Socialtext 3.0

Last night we had Alan Lepofsky, the Director of Marketing for SocialText, introduce us to the new SocialText 3.0 platform.  I thought I would reflect on some observations from that visit, and invite others in the class to comment as well.

Some thoughts:

1) I thought it was interesting the degree of functionality with which Alan was using the ST 3.0 platform compared to how we are using it in class.  Web 2.0 tools are part technolology and part social process.  I think ST has the technology part down reasonably well, but it’s transferring the processes that is more challenging.  I consider myself a relatively strong user of the platform, but I wasn’t aware of much of the functionality or ways it can be used.  So, if I have difficulty using it, 1) how are other companies learning of the new features and potential processes and 2) how can managers communicate these new processes to their employees.  I like the flexibility ST offers, but flexibility also comes with additional work.

2) Speaking of flexibility, I am somewhat underwhelmed with the ST people module, at least so far.   Three points here.

a) I am surprised that people don’t have more flexibility about their profile.  For instance, there are pre-designated fields for supervisor and assistant.  I have more than one assistant.  What do I do then?  I am surprised that a Wiki company has developed such a rigid approach to profiles.  Why not give people a Wiki area to create their own profiles.

b) I am also disappointed the user pages don’t provide more history about each user.  Do I really care about the last 20 edits someone made, or do I want to know their usage history across many months, what pages they are editing most, etc.  I can certainly envision business uses for this data, especially in a large company, and I am surprised ST doesn’t provide this functionality.

c) Lastly, I am surprised that ST still doesn’t support any type of messaging or commenting between users.  ST signals is nice, but there may be times when I want to raise an issue with a partiuclar user that may not relate directly to any particular wikipage.  If they are really looking to become a social networking tool, they need to let people communicate with one another.

Those gripes aside, I do think they are moving in the right direction with the platform.  I think there is great potential in where they hope to go.  What do you think about the ST platform and their plans for the future?

What happens when you actually use Web 2.0?

One of the most interesting parts of my MBA class this semester has been the NML assignments (incidentally, based on midterm evaluations, the students agree).   Of course, I use the term “interesting” intentionally, because I don’t think that any of the students, or the professor for that matter, has had a uniformly positive or negative experience with them.  Some of the lessons I am learning:

• Web 2.0 tools take up alot of time.  It’s hard to remember to post, to follow others’ activity, and generally keep up with all of the activity (no matter how genuinely interesting I may find it).   As a case in point, it’s hard to believe I haven’t posted in two weeks.  I think the trick is to find a good way to identify the content you are interested in.  This likely means that Web 2.0 can’t just be a casual engagement, you have to learn to use the tools to get what you want out of them.  Otherwise it can be a bit overwhelming.
• I am surprised at how many people are concerned with privacy – even people who are very active Web users.  I think I just learned a long time ago that the concept of privacy is out the window, whether we like it or not.   Sarah Palin is a good case in point – people hacked her email account using publicly available information.  We are living in a world where anything can appear online at any time.  For most of us, other people just don’t care enough to pay attention.   Attention, not information, is the scarcity in today’s world.
• Whether or not they are just sucking up to the professor, most people seem to have at least gotten some value out of the tools and have figured out how to use them relatively easily.  To be honest, I had gotten my TA’s all ready to field a host of questions about the tools, but people simply haven’t had to contact them.   What I find most intersesting are the ways that my students are using the tools that I had not even considered.
• I am beginning to see the value of ubiquity – the ability to access the internet anytime/anywhere.  I’ve lost some good thoughts simply because I wasn’t in a place to write on my blog when I had them.

Just some thoughts, more later

Questions I am asked

Last Friday (prior to the so-called financial apocalyse of today), I spoke about my use of Web 2.0 to BC’s parents weekend.   I got some questions about my appraoches that tend to crop up again and again, so I thought I’d address them here.

1) You’re an IT prof.  Will the Web 2.0 tools work in other settings?  To answer this question, I use the example of Alan Kafka, a geosciences prof here at BC.  He started experimenting with wiki methdos in the classroom after a talk I gave to the faculty.  He emailed me to let me know that he had similar positive results as I have.  I joke that it doesn’t get much slower than geosciences, so we’ve covered all ends of the spectrum.

2) Do students still need to come to class if everything is online?  Actually my experience is that it is MORE important to be in class regularly in a Web 2.0 setting.  Yes, it is easy to miss class from time to time and catch up easily becuase of all the information online.  On the other hand, there is SO much information online that it quickly becomes impossible to filter the important infomration from the unimportant stuff.  Students who have tried not attending tend to score in the 30s on my exam.

3) Do young students perform better than older students?  In the beginning, yes.  Students who are under the age of 23 (having had Facebook in their college years) are already immersed in the Web 2.0 culture.  Older students (i.e. older than 23) usually take a bit of catching up – but it doesn’t take long.  The tools are so user-friendly these days that it’s easy to get the hang of it.

How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com

How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com

Yes, I promised not to comment on new stories, but this one seemed good enough (and obscure enough) to make an exception.  This blogpost from the NYT talks about many of the same issues we discussed in class last week – garbage in, garbage out.  It talks about how analyists put optimistic and incomplete data into their computer models which yielded (you guessed it) optimistic and incomplete forecasts.  No matter how fast we crunch the data, what we can learn from it is only as good as the quality of that data and the assumptions we make about it.  Computers can give false hope and reassuring predictions, when that’s what their owners have trained them to do.

Jenni From The Blog: What’s that password again?

Jenni From The Blog: What’s that password again?

Jenni tapped into a personal passion of mine.  Well, OK, passion in the absolute geekiest sense of the word – it’s something I’ve done research into.  My doctoral dissertation looked at how people managed a portfolio of information systems to do their job.  One of the challenges that people faced when trying to use IT in their job was remembering all the different passwords.   What made this particular setting difficult was the portfolio of systems each had different password requirements (e.g. 6 characters, one had to be a letter) that expired at different times (e.g. one every three months, another every 5).  The result was a mess.  People resorted to posting their passwords on the workstation or logging in once then allowing their co-workers to use the system.  It either defeated the whole purpose or security, or people stopped using the IT becuase they couldn’t remember the password.

Of course, there’s also the opposite problem: other online services requiring one single password for all services (e.g. Microsoft, Google).  I went to experiment with Microsoft’s HealthVault, a new system for patients to manage their medical information.  Not only did they force me into using a very strong password, but then that password would also apply to my other services (e.g. Hotmail, Xbox).   The last thing I wanted was to be using my extremely complex password every time I checked my mail…and if I accidentally left the system open, then people could see my medical history.  I stopped at the password.

One of the real contributions of the “Flat World” was the fact that technology became easy to use.  What we need now is a better process for how to operate different IT applications as a single user.  I don’t have the solution, but I do think its a real problem.

Best Buy Leverages the Wisdom of Crowds

Business – WSJ.com

This article is right on point with our discussion in class this week.  It talks about how Best Buy offers a so-called prediction market to leverage the collective wisdom of their employees.  I think a key point is that they offer employees a modest reward for succeeding (although a bit too modest if you ask me).  Its basically an efficient mechanism to ask employees to offer feedback on particular company initiatives.  Finding out what the front line employees think in a reliable way can be a powerful information tool.

Talking Business – Stuck in Google’s Doghouse – NYTimes.com

Talking Business – Stuck in Google’s Doghouse – NYTimes.com

Credit Where Credit’s Due…Trevor beat me to to punch on this one.  Check out his comments at the link below.

http://swanbergcis.blogspot.com/2008/09/has-google-replaced-microsoft-as-next.html

This is a nice article about the potential monopoly power of Google.   The line I like best is the one that notes (paraphrased) that monopolies can’t help from acting like monopolies.  Google defends their monopoly power by arguing that they don’t take certain competitive actions against competitors because it’s all in the “algorithm.”  Nevertheless, Google will tweak their algorithms in ways that are best for Google, and others must pay the price.  Simply because the competitive moves are automated, doesn’t necessarily make them an improper use of monopoly power.

Of course, I love Google.  The challenge here is that IT works better when systems are integrated, but you need competition for innovation.    I’ll have to think on this more.

Commentary from Carrie: Facebook for Spies

Commentary from Carrie: Facebook for Spies

I have a highschool friend who I recently reconnected with on Facebook. She now is a lawyer for the UN, travelling to such places as Liberia and Eastern Europe to monitor elections and such.    UN employees have recently become big adopters of facebook as a way to keep up with the people that they meet in their travels.   People in these types of organizations (spies, UN lawyers) really benefit from the addition of these electronic social networks, becuase they provide tools for the far flung, loosely organized organizations they are a part of.  I wonder, though, if this means that ttraditional organzations will become more loosely organized and far flung, becuase these tools create new opportunities to monitor and track the less formal strucutres in the organization.  More on this in a couple of weeks.

The Incredible Inedible – Google « Scottamcgavin’s Weblog

The Incredible Inedible – Google « Scottamcgavin’s Weblog

Scott’s post reminds me of a forward-thinking doctor I have had a chance to work with.  The doctor said that the culture of the medical field is that if the doctor doesn’t know the answer to a particular question, the doctor will make up some excuse to step out of the exam room to go look it up in his office.  Now, with computers in many exam rooms, the doctor will sit down with the patient and Google the answer online.  The doctor finds the answer while also serving as a role model for how to search for infomration. 

I had a statistics question when I was writing my Ph.D. dissertation, so I went to an expert.  He did the same thing, sat down on Google and tracked down the answer.  I believe it was Einstien who said, “why would I memorize [the periodic table] when I can look it up.”  Google takes that sentiment to a whole new level.  Nowadays expertise isn’t about knowing the right answer but knowing where to look…and knowing its the right answer when you find it.

Web-Based Carpooling Startups

Web-Based Carpooling Startups

I thought that this was an interesting new application for Web 2.0 tools- carpooling.  Companies subscribe to the service for their employees, who can then search the database for people who have similar travel schedules.  The advantage to this service is that you can find people who travel your general route even though they may not work in the same company.

The main drawback to this service, as I see it, is that carpooling isn’t just about getting from point A to point B.  You’re trapped in a car with someone for 30 minutes to an hour, all sorts of different factors some into play – the most obvious of which being safety but also the fact that I have to sit right next to a perfect stranger for an hour.  I wonder if they have features that allow people to state what kind of rider they are (talker or non talker), and then let their carpool buddies rate their attractiveness as a carpool partner (did they stiff you on gas money, do they only shower every 3rd day, were they a safe driver?).  I’m all for technological networks and I believe that – in theory – a service like this might be better than relying on who you know personally.   The problem is that (with carpooling at least) it makes it hard to back out if its not a good fit.  The person knows who you are and where you work and you’ll have to tell them electronically at least  “I don’t like riding with you…find someone else.”  I think I’d want some advance sense of who I’m letting into my car.   The death of old-style face-to-face networks have been greatly exaggerated.