Global Neighbourhoods

SAP Global Survey: Joe Thornley

[Joe Thornley in Vegas, March 07. Photo by Shel]

Through blogging and social media, Joe Thornley and I have become pretty good friends over the last couple of years.Joe, a partner in Thornley Fallis, and agency in Ottawa and Toronto that helps companies integrate social media into PR. Joe was the first person I invited to respond to the SAP Social Media Survey and a few hours ago, he became the 24th to respond.

Any chagrin I felt for his slowness to respond has been offset by the quality and innovation of it. Joe decided to post an online video in response, which in itself shows how social media has evolved since Joe became a blogging buddy way back in 2006.  He also shows the similarities and contrasts between the US and Canada and how social media may be more important to Canada than even the US.  As evidence he offers the fast embrace of Facebook and the fact that Flickr was started by Canadians.

Thanks, Joe. Good post and you have taken the survey into an entirely new social medium.

SAP Global Survey: Kris Hoet in Belgium

[Kris Hoet & Bike Babe Sculpture in Brussel. Photo By Shel]

Kris Hoet is

Marketing Communications Manager for the MSN/Windows Live European team. I met him first through blogging, and then he invited me to visit Brussels last October when Canadian VC Rick Segal and I were traveling through Europe. Kris proved to be a great host. He gave us a great walking tour through the remarkable Brussels Old Town district, then hosted a blogger lunch in a most impressive restaurant where we discovered that most Belgian bloggers were friends.  We then chatted with some interesting Microsofties in an ancient tower they had converted into a meeting room with a great view. With interesting views in mind, I thought Kris would have some for the SAP Global Survey and I was right. 

1. How is the Internet adoption rate in Belgium? Are there still problems getting broadband installed into the home?

Belgium's total population is about 10.5 million and our online population is about 4.6 million. According to a recent Blognation post on the state of Belgium, “About 2.5 million of those people (or an estimated 50% of Belgian households) have a broadband Internet connection. ADSL and cable make up more than 92% of Internet connections, but the growth rate of new broadband connections is staggeringly low. The three most apparent reasons: the southern part of Belgium (Walloon region) is lagging behind, PC penetration is a mere 57%, and prices remain enormously high (about twice as expensive as neighbour countries France and The Netherlands). There is a virtual duopoly of the major Internet service providers Telenet and Belgacom (the Belgian State holds the majority of shares of the latter).”

 2. What are people doing with social media in Belgium?  What's popular? What's not?

That same Blognation article answers this one as well:

“Belgium has a relatively small but very active blogging community, with a concentration of heavy social network users (and more than 300 estimated Twitter users). This year, the Belgian blogging community organized its own awards show dubbed the Bwards, recognizing the best Belgian blogs, bloggers and vlogs. It is unclear how many bloggers use WordPress, TypePad and the likes, and how many are on Belgian platforms like Belgacom’s Skynetblogs, Telenet’s Digs Blogs, or other initiatives like Skyrock and Bloggen.be. Most media groups (are starting to) incorporate blogs and social networking features in their online properties. Belgium even has its own blog search engine, De Blogoloog, while other services like Blogium and BlogObs serve as Techmeme-like aggregators of popular links. There are a lot of opportunities for Belgians to engage in social interaction (and dating) on the web: Chat.be, Rendez-Vous, ASLpage, LNM.eu, etc. Some community websites target specific niches, e.g. Creativeskills for the creative sector or Dogsontheblock for dog owners. Join2Grow acts as a pan-European community site for entrepreneurs, and business travelers who regularly take trips to Paris and London might want to check out PlaceToBiz.”

 

The only thing I would add is that you have to know that most global players don’t localize their services (in language) for a market such as Belgium. Therefore, you will see ENG language services like Wordpress or Twitter because of the early adopter usage, but not that much for MySpace or Facebook. Again, all the key bloggers are on Facebook, but it’s definitely not widespread due to the language. One local service that wasn’t mentioned here is GarageTV, which is Telenet’s Youtube clone.

 

Also the Blognation post doesn’t mention anything about Windows Live Spaces, which is localized for Belgium and there are over 1 million Windows Live Spaces in the country. Neither does it talk about Windows Live Messenger which is by far the most used Messenger client in the country with over 3.4 million active users. On 4.6 million internet users, that sure ain’t bad ;)

 

3. How, if at all, is social media impact life in Belgium? How about just among young people?

I think most of the impact is among young people. Yes we have about 300,000 50+ users on Live Messenger, but it’s the youth segment that uses it hardcore. "MSN" is a verb in Belgium. e.g. "Let’s MSN later on," etc… referring to Messenger. It’s the young ones who share photos, get hooked up on new services, who only find their job through online services and as such are more quickly attracted to the Web 2.0 job services like expertize.be . It’s mainly youth that watch movies online, or post clips on Youtube and the like. But in the other age groups I don’t think the impact is that big… for now.

 

4. Let's focus on business. What kinds of companies are adopting social media?  Is it being used internally or externally?

The interactive advertising agencies are pushing for it very hard, but there are only few companies that have adopted much of it. There are great campaigns out there coming from Belgian agencies, that make very good use of the social media aspect. One of these that got launched just recently is Jealous Computers to promote the Nokia N95 cellphone. Some companies have CEO bloggers, but very few and if there are, these companies are mainly online businesses. Skynet (the ADSL operator) used to have a blogging CEO for instance. The idea of opening up for comments, feedback, 2-way conversation still seems to scare the hell out of people.

 So I would say, that if you see companies making much use of social media, their agency is probably the one to thank and, of course, as everywhere you have individuals who totally get it that fight the systems from the inside. The last business segment that is maybe getting into this, is the traditional media in their online presence (newspapers, TV, radio). They introduced their blog(s), RSS feeds, podcasts, debate options, interactive TV shows that made use of the online …

 5. Got any interesting case studies?

All examples are either in Dutch or in French so hard to read for your int’l audience I guess. I think of the Nsights website (for Nokia Nseries) at http://www.nsights.be/ (hey is that Shel Israel in there? J). We had the Paola246 case, which is quite interesting as it concerned a video of a mysterious new blogger in the beginning but ended up being a creation by Het Paleis which is a theater, and the whole online conversation with this Paola246 was the piece basically (almost only online (more here: http://www.hetpaleis.be/events.php?id=157&parent=53). Once you’ve put these answers up online, I’ll post the link to some of my distinguished online colleagues, I’m sure they can come up with some other cool stuff.

 

6. What about at Microsoft? How is the Blue Monster using social media in Belgium? What about in the EU?

I would think of it as two-way: (1)  I feel like we can go a lot further in using social media ideas on our own products like the MSN.com portals in all countries but most of that is driven from Redmond, and (2) We try and be part of the conversation and there we do have quite a track record already.

We’ve been trying things out for the last 2 years. We invited bloggers to small events where we open up discussion on our services. We invite bloggers to what used to be press events only. We were present at events such as Barcamps, several Microsoft colleagues started their own blogs to reach out to their audience on a specific topic or to engage more in the conversation. We sponsored LeWeb3 last year, invited some bloggers with us to MIX07 in Vegas (Microsoft Web Conference), … and so on. With +17.000 Microsoft colleagues on Facebook and 3.500 Microsoft bloggers I think we’re not lagging behind here.

 

7. What impact do you think social media is having on young people in the EU?

It is significantly changing the way they consume media. Think about multi-tasking, more on demand viewing, etc… but none of that is unique to the EU. I guess the main difference with the EU and the US or Asia is probably the speed on how people hook up on this. In Asia, the mobile element of it is key, more than anywhere else. In France, blogging is quite big, but less so in Germany, … but you know all that. It’s in your book .

 

8. What social media tools do you use?  How do they impact you personally and professionally?

I have accounts everywhere, but there are some services that I use a lot.

• Bloglines: because it syncs with my desktop feedreader and so I can read it on mobile as well
• Wordpress: for my blog(s)
•  Live Messenger: with 350 buddies on the list, a lot of conversations happen here
• Facebook: more and more addicted as we keep using it
• MyBlogLog
• Technorati, Blogpulse, … :blogtracking (my own and others)
• Twitter (and Jaiku/Pownce – although most interaction is on Twitter)
• Delicious: for my bookmarking
• Windows Live Writer: for offline blogging, and handy for multiple blogs
• Digg, Techmeme, …: keeping on top of the tech news

Key to all this is my feedreader, in which I have around 300 feeds, together with my own blog. Reading and commenting with others, as well as writing and creating your own conversation got me new conversations, got me meeting new people, like you for instance, … I learned a lot from that and had conversations that would have been almost impossible without it.

 9. What advice do you have for EU-based corporate communications professionals regarding social media?

I would give the same advice to any corporation with one special remark when it comes to Europe and that is that you have to think about language. As for the US, we can easily interact with anyone out there from Redmond, something that is hard to do in Europe in a sense that I don’t want the interaction to happen from HQ in London, but on a local level. Now this only counts for bigger corporations, but it’s an important element. It will force companies like Microsoft to make sure we can educate our local offices on this, instead of hiring someone in HQ to understand and takes care of things.

SAP Global Survey: Allan Martinson

[Estonian VC Allan Martinson on a rainy day in Tallinn. Photo by Shel]

Allan Martinson, is a journalist turned venture capitalist and is founder of Martinson Trigon Venture Partners, the first private equity investment firm in the Baltic states. Last October, he served as my guide during a visit to Tallinn, Estonia, after he told me he could introduce me to some interesting people. These turned out to include the nation's president, a former prime minister, Skype's COO among several interesting entrepreneurs. Here are his answers o the questions I asked as part of the SAP Global Survey.

1. You are probably the only VC with investments in Russia, the Baltics and the US. Can you describe your strategy in operating in these three distinctly different cultures?

To be exact, we do not invest into American companies per se, but very often our Russian portfolio companies have an American presence (a sales or head office or at least registration).

Our investment strategy is indeed different in the Baltics than in Russia. When we invest into a Baltic company, we can be sure there will be no big corporate governance, taxation and other general management issues, which are omnipresent in Russia. On the other hand, the ambition of the Baltic companies is often limited to the Baltic/Nordic region while Russian companies have global ambitions from the very beginning. Also, Russia is a huge and fast-growing market of its own.

In other words, Russian companies have huge risks but big ambitions. The Baltic companies are nice and nimble but very limited in growth targets. The best would be to marry the Baltic managerial talent with Russian ambitions but unfortunately those regions have so little interaction that it has proved to be almost impossible.

Most of the leads in the Baltics tend to be related to e-services (both in public and private sector) and consumer internet. Those are rather based on business innovation than technological breakthroughs. The Baltics have one of the highest internet penetration rates in the world and the small size of the countries makes launching new services extremely fast. Also, those nations are very quick adopters of new services which make them ideal testing grounds.

2. Can you give me some examples of successful Baltic social media companies?

• Skype (of course)
• Playtech (the leading developer of software for online casinos)
• Fotki.com (the # 10 global photo sharing site)
• Hansabank's e-banking solution (one of the most advanced internet banks in the wolrd)
• Estonian e-government
• Estonian mobile parking solutions

3. Tell me about the Russian companies.  What are their strengths? Name some of the successes.

The Russians are strong in developing software products for professionals. They are often based on really good and innovative technologies, which form the basis of their success. On the other hand, the Russian companies are not so strong in understanding and developing the user's interface and needs of the consumer. That is why most of the Russian success stories are companies whose products target professional users only.

Examples of Russian (or Russian-originated) success stories:

• Acronis (data backup solutions, due to be listed on NASDAQ soon)

• Parallels, Inc. (virtualization technology enabling to run Windows on Apple computers)

• SW Soft (another virtualization company)
• Kaspersky Labs (antivirus company)
• Spirit DSP (IP telephony and DSP company whose technology powers also iPhone)
• Parallel Graphics (3D manuals for aerospace industries)
• Transmeta (the processor company)
• etc

In addition, Russia hosts a multitude of fully-owned development centers of American companies who employ between people each - ranging from Intel to Boeing to Sun Micro to Microsoft to T-Systems to IBM.

4. Estonia is among the world's most connected countries. How has social media played with society in general? How about in business and social media?

Estonia is a very small country and this has put certain imprint on social media as well. The country's internet population (~70% of the total) is extremely active in using social networking sites (like rate.ee or Google's orkut.com) and writing comments to the articles of mainstream online media (like newspapers sites or Delfi, the leading portal). However, blogging has not really flown in this country. There are a multitude of blogs, of course, many of them maintained by online or offline opinion leaders, but the impact of blogging on society has been much less than in the U.S.

5. How has your business and strategy been impacted by the recent friction with Russia?  Can  social media help diffuse the situation or is that a naïve perspective?

My business has NOT been affected by recent frictions - but probably because it is in industries where people normally don't think of nationalities at all. Those industries are also not subject to government regulation. The situation is different in the transit, timber and oil/gas industries, of course.

Social media has done very little to diffuse the situation, rather vice versa. There are a lot of intelligent blogs and commentators on both sides, of course. But a majority of the

6.You were the lead investor in rate.ee, a social network that by some estimates had over 90% of Estonian youth as registered members. How did it get such a huge percent of Estonia's young people?  What are the social and political implications of this online network?  Does rate.ee expect to maintain members as they grow older?

90% is the correct figure. Rate.ee has registered users in a country of 1.3 million people, an equivalent of Myspace  having 80 million American accounts alone. 75% of Rate’s users are active (at least one visit per month) and 55% visit at least once a week. They receive 20  million daily page views.

It is probably natural that 90% of the internet-connected youngsters in ANY country will use some social networking site or sites. In a small nation-states like Estonia it is natural that the users go to local sites where their friends are and where everyone speaks their language. Rate was just in the right place in right time.

There are similar sites in Latvia (draugiem.lv, one.lv), Lithuania (one.lt), Hungary (iwiw.hu) etc which enjoy similar penetrations. So, it is not purely an Estonian phenomena.

7. Rate.ee recently started a social network in Russia.  How is it similar and how is it different?

Rate’s Russian site limpa.ru has gained users but only 25% of them are active (have logged in once in 30 days). Limpa’s loyal users are mostly Baltic Russians, which is a different crowd from “true” Russians. They have their own micro communities. They use Latin letters instead of Cyrillic due to absence of Russian keyboards.

There is no established leader in Russian social networking scene yet. Sites like odnoklassniki.ru (classmates), moikrug.ru (“Russian LinkedIn”),  have been growing fast but never gained over 1-1.2 m users (less than 5% of Russia’s 30-million strong internet community). Dating sites like loveplanet.ru, mamba.ru and damochka.ru have been more successful by getting 3-5 million profiles and up to $30 m in annual revenue but they cannot be named true social networking sites.

In fact, I should also note thatnote that the Russian livejournal is de facto the leading social network in the country.

8. Can you tell me about social media in Russia and the Baltics?  What tools are being used?  Do people in Russia and the Baltics have computers and broadband connection?

I think I answered to your question in large extent above. Some penetration statistics:

• Internet penetration in the Baltics is about 50%, (70%) in Estonia. Broadband penetration is about 25% in the Baltics and 40-50% in Estonia.
• In Russia, one must distinguish between Moscow/St Peterburg and the rest of Russia. I believe internet and broadband penetration in those big cities is similar to the Baltics, while Russian overall internet penetration is about 20% and broadband is less than 5%.

However, the mobile penetration is 100% in the Baltics and almost 100% in Russia. For many people in Russia, their cell phones are the first device to access internet.

9. This survey is, of course, designed to help SAP, a global software enterprise whose core competency is in ERP.  What advice would you have for them in developing strategy for your section of the world?

I believe SAP has lots of competence on how to do business in these countries already. In Russia, SAP IS the high-end ERP market, and in the Baltics they are the market leaders as well.

In my opinion, they have done very well in Russia, and being German has actually helped as the Russians have lots of positive feelings toward Germany. They have strong partners who know how to navigate Russian waters.

As for further strategy I would strongly recommend SAP look into acquisition possibilities, most of all of a company called 1C which is de facto leader in midsize ERP market in Russia.

10. How much of a barrier is language, between countries in your area?  How does that impact social media and business in general?

Language is much more important in Europe than most Americans tend to think. In order to do business in Europe you must be local. You cannot achieve market share for your ERP or social media enterprise if it speaks a foreign language. Period.

11. Looking forward, say five years, how do you think social media will have impacted culture and business in central Europe and Russia?

The impact will be huge and strong but I believe social media here will be more intertwined with traditional media than in the U.S. The main social media sites will be owned and maintained by large media companies, telecoms or oligarchs.

Online Video starting to give people access to candidates

I've written before about my frustration with politicians and their online efforts. It seems to me that to date, the presidential candidates have used online only to one-directionally distribute their messages out and to raise funds.  They have shown little if any interest in actually using the Internet for two-way conversations with voters.

When I suggested at a recent conference that it was time that candidates use the Internet for conversations, a political pro sneered that I was suggesting presidential candidates have to email voters. 

Tomorrow night, there will be two small but significant steps in the path toward internet-enhanced democracy.  First, is the CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential candidate's debate that starts at 4 pm Pacific.  CNN will televise a live debate and its editors will select video clips of questions that have been uploaded on YouTube over recent weeks.  They'll do the same for Republican candidates in September.

This is significant in several ways, but it still wedges professionals between the candidates and the people they want to serve. If you ask me, voters can do just fine without gatekeepers and filtering systems, but this is progress and I like the concept.

Immediately following the debate, John Edwards, will become the second Democratic presidential candidate to appear on Ustream.  Immediately following the CNN?YouTube debates  Edwards will go live on Ustream to talk directly with voters via live chat comments. 

While YouTube has video clips and Ustream only has text chat, the questions asked on YouTube will be reviewed by candidate handlers and newscaster screeners. Someday, and I hope some day soon, we'll be able to see the politicos and the inquiring voters on a split live screen, but not just yet. I'm on the Ustream team, but even if I were in the neutral position I prefer Ustream's approach. i think the more direct we can make democracy, the better.

What I like most is that we are in the early stages of a new and better way to select candidates. The internet is beginning to restore the democracy part of the elective process.

I can only dream about the role online video and other Internet functionality will contribute the presidential election of 2012.

Josh Hallett Says Blogging Hot in the Enterprise

[Josh Hallett. Photo by Shel]

I always learn something interesting or useful when I listen to Josh Hallett of Hyku, Inc. speak. His recent appearance with Alex Kim from SolutionSet at Third Thursday, the marketing/communications networking event, hosted at VOCE Communications in Palo Alto was no exception.

As a web consultant, Josh's clients are overwhelmingly large and global.  As a social media company consultant my clients are small as mine are small but still global, thanks to the internet.

One of Josh's main points, confirmed as well by Alex Kim, is that the social media tool of choice in the enterprise these days is the blog.  This is in striking contrast to what I'm seeing from the corner of the field where I sit. From where I sit attention has moved on to online video and particularly online social networks.
A few attendees were disappointed in Josh's other comments, particularly those that made IT sound like a barrier.  Yet almost all the feedback I get says this is true. But I have always found that Josh's enterprise insights are accurate and if he says blogs are hot and online video is not, then I tend to assume he is accurate.

This confirms the argument that blogs are normalizing. I sit on the edge of technology, where early adopters are,well, adopting early. Enterprise is slower to adopt and slower to adapt and as they begin to immerse themselves in the blogosphere, the geeks in Silicon Valley are getting excited about new technologies.

What is most interesting to me is that the timeline has gotten so much shorter.It took about a dozen years for the enterprise to accept the PC.  It took about six years for them to see the value in wired networks.  It took about three years for IT to accept that notebooks were less of a threat to corporate security than was originally feared.

Now, less than 18 months after my world was euphoric with the excitement of blogging, they are being ingested into large corporate bellies. The world is moving faster and faster or so it seems to me.

SAP Global Survey: Nob Seki

According to Technorati, there are more Japanese bloggers than English-speaking bloggers, which seems surprising to me because there are so many more people who speak English than Japanese.  When I interviewed Nob Seki's Six Apart Japan's EVP & GM two years ago, he enlightened me to the significance of culture on influencing social media. I used some of his comments from June 2005 as a starting point for my interview with him for the SAP Global Survey.

1. When we last chatted,  Japanese blogging was  taking a different path than in the US. There were more women than men blogging. Business was using blogs as a direct sales tool. No one was using the Comments feature  Instead everyone linked through their own blogs. Have these trends changed or stayed the same since that conversation?

Basically, those trends have continued with some notable changes. More business users have  blogs for marketing and communicating with customers. According to  Internet Whitepaper 2007 published earlier this month by Impress Group, 13.8% of companies have  their own blogs, and in particular, 27% of companies who have nine employees or less  have blogs.

Companies are becoming more accustomed to responses from the Internet. More business blogs have opened up Comments.

2. What about the other social media tools, such as social  networking, wikis, podcasts, online video, etc?  How is adoption coming?

Social networking and video sharing are two big services in Japan. Social Networking Services (SNS) are widely used. The leading SNS mixi attracts more than ten million users, bigger  than any other blogging service. However, it does not seem to me that SNS in Japan is the same as that in the US, because people use SNS to share diaries, which is essentially "blogs" in the US. The big  difference is that mixi and other Japanese SNS can control access over diaries for greater privacy.  Remember, the reason why business blogging used to keep comments from  end-users because companies fear attacks by end-users. Personal bloggers have very similar concerns. That is why, I  think, mixi has become very popular.

3. How are businesses using social media tools, either internally or externally?

Businesses are using external blogs and SNS very aggressively and positively. Blog marketing is one of the MUST items if you consider promotion on the Net. Not only do companies prepare their marketing blogs for consumers, but they try to make use of the power of  bloggers, especially what we called "alpha bloggers" (A-listers). In the past 6-12 months. companies have started hosting "blogger  conferences" that are very much like press conferences for bloggers.

Internal blogging, or "intrablogs," as well call them have started up more recently, since Winter 2006, after  people started saying "Enterprise 2.0," many companies are now  interested in deploying blogs (and other social media tools). Intel's  SuiteTwo (blog, wiki and RSS reader) was recently introduced and NEC is selling into the enterprise market as well. It appears that in the past year more  Enterprise 2.0 type solutions have been deployed into Japanese corporations.

Blog tools have been used as corporate Content Management Systems (CMS) here for a few years. According to the Impress Internet White Paper 2007, Movable Type is ranked as the #1 Corporate CMS  tool (27.2%), and other blogging tools as #2 (22.1%) whereas  traditional CMS tools are ranked #5 or lower with single digit percentage market share.

4. Are there many social networks?

Yes. I mentioned mixi already, but I should point out that social networks in Japan do not look like those in the US. Mixi, is not  the place where people meet people, but rather where people invite their existing friends to share diaries (and other information). Actually, these social networks still maintain "invitation only" policies to ensure safety and privacy rather than blogs, which are fairly public.

Probably, many Japanese people feel more comfortable with "closed"social environments and in the Japanese language, SNS is perceived as a service where only invited people can read your diary.

5.  Do Japanese people continue to keep their personal and professional personas firmly separated or has social media begun to blend the two as is occurring in the US?

     Yes and no. I do not have any quantitative figures, but I usually see both.

6. Has social media impacted communications between Japanese people and people in other countries?  Why or why not?

No. Only selected people feel okay to communicate with foreign people in English. For many Japanese people, communication in English is not a comfortable experience - they usually feel ashamed of their poor English skills, so they hesitate to communicate in English.

7. Western perceptions of the major Japanese enterprise is that it is  very top-down in its structure. Has social media had any impact on that or is it pretty much the same?

It seems to me it needs some more time. Social media inside the  corporation is being adopted in the last 6-12 months and we hope it will change aspects of some corporate cultures that slow down innovation.

8. What advice do you have for a Western enterprise wishing to use social media to do business or build relationships with Japanese people?

Do you assume, by this question B2B use? If so, making use of social media should help Western people get along with Japanese business people.

First, many Japanese business people hesitate to speak English, but usually are comfortable in written form (they tend to prefer  emails/IMs/blogs to conference calls for that reason as well).

Asian people are generally much more "context" oriented (if you would  like to know more, please read "The Geography of Thought : How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why"), so social media is the  perfect way to get along, because you can understand not only "what do you want" but "how/why do you want to do this," which makes Japanese people more comfortable.

10. Additional comments?

Social media is widely known and widely used here in Japan by PC users, and more mobile users are expected to be using social media.

SAP Global Survey: Stewart Marshall

Stewart Marshall, a Brit who has migrated to Canada takes the roll-your-own version of the SAP Global Survey. He talks about how social media has transformed his life and will continue to do so, how social networks helped him connect in a new country and how SAP needs to better understand customers through social media.

A few people have asked how I'm conducting the survey and there are several ways to be included. I am interviewing 50-75 people by email.  Each has the choice to post the answers on their own site or on this one, with me pointing to it. Anyone else who wishes, can take the roll-your-own version and post it on their own sites.  let me known and I will point to it.

Keep those cards and letters coming in.

It's a FaceBook World

When I interviewed Scoble for the SAP Global Survey, he delivered the one-liner that has been enduring.  "It's a Facebook world." Robert has been prolific in praise for the upstart social network on his blog and I do not think he is overstating the case.

I have been on Facebook for less than five weeks. Today my Facebook Friends list outgrew my LinkedIn network, which I think I joined in 2004. But size is not what impresses, it's strength. I really connect with the people in my Facebook network.  They have been the source of information and business contacts. Facebook is also a Hell of a lot more fun. Unlike LinkedIn, it is not just a network, it is a very social network.

Facebook's soaring success was triggered by a single strategic move.  It opened it's API's to third party develpors a couple of months ago.  It stated with 65 of them. Yesterday, I had the pleasure to meet Chi-Hua Chien, an associate at Accel Partner's Facebook's lead investor.  He told me that Facebook already had over 2000 approved apps, and that there were already tens of thousands of unapproved.  They were unapproved because Facebook cannot keep up with the thundering herd of developers running to this incredible platform.

It goes to show you what some people have been saying all along. Open beats closed and fun beats formal.

Blogging. Not passe, just normalizing

About ten days ago, I posted a question: "Is blogging passe?" It got more response than I had expected, some of it nastier than I expected and much of it not accurately reflecting what I said.  Some suggested that Naked Conversations had been wrong, others contended it was the overdue time for the death of A Listers. My favorite was the suggestion that it was just my blog that sucked.

So, let's get the personal part out of the way. I was a PR guy for more than 25 years.  I am aware that for everyone, fame is fleeting.  I am perfectly comfortable waking up some morning and discovering that Shel Israel has become soooo yesterday. In some ways I look forward to it.

I posted my question, because I do try to spot early trends.  In this case, I was not so early Steve Rubel and Robert Scoble had both predicted the cooling of blogs six months ago. I was more mystified about Technorati's ranking than anything else. The self-proclaimed authority experts had kept me at about the same rank, even when my analytics were saying my readership had dropped measurable for a few months.

In the last couple of weeks, thanks in part to the SAP Global Survey and in part to the Passe post, my readership has bounced back up and then some. But, remarkably, my Technorati ranking has remained about the same, making me question the credibility of their ranking system.

As for Naked Conversations, Robert and I wrote: "Some day,people will look back at the tools we are using today and they will marvel at how quaint they were." The book was not locked into blogging, which in 2005, was the only social media blogging tool.  The book was locked into the conversation and really just updated what the Cluetrain had said a half dozen years earlier.

The conversation has moved beyond the blog. Conferences just on blogging are fading.  Blogs on blogging are about as interesting as email about emailing or Faxgrams about fax machines. In the past few weeks the conversation has moved onto the rapid emergence of microblogging services, online video and to a very large degreee, the meteoric ascent of FaceBook.

This seems to me to be as it should be. People talk about what's new. They use what is normal.  It  becomes part of their everyday lives. People may talk about the iPhone, but they rarely marvel at the remarkable fact that you can actually use them to talk to a remote human being in realtime.

Blogs have become part of everyday lives for millions of people. The blogs are not the revolution.  The conversation is the revolution, and the tools for online conversation keep getting better and more diverse and that is how it should be.

SAP Global Survey: Nicole Simon

I had a little trouble tracking down Nicole Simon for the SAP Global Survey and I figured she was important, not just for her legendary candor and wit, but because she has always seemed to have her hand on the pulse of European social media. It turned out that she had joined Sam Sethi's new Blognation, a new online newsletter reporting on the news of social media in the world, all in the English language. That project is obviously one of great interest to the SAP project. Nicole's answers are, as usual, terrific.

1. The SAP Global Survey is  concerned with social media and how it emerges in different cultures and how it transcends the formidable barriers of language. But Blognation is one-directional.  It takes Spanish, Italian, Chinese and the  world's other major languages and reports what is happening to English-speaking people.  Does Blognation plan to also reverse English events into other languages or does it expect English will become the common language of the Internet and social media?

You would have to ask Sam this one, but Blognation's goa is different. To bring information about what is happening in these countries to establish a common ground.  English is the de facto language for this audience. Personally, I see no reason to go back into the native languageitself because that would not foster common discussion among everyone, but would just make the old silos again. As long as there isn't one big Babelfish, we will have to agree on one language.

One big big goal I have with Blognation is exactly that: To kick start local entrepreneurs and startups; to get them to start thinking internationally, because the world is becoming one huge place - and it is not enough to stay in your own little corner.

You might also get some information out of this for the survey:
http://detech.blognation.com/2007/07/09/willkommen-to-blognation-germany/

2. What similarities and differences do you see in the way social media is  emerging in the different regions and cultures of the world?

My view of my world is limited to the languages I can read - therefore I have no  clue at all outside the USA and Europe, even more Germany than Europe.

One thing is that people should learn that there is more than one solution to
things. In Germany, Xing is the dominant social network for business, and although the German geek crowd uses Facebook, in Germany studivz.de does run 2.3 billion page impressions per month. If Facebook would ever come over,
they will find it very difficult to just take over the market. Due to it being separated from the rest of the German-speaking world, the whole effect of Facebook and its applications is unknown to Germans. Similar, would be their interest in connecting online as well as offline. Social media is a tool like everyone other and if you bring the right toolset, everybody will jump on using it.

3. When Robert and I wrote Naked Conversations, French blogging was  fast-emerging, but not so in Germany.  Has that changed? We know of course that German-based SAP has embraced social media.  What about other German companies of any size?

Blogging is still not very visible, but it does exist. There is no huge provider giving out numbers like in France; also many  users do not care or even know about Technorati or Alexa. Alexa numbers are usually used  to prove something - total bullshit when it comes to countries other than the US.

Companies slowly start to blog a bit, I remember an experiment with mobile phone provider O2 when I was at Cebit, and also Siemens running a Cebit blog.

Tools like blogging, podcasting and Second Life are much more used for internal reasons and I think that is a good development. Perhaps it is a mentality thing not to bust out about how AWESOME you are, but being more interested in how to get things done internally.

As journalists still have no clue about blogging, it is no wonder they do not write about it. Add again the language barrier and the buzz around blogging does not reach companies much.

4. Let's go back to language. The EU has a common currency, but it's
population speaks over 50 languages. Can social media play a role in
changing that?

The EU does not have a common currency, only a currency which a lot of the
countries of the EU agree to have. UK for example does not, nor does Denmark.

I rather give the role to computer science and linguists to finally build a Babelfish, but social media can help to connect people - even across language barriers. Social media allows me to stay connected even though I am not next to you.

Does Social Media allow me to get a stronger feeling for EU? Yes. But not so  much because of the tools, I think.

5.  How does a start up in Italy or Ireland or Germany use social media to reach global markets?

No clue about the other markets - hence blognation. As for Germany, I would
say that is a typical question of somebody writing. First of all, do I want to
go international? Second, what kind of social media I use depends a lot
on the targeted group. Having a strong German accent but going for audio might
not be the right way for me to go forward.

And if my target group does not even use social media, I can try as much as I want, but it will not result in anything. So if this is the right choice to go for social media, I would assume it is the same as everywhere else, with the only addition that it makes sense to do it in both languages, German and International.

If it is your choice and makes sense for your market, go local with the language as well.

6.  What social media tools are the most popular in the EU? Why?

No clue. I would assume blogging cause it is most convenient, bookmarking  perhaps, and sharing.

7.  Where is it all going?  What will social media in business look like five years from today?

I do not know what it will look like.

The challenge will be to help the individual make good use of the tools and avoid problems / irritation like with privacy. We are going to be a much more connected world, though I see that many normal users do not even recognize what they are using and why.

I would expect some groups to be more internationally oriented than now, and in general expect the user will have higher expectations. Meaning also that I do not care about structures of your company, I can read that you are offering a special deal to country A but not to B.

I, for example, am highly annoyed how airlines treat me just because I am not in the US. Communities like flyertalk already show that this kind  of Business 1.0 - the more people get to know the game, the more the businesses have to change their approach in marketing, management and communication.

8. Do you have any social media related advice for SAP as either a major business software provider or as an aspirant to become a global thought leader in social media?

I have had experience working with SAP, my whole 15 years of enterprise live and if there is anything I can tell you it would be that SAP being the leader in social media itself is not going to happen.

If they try to do that they would be like me trying on a size 6 dress
and pretend to be slim. Business, social media, its applications, its benefits and how businesses / management / organization need to change - there I see a good possibility because SAP understands the processes of a company, not just the technology. Something IBM  feels like, even though they have a VERY good reputation about this space.

SAP customers look for objective orientation, guidance in this world full of confusing things and technologies, this is an area where SAP can be a good global player. In the whole Social Media space? Absolutely unbelievable.

9. Can social media play a significant role in strengthening the EU?  Why or why not?

Yes, through being able to connect with one another, outside of the traditional
channels of media and power / politics.