A history of Social Networks - Open always wins

Techcrunch ran a very interesting series of posts about the history of social networking. They were written by Mark Suster (@msuster). I think you should go ahead and read all the posts, but I'll pass on some highlights here to get you started.

Marks posts are about the “6 C’s of Social Networking” – Communications, connectedness, common experiences, content, commerce & cool experiences (fun!). He stresses that social networks exists before they were hyped in our time they just work better now "and there are more people doin’ it." And a bit further on: "Yes, social networks of 2010 have much better usability, have better developed 3rd-party platforms and many more people are connected.  But let’s be honest – they’re mostly the same old shit, reinvented, with more people online and trained.
But less considered is the fact that the success of the Web 2.0 companies versus the Web 1.0 ones were enhanced because they coincided with hardware that allowed us to capture more content instantly – namely images and video – otherwide Web 2.0 might have been a lot less differentiated."
He relates back to the beginning of internet and AOL. "The funny thing about AOL is that while you dialed up to the Internet, the goal of AOL was to keep you locked into their proprietary content and thus earned the classification of “walled garden” because they kept you inside AOL." From AOL he goes on to show how closed and open social networks has been successful or not. "The lesson was learned over 30 years in Silicon Valley: you create ecosystems where third-parties can innovate and thrive and you become the legitimate center of it all and can tax the system later.
He closes off with social networking trends he sees (- I only list a few of them):

• Social Networking is becoming mobile "and that adds new dimensions to how we use social networks.  The most obvious change is that now social networks become "location aware.""
• Facebook is our social graph and will be so for the next decade, Mark says. He goes on to say Facebook with make our social graph portable or we'll move to new networks. Because "nobody exists in one social network." He thinks public and private network will be more separate in the future.
• There will be lots of focus on privacy in the future.
• Social networking will mix with everything we do. "As our social graph becomes more portable I believe that social networking will become a feature in everything we do."

What really struck me in these posts is that it shouts out: Openness always wins on the long run. Do you agree? This is the case in mobile, but also in social networking (tools).

Two other nice quotes to think about:

• "Twitter is much more.  ... in a nutshell it is: an RSS reader, a chat room, instant messaging, a marketing channel, a customer service department and increasingly a data mine."
• "When you’re on Facebook you’re not on the Internet—you’re on the InterNOT."

Intranet governance and implementation of guidelines for the right and efficiënt use of social media tools and intranet apps #epem

Next up is Sean McNiven, SAP. Sean is head of the Social Web.

Sean starts out with Web 0.0. Web 0.0 was and is the coffee machine. It’s still their running communication platform. This platform is now also happening on the web. The rules are practically the same, says Sean. So the guidelines are the same as well. Be honest, be respectful and add value, don’t pick fights, separate opinion from fact, be human, etc.

A brief history of their employee network: 1995-1997 DMS and structure; 1998 SAPNet Communication, Team Collaboration and self service; 205 Corporate Portal based on Netweaver; 2007-200 Corporate Portal, Relaunch Enhanced UI and Personalization; 2010 SAP Employee Network, SAP Corporate Portal + integrated external tools and social media / Enterprise search.

The governance changed considerably over the years. From open/decentral to closed/central in 2007. Now the governance is hybrid: open groups, governed communities, expiry of unused groups.

SAP has many modules that integrate into one intranet. SAP’s intranet is the (only) way to get to SAP information and communication.

They use the Wordpress platform for SAP Internal News. The Star rating is important for them to give feedback to the Communications department. They allow comments on the news item as well.

Remark: SAP sees that the border between internal and external is blurring rapidly.

SAP is using Jive for their communities and groups. Alfresco is their backend. Communities and groups consist of online documents (wiki-ish), discussions, polls or blogs.

SAP Talk is their internal microblogging platform. They use StatusNet. They want it to be easy to post internally and/or externally at the same time.

They also use Wordpress for employee crowdsourcing. They use it to ask or vote for questions or suggestions you’d like to see addressed at Global All Hands meetings and during special information campaigns. Voting is anonymous, posting and voting can be done in your name and anonymously. They see more and more people posting in their name, showing increasement in trust.

(By the way, I just asked Sean if they use this for ideation as well. He said they used social media in general for ideation. They also installed an extension to Jive for ideation. But that didn't work well.)

Video sharing is done, called SAPTube. Everyone can upload videos.

Sean also points to their social media guidelines. He remarks they are getting shorter and shorter. It should be one page max. Or as Microsoft says: Don't be stupid.

From Atoms to Bits and Back

Oof, really have to get back to blogging... I've been very busy with a product creation process re-engineering project. In general terms it's business process re-engineering. Recently the business team release their process descriptions, way of working descriptions and requirements to manage the processes. I'm in the Architecture Team, but also one of the Functional Team members. So now it was our turn to take the requirements and flip them into a functional specification. Interesting but cumbersome work...

As I tweeted I'm also reading Chris Anderson's book 'Free'. And I'm really enjoying it! One of the interesting remarks he makes is: every that goes from atoms to bit will be 'free'.

But Chris Anderson doesn't stop thinking. In the last Wired issues he says the following. Very interesting stuff!

"Peer production, open source, crowdsourcing, user-generated content — all these digital trends have begun to play out in the world of atoms, too. The Web was just the proof of concept. Now the revolution hits the real world. In short, atoms are the new bits."
- In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits | Magazine (view on Google Sidewiki)