::.. Timing ..::

:: 2003/08/14 ::

Instant Messaging Research Forum

Going live (on a beta basis) on the all-new, rebuilt from the ground up Instant Messaging Research Forum, an online and open community-of-interest from those tracking instant messaging. Sponsors include Jabber and Blueair Networks, and research sponsors include Cutter, Osterman Research, and of course, yours truly.

:: Stowe Boyd 8/14/2003 06:23:37 PM [link] ::
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FIMA Announces Public Website

I saw that FIMA has announced a public website. At first glance, it seems pretty skinny on information, except the obvious bias toward interoperability:

"Most organizations would like to be able to standardize on a single Instant Messaging (IM) client on their desktop. Multiple solutions take up valuable desktop “real estate” and are costly to support. Businesses will ideally make their technology choice based on cost, functionality and existing user base at other organizations.

However, the enterprise IM marketplace is evolving very rapidly, there is still no clear winner in the IM protocol race and, as a result, there is no true interoperability between the different products (although plenty of tactical gateways are starting to be built). As a result, businesses are faced with a number of challenges, probably more so in an industry such as Financial Services, where IM is rapidly becoming the communication channel of choice due to its real-time and presence features."

For those interested in a little more meat, check out an issue of Message in which I interviewed Ursula Mills, Co-chair of FIMA.

:: Stowe Boyd 8/13/2003 01:26:07 PM [link] ::
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The Case for Business Blogging: Conversations with Your Market

DC's New Media Society asked me to join in a panel presentation on 9 September 2003, called The Case for Business Blogging: Conversations with Your Market (which I also got to provide the title for). Be there or be square.

:: Stowe Boyd 8/13/2003 11:35:46 AM [link] ::
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August's destinationKM Column: Contact Unmanagement

My newest "Message is the Medium" column is up at Knowledge Management Magazine's destionaKM, called Contact Unmanagement. I profile Plaxo, which is an Outlook-integrated peer-to-peer contact management solution.

Plaxo begins with contact unmanagement, an insidious and viral starting point for what could rapidly become social network unmanagement. Where better to manage the flow of social capital than directly in Outlook? Imagine the point perhaps not too long in the future where the majority of Outlook users have opted to install the free Plaxo solution. (In my case, 7% of my contacts are already using Plaxo.)

I bet Plaxo will soon offer new fee-based services, such as social networking wired into Outlook. That global, peer-to-peer social network is just crying out to be leveraged in more sophisticated ways. And (oh, by the way) those competing services don't offer the initial hook that makes Plaxo so appealing: they don't automatically keep your contacts updated.

:: Stowe Boyd 8/12/2003 11:30:30 AM [link] ::
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