- the group arising from the interactions of individuals. People exist as individuals -- with their own interests, biases, and connections. These are reflected in social relationships, from which groups emerge.

Groupware put the group first, and individuals second. As a member of a lotus notes group, for example, you have various sorts of access to various sorts of information based on the administrator's settings. Its all about control.

The fact that you are involved in other groups, have had a long history with various other people in the groups, and so on, is secondary to the fixed purpose of the group, whatever that is. Social software reflects the 'juice' that arises from people's personal interactions. It's not about control, its about coevolution: people in personal contact, interacting towards their own ends, influencing each other. But there isn't a single clearly defined project, per se.

The answer to nearly all 'why now' questions is technology, and that is true here. The availability of low-cost high bandwidth, tools like blogs, and so on, coupled with some density inflection point of motivated users of the Internet equals social software as next big thing, as we move from control toward coevolution.

My guess is that the term will catch on, especially as new tools and technologies appear that make bottom-up emergent group formation possible. And, yes, Mr. Winer, as consultants and analysts like me push it as something new. It is at the least a new approach, even if we haven't gotten there yet.



:: Stowe Boyd 5/5/2003 09:53:14 AM [link] ::
:: ::