Following on from my post about Seaport.exe, one of Microsoft’s Live Writer software developers Joe Cheng has been in touch. Joe’s Whatever blog covers Live Writer in development and action and looking at the screenshots and integration with Twitter maybe I should give it another go. Joe also left a link to a blog on Windows Live Groups: http://windowslivewire.spaces.live.com/blog/cns/ and the screenshots / descriptions look impressive too. Readwriteweb says this is all about integration of our digital lives and yup don’t we need it. I’m going to explore a bit more as this whole area looks very tasty. The Battle of the Cloud is shaping up nicely in the social media, UI as well as Search space.
Category: Communications
Categories
Passion 2009
The return of passion.
1st Micah:
There is only one thing that breeds success, and that is passion. Hire people that are passionate about your product; that can talk about your product with passion. Remember, its not your call as to whether you are passionate or not. Its the people listening.
If you are an SEO or SMM consultant, you have three years. Three years to adapt or be out of work. Learn how to be passionate and breed passion or find another line of work…
and now Seth:
Best of both worlds: someone who has passion (and skill and insight) about their task and passion about the mission. The latter can never replace the former. Organizations staffed with sports fans or true believers worry me, because they often use their passion as an excuse for poor performance. What worries me more are the employees who have neither expertise nor passion.
Another for the list, Audiophilia adds Passion in their A list by which to live and love.
Also, now Valerie Maltoni at the Conversation Agent:
Performance is a highly emotional business. Emotion (Lat. ex = out + motio = movement) leads to action. Passion leads to performance.
I like that one!
Watch this chart, 2009, passion is back in fashion:
My one and only prediction for 2009, it’s going to be a year of passion.
Some fab data in from eMarketer/Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) over at Mashable on Social Media Marketing and the benefits thereof. Customer engagement and customer comms comes tops. Be really useful to see how this compares within the firewall, especially with employee engagement and internal comms.
Just did a quick check on the Twitority of the term ‘Internal Communications’ on Twitter. Of dubious merit methinks- firstly, for a quirk of data, I actually get a mention because of my Top 10 Internal Communications people to follow on Twitter; but hardly any of that list who should be there, actually make it directly into the Twitority posting. But, saving grace, @csaba81 does get mentioned in dispatches and he certainly has genuine authority not to mention generosity, in the sphere of internal comms and Twitter.
I know this was knocked together quickly in reponse to a post from Loic, but hey ho, it still produced some questionable results:
For more seasoned analysis of Twitority and Authority see:
- Loic Le Meur Twitter: We Need Search By Authority
- Loic Le Meur Twitority Made It
- Stowe Boyd Authority Is A Highly Charged Particle
- Om Malik On Twitter, Followers Aren’t Really Friends
- or follow the debate on Twitter!
Categories
Price of Spam
Reports in from Australia and New Zealand plus that august journal The Register, of a court case against one Lance Atkinson. You may have heard of him as he’s one of the chaps behind millions spam mails offering to augment appendages under such brands as Herbal King, Elite Herbal and Express Herbal, all made and shipped by Tulip Lab of India.
But how much spam did the spammer actually send out? The Sydney Morning Herald says it’s in the billions mark and cites the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC):
…allegedly controlled a “botnet” of 35,000 computers, capable of sending 10 billion email messages a day.
Atkinson’s fine for all this is the Register tells us, is $92,715 (about US $63,400). Infonews in New Zealand put it at $100K but which ever, all of which pales compared to the $2.2M USD he caught fined in 2005. But, being a good egg and of good character Lance got off lightly in any event:
The maximum penalty provided in the UEM Act for an individual is $200,000 but Justice French said Lance Atkinson was entitled to a substantial discount because of his co-operation and candour with authorities at an early stage, his undertaking to comply with the Act and the fact that the spamming began before it became illegal. (Infonews)
All a paltry drop etc when compared with the volume. None the less, according to Voxy in Kiwiland the Internal Affairs anti-spam compliance unit is celebrating:
The negative effects of spam are significant and far reaching and it’s pleasing to know there’s at least one less spammer plaguing the internet.
Too right, one less…one less.
Very good post from Lilia Efimova on Blogs – Publishing vs. Interaction: blog networking study: publishing vs. interaction
Elia argues that Blogs are a hybrid between the 2, allowing the means to communicate and interact simultaneously:
Blogging as personal publishing is about broadcasting to broad and often unknown audiences allowing efficient communication, while blogging as interaction is about engagement with specific others that builds shared understanding and enables bonding. While those two functions result in positioning blogging as a hybrid genre….
Hybridity is one of those sticky terms that will for me be always associated with Post-colonialism and writers such as Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak, and Paul Gilroy. This concept in Blogs is one to ponder as I think there’s a rich seam of information and sociality present…
Hybridity on Wikipedia
The last post on Spinning Mule 2.0 was originally posted last week but I thought it a bit OTT so saved the HTML and deleted it. I’ve now done a repost and made a note to trust my judgement a bit more in future. The reason for that is the arrival of a nice little number from Forrester called: “Innovating Strategic Management Paradigms And Models To Thrive Amid Global Change.”
The report bandies about some dandy terms such as ‘Globalization 2.0? ‘Invisible IT’ and ‘Technology Populism’. By these they refer to the truly global market and the increasing impact, influence and importance of the BRIC economies; the evolution of IT into a ubiquitous business technology; and the fact that rather than the military it’s now the Facebook generation, i.e ordinary tech-savvy punters who are driving change.
To survive in this new world, Forrester recommend something that caught my eye – they recommend that corporations adopt what I’ve always thought as the prime mantra of internal comms, namely align whatever and all you do to the business strategy.
Strategic management paradigms are the über-approaches that: combine several discrete activities under one umbrella; have a direct and complex impact on a company’s strategy setting; and require comprehensive implementation efforts. Examples of strategic management paradigms include the core competency concept or the management by objectives (MBO) approach, which emanated from the academic world.
To back this up and to validate it for good or ill they say a measurement system is needed, such as SWOT, Balanced Scorecard and Six Sigma. What follows however takes an increasingly 2.0 twist – old business paradigms need to take the tectonic social media shift.
The focus then should be on a customer-centricity. These they argue becomes part of a Business Transformation model. This transformation is one not only about organizing and behaving to meet customer needs, it’s also about adopting social media technology and practices to foster innovation and to adapt in agile fashion to meet new and evolving customer needs and desires.
Will this happen? Forrester note the huge challenges present. I think this is the rub. Also there’s not a lot of choice. Global market, increased competition, global skills market, next gen 2.0 employees expect at least the very basics of what they use at home and at leisure. This opens up the market – opportunities as much as threat. The game is being completely re-written. We’re in a Crisis phase at present, but as the Chinese note, this is both Danger and Opportunity
While traditional IT service providers can rejoice in the fact that their contributions will gain in importance, they can’t become complacent, as the new game represents an opportunity for entrants that excel in both strategy and technology. As a result, Forrester foresees active consolidation in the consulting and IT industries over the next five years.
An excellent post from Bertrand Dupperin on the future of E 2.0: Enterprise 2.0 : my predictions for 2009. One item stood out and that was:
The end of “soft value” : Enterprise 2.0 ROI have been a taboo subject for a long time.
Over at Bill Ives’ Blog, there’s a review of an IBM report on Social Media –Even More Research on the Use of Social Software in the Workplace from IBM. Bill says the next step is the hard $ question and we need to:
…see if there are ways we can tie these behaviors [behavioral ones] to level four financial impacts. I feel confident that this can be done.
I don’t think it’s going to be easy. If we go down the route of hard-cost savings then it potentially loses the richer benefits of social media which are much less harder to measure. IBM looks at the engagement factor by looking at societality, the element that interests me though is the degree to which E2.0 is a business enabler and a business transformer. Engagement might be measured in churn or satisfaction,even in increased profitability for the business, but E2 as business transformation provides more.
That more is the Mule effect…It’s an effect that will be measured after the event, by profound competitive advantage. That’s why there’s an edge to E2.0, time is of the essence. 2.0 may well dissolve into the enterprise as Bertrand believes, but those that get there 1st will be the winners. The laggards will be like those handloom weavers who in a generation moved from sporting £5 notes in their hats to, well, utter destitution. This may seem apocalyptic, but then we’re in uncharted times, with seemingly ‘timeless’ brands suddenly realising their mortality. E2.0 will only quicken that process.
A conversation yesterday, with Trevor Hamilton of Unique Entertainment on his web site. Unique Entertainment do events management and conferences for corporations across Europe as well as Product Launches and Strategic Communications.
Interestingly the site built on the open source content management system Joomla which will allow Unique Entertainment to update their content themselves. So, theory is when Trevor has new photies he can add them to the Unique Entertainment Gallery.
Joomla is one of those apps I’ve dabbled briefly with but never quite got my head round and the Unique Entertainment site has gotten me wondering how it can be tweaked for SEO. A quick Google provides and search on the Joomla site provides a good few ideas.
One of the key things to think about here is how to ensure that people looking for Unique Entertainment’s contact details get pointed through to the actual Unique Entertainment site rather than all the other potential links that this name is associated with. Market Samurai throws up a lot of potential confusion here so it’s not an easy one.
Thus, if anyone has any ideas on the SEO question and Joomla, please do let me know.
Another slideshow. This is really good too…I can see another Top 10 brewing.