There’s been a slew of stories about people posting embarrassing or boneheaded things on their Twitter or Facebook profiles without realizing that their boss, friends or clients could see the posting, and that it ultimately led to disaster – stories including pictures of people spending the night partying, lying about calling in sick, or insulting the home town of the client they are about to visit.  Most of these instances were indeed lapses of better judgment on the part of the person making the posts, but rather than us all having to lock down our profiles to infinity, wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just say a little more about what we really think without having to apologize for it?

Imagine, for example, if instead of a lot of political posturing and politeness, my vendor just told me straight up that my ideas were dumb and suggested better ones instead.  It’d take bravery on the part of the vendor to tell me the truth, and maturity on my part to not be insulted and dismiss the critical feedback.

Am I wrong to want the world to change?  I’m probably just being too much of an idealist. 

The reality is that these cases highlight the flaw in the default privacy level set by social networking sites today – especially Twitter, where it seems like most people don’t realize that anyone can view your posts unless you lock it down, and that if your friends don’t also lock their feeds down, their replies to you would be visible to the world.

I do believe, though, that operational transparency in the enterprise is a great way to give employees the opportunity to serendipitously discovery the information that might make the deal, save the day or otherwise make the company successful. (I love that phrase, so I’ll repeat it: “serendipitous discovery”.)

So while social transparency on a very personal level is probably going too far, there is a benefit to be had by keeping your co-workers in the loop on what you’re busy working on.

Come to think of it, the one person who comes to mind who tends to be very transparent and open about himself is Howard Stern.  I’m not so sure that’s worked out in his favor over the long run.  He’s famous, but it seems like it’s taken a pretty hard toll on his personal life.

Filed under: Privacy, Social Computing, Social Networking | Comments Off

Here’s my impression of a web 2.0 company making a pitch to a venture capital firm from between 2006-2008: I’ve got this really great idea to build this service that everyone will love, no one will be able to live without, people will tell all their friends about, and users will add their own content.  Once it gets going, we can just sit back and profit!!!

In case that was way too complicated for you to understand, here’s my web 2.0 business plan in three easy phases:

This was pretty much the plan for everyone from Digg to FriendFeed, Twitter to Facebook.  And despite the obvious flaw of not really having a phase two, these companies still exist and are still fully operational.  Granted, several web 2.0 companies have entered the deadpool (Pownce, for example), but a lot of the ones you might have thought would be dead and out of money by now are still up and running, which is pretty darned amazing considering that they lack any publicly known business plans.

Twitter is already trying to figure out exactly what their business plan is, and in fact they’ve recently hired someone to help them figure out how they’ll make money – Twitter recently hired Kevin Thau who hails from past ventures Buzzwire and Openwave.  It’s hard to imagine what Twitter might do even just to cover what are likely to be increasingly expensive costs to run and maintain their infrastructure.

But that doesn’t explain one small, minor detail that I still can’t figure out: how is it that these companies got any VC funding without presenting any real business plans?  And furthermore, why is it that companies like Yammer, Present.ly and even IBM are taking concepts directly from Twitter and already making real money on them before Twitter ever even turns over a single dime?  I’m not criticizing these companies for creating similar functional offerings – to the contrary, the fact that they seem to have a good business a plan speaks highly of their possible futures.

Upon reflection, I think it’s probably wrong of me to include Facebook in the list of web 2.0 startups that don’t really have a solid business plan.  I do believe they had always intended to advertise to their users, and that they could do this more effectively by selling ad space on profiles that matched demographics that their marketers are after.  I had also written last month that I do believe they have enough momentum going to find a steady revenue stream before going under.

But that doesn’t explain what Twitter, Digg or FriendFeed or similar services will do if the costs of running their infrastructure outpace their funding.  They’re all great tools to share and discover content (and generate endless memes), but if push came to shove I think I could probably give up most of them and rely on Facebook to provide the same or similar functionality.

That’s enough for now.  I’d better get back to enjoying my favorite web 2.0 sites while they last.

Filed under: Consumer Web, IBM, Product Management, Social Computing, Social Networking | Comments Off

It seems like everywhere you look in web advertisements, television, and print ads, where there should be a picture of your average run-of-the-mill PC laptop, there’s an Apple MacBook Pro instead.  Here are just a few examples.

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Filed under: Apple, Hardware, Offbeat | Comments Off

IBM announced a new SaaS offering for collaboration at their Lotusphere 2009 conference, dubbed LotusLive.  There appears to be three main offerings to LotusLive: Networking and Collaboration, Web Conferencing, and LotusLive Email services – which appears to be a version of Lotus Notes in a web-based format.

According to the company press release:

LotusLive is designed to help companies work smarter by making it easy for them to connect and work together — with an emphasis on simplicity and ease of use. LotusLive’s online services give businesses of all sizes access to Lotus’ rich collaboration tools without requiring an up-front investment in IT support resources or infrastructure.

What’s most interesting about this news is IBM’s plans to partner with several key SaaS vendors:

• LinkedIn will provide LotusLive with searchable contact information.
• Salesforce.com will integrate LotusLive services within its CRM application.
• Skype announced plans to integrate voice and video into LotusLive.

Right now only LotusLive Meetings (Lotus Sametime) and LotusLive Events along with the hosted Notes application appear to be available for purchase, with the other solutions still showing up as being in beta.  I wasn’t able to find details on when IBM plans to make the additional functionality available.

The dashboard page for the collaboration component looks a lot like what you might expect from a "web2.0” site, and is actually pretty slick looking.

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Filed under: Enterprise Web, Google, IBM, Microsoft, SaaS, Social Computing | Comments Off

As was reported by TechCrunch and others today, during Apple’s quarterly earnings call, Apple’s COO Tim Cook answered questions about what Apple would do in the face of rising competition from Google’s Android, RIM BlackBerry and Palm.  Cook’s answer seems to be a warning to the competition that Apple will sue competitors that blatantly infringe on Apple’s intellectual property (IP):

We approach this business as a software platform business. We are watching the landscape. We like competition as long as they don’t rip off our IP. And if they do, we will go after anyone who does.

I don’t want to talk about any specific company. We are ready to suit up and go against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our IP ripped off.

Cook declined to answer whether he was talking specifically about Palm, and the recently announced Palm Pre.

The current speculation is that this might be a personal battle between Palm and iPhone, since Palm’s executive chairman, Jon Rubinstein, used to be Apple’s product chief.  Rubinstein was installed as chairman by Elevation Partners, the company that recently invested an additional $100 million into Palm.

However, it’s much more likely a strong statement to anyone who’s thinking about entering into the already crowded smartphone market.  I would imagine that might actually be Microsoft, especially with so many Zune phone rumors flying around.

Filed under: Apple, Mobile Web | Comments Off

Two things about ESN (enterprise social networking) and ESC (enterprise social computing) solutions bother me.  One: often times people talk about the features using empty buzzwords that fail to succinctly describe what people really want to do.  Second: a lot of proclaimed ESN/ESC tools get lumped together, even though they really only offer a partial solution.

I started thinking about this more today, and I came up with what I believe is a more or less accurate picture of the high-level areas of social computing, or for lack of a better term, the community platform:

So, what’s in a community platform?  Let’s take a look…

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Filed under: Enterprise Web, Knowledge Management, Social Computing, Social Networking, Wikis | Comments Off

I continued to ponder why IBM and Oracle both purchased BRMS (business rule management software) vendors in 2008, and whether it really has to do with the economic downturn as Oracle publicly states that it does.  One reader very accurately pointed out:

I would say it is a bit unlikely that they decided to purchase either due to the downturn. I believe both companies would spend a long time in doing due diligence before announcing that they would be looking to acquire any company. This would mean the idea most likely would have germinated pre-financial crisis. Unless the two companies had the foresight that the rest of the world seemed to lack.

I completely agree with this.  Although I do wonder about the timing involved of the Oracle-Haley acquisition.  SAP purchased Yasu, another BRMS vendor, back in 2007, long before IBM announced its purchase of ILOG.  My suspicion is that Oracle didn’t really care until they heard about the IBM-ILOG purchase, and at that point fast-tracked a replacement for their own under-resourced BRMS offering.

They probably realized at that point that two of their products were at risk of losing a strategic advantage: their BPM offering and WebLogic.  If IBM is able to integrate ILOG into their WebSphere J2EE platform, it would strengthen both their BPM solution and their WebSphere offering.

And then there’s the whole issue of how long it’ll likely take to ever fully integrate Haley and ILOG into Oracle and IBM respectively.  Although the company entities can be integrated quickly, the work to do real software integration may take years.

Again, this is all my own personal speculation and conjecture, but I still find Oracle’s public explanation a little curious.

Filed under: Enterprise Web, IBM, Product Management | 2 Comments »