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 neighbor 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 N series) 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 Feed reader, 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: Japan's 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 goal 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 language itself 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.

YourTrumanShow names me to Board of Directors

I am extremely proud to announce that YourTrumanShow has named me to serve on its board of directors. YourTrumanShow, founded by two Italians, Arturo Artom, a sequential entrepreneur and Luca Ferraro, successful TV producer and software designer.

YourTrumanShow is a video blogging site, designed so that everyday people can tell their lives on video in the same way that people tell their stories on their blogs. It is still in private beta, but I can get you a password to get in if you want to have a look at it. Just email me here.

Jaqueline Zenn Rolls her own SAP Global Survey

Busy day for me on the SAP Global Survey. Germany's Nicole Simon has sent in her answers which I will post tonight and Jacqueline Zenn has rolled her own answers to it over on her site, "Chasing the Southern Cross."

Jacqueline talks about how blogging has expanded her world and social network and believes that it will narrow the digital divide in coming years. She also believes that blogging is stronger than it ever was, it's just that the platforms are changing.
She's reading more blogs than she used to read.

I have not regularly read Chasing the Southern Cross, but I like her articulation and passion.  I am now a subscriber.

SAP Global Survey: Loic Le Meur

[Loic LeMeur geeks out at dinner in Paris, December 2005. I'm sure the technology he's carrying today is newer than what you see here.  Photo by Shel.]

Mon ami Loic Le Meur, host of Les Web and Europe's best-known blogger has responded to my questions for the SAP Global Survey. He paints a broad and detailed picture of what is happening in Europe saying that social media gives the EU a real chance to compete with Silicon Valley. He also talks about the current hot trends of microblogging and online video.

Go read it.

SAP Global Survey: Ewan McIntosh

[Edublogger Ewan McIntosh(l) chats with Canadian investor Rick Segal on streets of Edinburgh. Photo by Shel]

Scotland's Ewan McIntosh is a research practitioner for Scotland’s national education agency, Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS). As such he has played a major role in the remarkable adaptation of social media into Scotland's public schools. He has also become prominent in the international blogging community and is speaks globally on the subject of social media in education.

Here are his responses to the SAP Global Survey:

1.  Both your expertise and passion are social media in education. Can you tell me a bit about how the two are being used together in Scotland and how that will impact Scotland overall?

Scotland has been a bit different from other countries in terms of adoption of social media, because most of the impetus has come through the education system first. Just one example: the project I have been working with since September 2006 has grown from 20 or so teachers sharing their ideas, experiences in the classroom and resources through blogs, to somewhere around 350 by this summer, with around 800 bloggers in the education area alone. Throughout Scotland educators are realizing what is to be gained from having a wider pool of expertise on which to draw, and social media is the glue binding them together.

The impact on education of children is profound, even if the children themselves are still getting limited use of social media, especially when they hit secondary school (yes, there are more kids in Primary schools doing exciting things with social media than those aged 11+). As teachers refine their practice quicker and with better expertise to choose from, in the form of reflections and ideas and action research, the education of our children improves in tandem.

The impact for our nation in years to come will be significant for this very reason.

2.  How do you expect social media in Scotland to impact Scottish business?

Scottish business has been slow off the mark but is now picking up more speed as people like me and my colleagues at the Edinburgh Coffee Morning shout louder about it. There are, unfortunately, a lot of ad agencies and individuals who aren't really using social media themselves on a daily basis, who mislead companies and organizations as to what this might bring them. That is, they're busy promising short term gains when the reality is something more like two years for any tangibles to kick in. I'm starting some work with Scottish Enterprise, the public/private body which helps small to medium enterprises in their business. Hopefully I'll start to mentor a particularly Scottish kind of business later this year to see what social media might do for it.

3. Let's expand to the EU.  How are the social media changing culture in the EU?  Is it closing or expanding cultural differences?

My expertise in other countries varies, depending on the country. It's such a diorama of culture to start with before you take social media in to the mix. My wife is French but managed to miss the wave of social media. Our French friends, on the other hand, wouldn't refer to it as 'blogging' or 'social media'. They're just having too much fun sharing their pics and family news through MSN and Skyblogs, not caring what they call it.

Slovenia is one to watch, since the education minister put in huge broadband pipes to most towns and cities for the schools. It's only a matter of time before they leapfrog other, more 'established' nations that have plugged away at social media adoption for some years. Ireland, for example, has a terrible state of affairs at the moment regarding broadband. The Fisheries minister there has more to do with internet access than any other - they needed it for the relay points for fishing reports, as far as I know.

4.  What happens to business and culture when the young people of the EU enter the workplace and take over the market? How will social media then be used for such functions as marketing, recruiting and customer support?

2007 is the year when our sixteen year olds, all over Europe, start to enter further education, university or the workplace. They were born in the same age as the Web. Unfortunately, I don't think education or business is doing enough yet to equip them with the skills they need to function professionally with what, for them, are their online toys in countries over Europe. In pockets around Scotland,  you might start to see some more appreciation of the skills youngsters have, and an effort to harness these through further training or simply talking to them. In the European market, however, I think there are too many nations working with old hierarchical business and governmental ideals for this to make any impact for at least the next generation. I'm just hoping some of these young upstarts begin to make what we see as innovative management and social media use much more common before the next generation come through.

5. Which tools do you see ascending and which do you see in decline?

The blog continues to be a place which people value for constructive reflection, for self-promotion or the promotino of their ideas. Presence tools (Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku et al) are for a different, more fun purpose, and some are using them in clever ways in tandem with their more thoughtful blog profile.

In decline? Television. I know everyone's saying that TV and IPTV are the big things this year but they've obviously never met a teen. Teens don't watch the telly. They want much more interactivity than that offers. You can put the telly on the web, but it's what's around a program rather than the program itself that is going up. TV itself, in education, in business, in pleasure, is heading down.

6.  When I visited Scotland, we had some interesting talks about virtual reality in education.  What prospects do you see for it in business moving forward?

Simulations, working out best and worst case scenarios, doing things you can't do in physical space due to lack of funds, space, imagination...
Business can finally do some really short-term exciting projects at low cost instead of pumping money into grandiose F2F projects.

I think that gaming and games, as distinct from virtual reality per se, offer the best opportunities for sims and improvement of employee skills - the employee, after all, remains the most important asset of a business.

There are some great examples of medics, with problems in numeracy, using Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training on the DS Lite, to help prepare for passing their exams. We use it in primary schools, too, to great effect and relatively large attainment gains.

It doesn't even matter if the game content is not related to the sector. The complex skills required to get through a game, whether it's Sim City or World of Warcraft, are the kind of skills a consultant cannot teach.

7. Can social media help bypass traditional language barriers?  If so, how?

As long as Americans continue to call a bum bag a fanny pack I think we're going to have language barriers, even when we're speaking the same tongue
;-) I've found the visual elements of social media have helped me connect to people who speak languages I do not, and connect better to friends I know F2F from all over the world. Seeing a video, having a photographic tour of a home on Flickr, it all helps bind us better. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words. And that was before 'they' saw YouTube.

Joseph Paolantoni takes the SAP Global Survey

Cynosural's Joseph di Paolantoni, one of the biggest thinkers I know has become the most recent person to take the roll-your-own version of the SAP Global Survey and provides some great perspectives.

It's Sunday morning.  When you are done reading what Joseph has to say, why don't you take your laptop out into the yard and take the survey yourself.  Then let me know, so I can point other people to it.

SAP Global Survey: Mark Evans

Toronto-based Mark Evans, maintains three blogs and is VP Operations for B5 Media, a global blog network.Previously, Mark was a traditional newspaper reporter covering the Internet for the National Post, Canada's national newspaper. Mark has always espoused that blogging and social media lag behind in Canada, which puzzles me since a disproportionate number of my favorite blogs are Canadian authored and because FaceBook has enjoyed such meteoric success there.

I asked him about it and here are his answers:

1. You have often pointed out that the Canadian enterprise has been slow to  adopt blogging.  Has this changed? Why do you suppose adoption has been so slow?

While I think there is a lot more happening within the Canadian blogosphere, it's really not where it should be yet. By nature, I think Canadians are conservative when it comes to the Internet. You could argue that the e-commerce market is still lagging and the online advertising market is just starting to gain momentum.

2.  What about other forms of social media?  Is business using wikis, video,  social networks or even podcasts to any appreciable degree?  Why or why not?

The simple answer is no. In fact, I would argue that the vast majority of Canadian business still believe a Web site is cutting edge - let alone using podcasts, wikis or social networks. One exception might be ScotiaBank, which has a popular podcast called The Money Clip.

3.  How can social media extend Canadian-based business opportunities?

If you want to engage your customers in a conversation and build customer loyalty, social networks are great tool.

4. Let's talk FaceBook. Contrary to most tech adoption trends, Canadians rapidly adopted it before Americans or Europeans even seemed to notice it. Now one in eight Canadians is on FaceBook.  How do you explain this  phenomenon?

To be honest, I'm not sure. We're all pretty amazed that it has caught fire so quickly given the same kind of wild adoption didn't happen with MySpace. Maybe it has to do with timing: Facebook opened itself up to the world at a time when Canadians were waking up to the wonderful world of social networks.

5. Is there a lesson for business in the Canadian FaceBook phenomenon?

Absolutely. I think the biggest lesson is you need to carefully monitor the online landscape for hot/key/new trends. If a Canadian business was savvy, flexible and fast-moving, they would have figured out a way to leverage the Facebook phenomena.

6.  Because of FaceBook, a lot of younger Canadians are getting comfortable  with social networks.  What happens over time as they enter the workplace and marketplace?

I think it becomes a part of their work/personal lives. The challenge will be keeping a separation between the two, and making sure work doesn't interfere with play. Employers will also have to realize Facebook is becoming an everyday tool like e-mail. Rather than prevent people from using it, employers will have to trust their employees will use Facebook responsibly.

7. Do you know much about social media being used behind the firewall?

There's really not a lot going on. I do know that Imperial Oil, for example, is very active with internal blogs. I do find it puzzling that consumer-facing businesses such as Tim Horton's (our version of Starbucks!), Canadian Tire and Loblaw don't have blogs.

8. Almost every Canadian business person I've met has talked about social media giving them greater access to American markets.  Do you see much evidence that this is happening?  Do you have any good case studies?

Not really.

9. What social media tools do you see on the rise and which are diminishing?

I think blogs still have a long runway in front of them, and that audio (podcasts) and video are going to be embraced in a big way once people realize they are just as easy to produce as text. I'm not convinced about wikis.

10.  Additional comments.

If you had to look at the Canadian online landscape, it's a mixed bag.

We are among the most penetrated high-speed nations in the world (although we've dropped a few places since being ranked #2 behind South Korea a few years ago) yet when it comes to new activities such as e-commerce, advertising and blogging, we're not as advanced. Then, you've got Facebook, which is extremely popular.

The one thing that concerns me about the Internet is Canada is the lack of high-speed competition. In many markets, you're lucky if you have two options (cable or DSL) while many rural communities only have one option. The problem is that with so few players, prices are going nowhere but up, and that does little to encourage non-high-speed users to jump on the bandwagon.

At the same time, I think the high-speed service providers are also looking at other ways to generate revenue such as tiered service. In other words, net neutrality may be at risk in Canada unless the government/community steps up.

SAP Gobal Survey: Ethan Bodnar

So far, the SAP Global Survey has interviewed many prominent bloggers including Scoble, Weinberger, Hugh MacLeod, Doc Searls and now, Ethan Bodnar. Who, you might rightfully ask, is Ethan Bodnar?

The answer is that he is the future of social media, him and the remainder of his generation. He is a 17 and a high school senior.  I met him last week on FaceBook and we have been talking every since. I visited his blog and thought it was pretty cool and in our conversations, I came to realize how informed and immersed he was in social media and how it was already transforming his world into something far larger than mine was at his age.

Following is his interview for the SAP Global Survey:

1. How did you first become involved in social media?

I was first introduced to social media in a book store, where I saw a book on blogging. I didn't even look through it, just read the cover. That night I went home, Googled "blogs" and found some which I just started to read and explore.

Finally, I got around to starting a blog of my own and have been using social media ever since.

2. What social media do you use?  How much time do you spend in social media each week?  How many hours do you spend watching TV in the average week?

I read blogs, use social networks, take part in specific interest community websites, and share videos/photos/bookmarks through web applications.It's hard to say how much time I spend on social media each week. Probably around 21 hours a week which breaks down to 3 hours a day. Still that can vary a lot.

I would say that I watch around an 1 to 1 and 1/2 hours of television a day when all the shows have their full seasons going. (less in the summer) So , that comes out to around 10 hours of TV a week. About half of that is recorded so that I skip the commercials. This thus makes it more important how advertisers reach me online than how they reach me through traditional "old media" methods. Sometimes I will be working on the laptop at the same time as I watch TV or during commercials.

A good mix of social media and television is Current TV. You can submit short videos (based on specific topics or areas or programming) to be voted on by the community on their website. The videos with the best ranking or most votes are then played on the real broadcasted television channel. Unfortunately, my cable provider doesn't offer the channel.

   

3. How do you feel social media has changed your life so far?

It has connected to me to so many wonderful people from all around the world who are doing amazing things. (for the most part, people not my age) And has allowed me to share what I am doing with them. Without it , life would be completely different. I used to wish that I was around when computers were first coming out but now I am happy to be around when social media is really taking off.

On the other side, there are my friends that I go to school with and interact with in the real world. Interacting with them online takes away some things that could happen in the real world but it still keeps us all connected online, which is good.

4. Who or what influences you and your buying decisions?

I would say that blogs and all those people who write them have some influence on what I buy.  I buy a lot of creative items such as t-shirts from and I have my eye on some stuff from Etsy and Coudal Partners Swap Meat project. Those websites offer products that are based a lot on the community behind them.

5. How could a business successfully use social media to influence you buying decisions?

No Flash Ads. No Banner ads. No pre-roll video ads. Make an awesome product and then find online communities that would like your product and become a member of that community. Allow the community to have conversations about your product or service and welcome the input.

6. You're a lot closer to the classroom than many of my readers. How do you think social media can be used to improve public school education?

In so many ways….

Social networks can be used to connect students in different parts of the world who are studying the same thing.

Students can use social media to collaborate online.

Education will move away from just the teaching of facts to a model where students start to be more creative and develop their own ideas and concepts. We will see students using social media to share these ideas of their own with others. Along with having a conversation about old ideas and their new ones.

Social media in the classroom allows students to see more examples of how what they are learning is used in the real world.

7. You've told me that you are interested in starting a business of your own.  What would that business look like and what sort of role would social media play in it?

The business would hopefully combine design, technology, and the internet as the product or service that it would offer. As for social media, it would try to use it to reach it's customers and would use it for the employees own personal reasons as part of the office culture.

8.  What if your first job out of college banned blogging and/or social media?  How would that impact your working there?

If there was another job that didn't have those restrictions, I would quit the one that banned blogging and/or social media. And if it was the only job I could find, it would be pretty stressful. I would want to work at a place that had a office culture that accepted and used social media for their work and play.

9. What are your favorite social media tools and why?

I use these social media tools because of the great communities that are behind them, the people I know that use them, and how they are designed.

For photos…Flickr rules them all.
For blogging…Wordpress.
For videos…Vimeo is way better than YouTube.
For status and life-streaming…Twitter.
For social networks….Facebook is where my school's at. Virb pretty cool to.

10.  Describe for me your vision of social media in your life five and ten years from now.

Five and ten years is a long time into the future. I would hope that the social media space becomes more organized and some of the sites better designed (nothing against what is out there now). I think we are going to see a lot more development in local community online. Right now there is much more based on interest and I think online networks of people from the same location will start to show up.

People will start "streaming their lives". There will be "streams"
which are really websites that will have a chronological list of what they have done through social media and real world status updates like Twitter. The best example would probably be Jeff Croft's Lifestream. This is some what of a movement away from blogging and takes less time than blogging while still having a strong online presence. Blogs are not going anywhere though.

I think we will start to see social media creating more real world interactions. Through mobile devices that can tell you the location of your friends. And linking those mobile devices to the networks you have already formed in applications and communities online. For example, the social cameras that Dave Winer has suggested. His ideas can also be applied to MP3 players, video cameras and other devices. The link between online social interactions and real life interactions will form.

11. Additional Comments?

Since SAP deals with enterprise applications I though I would throw in some thoughts dealing with that. Keep in mind I have never used any SAP software.

-    Build social media into your customer relations and support applications.
-    Build social media into internal applications so that employees
can communicate and interact with other employees, whether it be in the same office or another country.
-    Build social media into your planning and strategy applications
so that people inside the company but outside of the department can make suggestions and be part of it.

If it wasn't for the social media I wouldn't be answering this survey.
I found Shel Israel on Facebook which caused me to re-discover his blog and then I found the SAP Survey. I look forward to watching the results as other people answer it and would like to thank Shel for the opportunity.

Ryan Quackenboss posts his own answers to SAP Global Survey

Ryan Quackenboss, an IT professional specializing in SAP solutions, has become the first volunteer to take the "roll-your-own" SAP Global Survey, posting answers over at Shenanigans, his own blog.

"Quack," as he signed his note to me, has some great observations. First, he describes a long tailed adoption curve among his own family members, pretty similar to the one in my own home. As a customer, he has a specific tip for SAP: Make the enterprise portal easier to use.

Major Firefox Security Flaw Uncovered

CNET reports that Secunia has uncovered a "highly critical" security flaw in Firefox 2.0 and later versions, which can allow a malicious attacker to gain remote control of your computer.

When Firefox first came out, a compelling reason to switch from Microsoft explorer was that Firefox was more secure. At the time, it's userbase was extremely small and dominated by very geeky people.  As Firefox gains mainstream adoption, it seems to me that bad new like this had to happen. If users are moving from one browser to the other, then the bad guys are pretty certain to follow.

Amazon & Tivo renting movies directly to TV sets

Reuters is saying that Amazon and Tivo will be renting movies for $4 and TV programs for $2 directly to your TV set without any need for a PC involvement. The feeds require high speed Internet connection, but all you need is your TV remote control to get the entertainment once you install an upgrade called the "Amazon Unbox on Tivo," a name that just doesn't roll off the lips very easily.

This is an interesting development. The folks at Joost will need to sit back and think about this. Joost is free, but if this is as easy as it sounds, many potatos will pay the two bucks to stay seated on their couches.

Is Ning Blowing up a Bubble?

While I don't know Marc Andreessen personally,I am among the many who have followed his legend and I greatly respect what he has done so far. I have followed Ning, the do it yourself social networking company only slightly and i think it shows some promise.

But Michael Arrington says that it's first external financing round was $44 million and that the company's post-money value is $214  million. This scares me.  It scares me because I cannot conceive of any possible argument that this company is worth nearly a quarter billion dollars. Even considering the value of Marc's personal brand, the upside expectation seems to me to defy reality.

I am a survivor of the Great Dotcom Bubble. I remember hearing company valuations that seemed silly or worse to me, and I recall being shouted at because "I just didn't get it." What I did get was bubble splatter all over my nice PR guy suit, and then a nice long rest from work.

The Ning valuation scares me. I just don't get it. I hope someone else does.

SAP Global Survey: Italy's Marco Palombi

[Marco Palombi,  sequential entrepreneur.  Photo by Shel]

Marco Palombi is perhaps the best-known and most successful Italian social media entrepreneurs. After stints with Proctor & Gamble, France, McKinsey&Co., Italy and a global enterprise that moved him to Brazil, he founded Tipic, Inc. an instant messaging pioneer company based in NYC with an Italian development team. Tipic developed Splinder.com, Italy's largest online community with 5.5 million unique visitors per month. Tipic also developed the first Jabber Instant Messaging Server for Windows in 2002 and the first mobile Jabber client for J2ME . Marco served on the board of the Jabber Software Foundation in 2003.

By the time I met Marco in Rome last October, he had sold Tipic and was contemplating his next step. He told me that he belonged on the leading edge of technology exploration and that the social media landscape was filling up. He wanted to move on to the "Next Big Thing". He is now planning to move to Silicon Valley with its richer entrepreneurial
ecosystem.

Below are his answers to the SAP Global Survey.

1. How much of Italy is online and how much of the population has
adopted social media?

Italy has a population of approximately 60 million. Approximately 20 million people connect at least once a month. There are an estimated 7.5 million unique visitors to social media sites each month.

2. What's happening in terms of Italian/European business and social
media? Are they starting/joining/ignoring them?

I'll try to answer by giving you a "qualitative" overview of how social media is being adopted in Italy.

As opposed to the US, Italy is characterized mostly by: (1) some experiments of social media launched by incumbent media companies and telco operators; (2) "me too" start-ups; (3)corporate blogs (4) US-based services now available in Italian.

Italian media incumbents were slow to adopt social media, but now they are starting to understand that a big paradigm shift is happening and that their own existence is threatened if they do not invest in social media. An interesting example is the investment by Il Sole24ore (the leading Italian financial newspaper) in Blogosfere, a blog network. After il Sole24Ore unsuccessfully tried to go public on the Italian stock exchange, the word on the street was that analysts were unhappy about Il Sole24Ore lacking any social media activity, thus the investment.

Another example: last year, I sold Splinder, the largest blogging platform in Italy to DADA, part of the Rizzoli Corriere della Sera Group. This helped establish DADA as Italy's social media leader, which,in turn helped them with their market valuation.

Traditional Internet players have launched social media platformswith mixed results, but there is no clear leader in the market, as of today, except for Splinder, and the US players (Blogger, Flickr,YouTube, etc), which translated their services into Italian.Corporate blogs have been used mostly so far for advertising.

3. Who or what English speaking people and services are the most
influential on Italians and Europeans in terms of social media?

Italians who are fluent in English are influenced by the same services that are popular in the US. There is no site similar to Techcrunch or a community like Facebook in Italy, since the social media business ecosystem is not very developed.

Also, the most famous blogger in Italy, is probably Beppe Grillo, with a political/satirical blog. Having said that, there are a number of bloggers who have become famous and respected. They blog mostly about technology and social media. A few of note:

- Luca Conti
- Massimo Mantellini
- Andrea Beggi
- Alberto D'Ottavi
- Luca DeBiase
- Mauro Lupi
- Antonio Sofi

4. I'm doing this for SAP, so of course, so they want to know what, if
anything, is going on in terms of the enterprise and enterprise
software, smaller business, etc.

Following are a few start-ups, as blogger-journalist Alberto D'Ottavi points out. I have not had any contact with them, so I cannot really recommend them:

- mobango.com (Free user-generated content for mobile phones, now based in
the UK)
- zooppa.com (User generated advertising)
- domainsbot.com (Domain name suggestions using social data)
- www.clipperz.com (password management)
- www.passpack.com
- www.yooplus.com (wiki + Project Mngr platform)
- www.evectors.com (Consulting and integration)
- www.reply.it
- http://www.webratio.com

5. How big a barrier is language to European social media entrepreneurs?
Can they work around it.  If so, how?

If you look at language barriers as a European entrepreneur, it is a
problem, because you have to spend more money and time to service
different countries, compared to a US entrepreneur. I always tell the
story of Splinder, my latest bootstrap; when we were the leader in Italy,
we employed 5 people; in order to launch the service in France we would
have had to hire one more person (+20% cost) and I would have had to
spend more time.

I would say that the large majority of user tend to use services in their own languages.

6. What about young people? Are young people adopting social media
faster than older generations? How do you think that will impact Italy
overall?

More than 80% of Splinder users were under 30. That says it all about
the digital divide and different adoption rates. I think social media is a
big opportunity to create a more democratic media ecosystem in Italy
that will change society.  I am optimistic. 

7.  Why do you think Italy has been slower to adopt social media than
other countries like France?

I really do not have any idea why France was so quick to adopt social media. Probably because a few large media incumbents adopted blogs (SkyBlogs) and spread the word much quicker than in Italy where all happened virally up until last year.    

8.  How is broadband connection doing in terms of availability and cost?

Unfortunately, broadband costs more in Italy than in other European countries,
because we have a de facto monopoly in Telecom Italia. Hopefully, things
will improve in the future; but it is a political decision that has to be made.

9. Tell me about your next start-up.

Right now I am exploring new fields. I am trying to understand more
about Biology and Artificial Intelligence; I am fascinated by concepts
such as Networks (in different fields having similar properties) and
Emergence.

Is blogging passe?

I may or may not have started a circular conversation on this one.  And what I started may or may not be true. I had noticed that my number of visitors had been steadily dropping for the last couple of months, even though my topics and frequency of posting had not really changed much. Technorati was still ranking me in my usual range.

This puzzled me.  Technorati really measures a blog in relationship to all the others.  If my ranking and so-called "authority" was holding steady it mean that everyone else was experiencing the same thing. I started asking other bloggers--only a small handful--but they all told me that they were experiencing some slippage over the past couple of months.

The last person I asked was Scoble. Asking Scoble something quietly is like issuing a press release. It is his nature and I should remember that.  It isn't that I wanted to maintain a cloak of secrecy on the subject, it's because I'm not certain that I have spotted a trend or that he has.

Scoble posted on the subject.  Then Hugh posted as well, although Hugh spun it to announce the decline of A-Listers, which is different than what Robert or I has said. This would not be true, because if that were happening other bloggers would be on the rise, and there is no evidence of that happening either.

Of course, once something about blogging is declared by Scoble and MacLeod, it is very likely to become conventional wisdom in a very short time. Today I got asked if the apparent decline of blogging refutes "Naked Conversations."  I'll get to that in my closing paragraph.

When I talked to Scoble, I had not yet begun my SAP Global Survey.  The soon as I started posting answers from A-Listers like Scoble and Hugh as well as Doc Searls and David Weinberger, my rankings shot back up to a higher level than I've enjoyed in quite some time.What was most interesting is that my Technorati ranking--you guessed it--has stayed the same.

I have no idea whether or not blogging is in decline or not. Nor so I know whether or not A-lister are sinking further down the alphabet. Many of us would feel relieved if that were to happen. For me, I love having conversations with people and I hate being pitched. So a lower letter would be comfortable.

I am more agnostic than you may think about the rise or fall of blogging. Naked Conversations focused on blogging because, way back in 2005, blogging was the only social media power tool. It's a very different story now. Today, Robert and I would most certainly cover different ground. Naked Conversations, like Cluetrain Manifesto, a book that profoundly influenced what we wrote, championed conversations over message sending. It argued for an interctive internet rather than a static one. It was about the business advantage to listening, instead of just talking. The rise or fall of blogging as a tool is simply an interesting data point along a fast moving bitstream of data points.

The Roll-Your-Own SAP Global Survey

My SAP Global Survey project has been interesting so far with lots of great answers from several bright and knowledgeable people. Before it's over, I plan to interview about 100 people from a very broad swatch of the world. 

But, unlike the Naked Conversations project, the SAP Survey has found some legs of its own and has walked off in directions that I had not previously thought about. Hugh started a trend by posting his answers on his own site. From there, the questions were lifted by someone else, and then someone else. I've received more than 50 answers to survey-related questios I've asked on Facebook and Linked-In and the nature of the answers has taught me a few things about the differences in my two social networks.

I've also received a few email requests from interesting people who wish to be interviewed, and the folks at SAP and I both agree that the bigger the crowd, the wiser we will become with the results. So below is a generic SAP Global Survey questions set.  You can answer them on your own site and send me a link, or you can email me your answers at shel@itseemstome.net.
I'll post as many of them as I can. If you respond, you will be credited in the final SAP Global Survey Report.

One more thing.  This is an Open Source Survey. Feel free to ditch some questions below and ask/answer some of your own.

1. From where you sit in the world, how has social media changed your life? How about the lives of your other family members?

2. From where you sit in the world, how do you think your personal and business lives will change over the next five years? Hw about for the rest of your family?

3. What do you feel are the ascending social media tools and which are descending?

4. The folks at SAP are particularly interested in social media's impact on the global enterprise as well as small to medium-sized corporations. Do you have any knowledge or advice for them?

5. Do you have any interesting case studies of unique uses of social media?

6. What social media tools do you use?  Which are your favorites? Why.

7.  Do you see language as a barrier for  social media?  Will English become the global language of the Internet?  Should it?

8.  Are you reading more blogs or less these days? Are you watching more online video or less these days?

9. Write a question(s) for yourself and answer it.

10. Additional comments?

Rupert Murdoch Buys Dow Jones

London's The Business is reporting that Rupert Murdoch has succeeded in buy Dow Jones including the venerable Wall Street Journal. Mark your calendars.  This is a dark day in the history of free press and independent, truth-seeking newsrooms.

SAP Global Survey: Dennis Howlett

It seems that wherever I look online looking for interesting conversations on business use of social media, I find Dennis Howlett, not just participating but as a top contributor. An accountant by discipline, he has emerged as one of the most knowledgeable and generous thinkers on the impact of social media on the Global Enterprise.

He has taken my SAP Global Survey questions and posted his answers on his AccMan blog. He also has an excellent recent post on FaceBook and the Enterprise as a guest editor over at ZDNet's Between the Lines news blog.

Alec Saunders questions some FaceBook numbers

Alec Saunders points to some severe discrepancies between FaceBook's user numbers and the Comscore's visitor numbers, which have received a good deal of coverage in recent days. He shows why FaceBook's own numbers seem more credible.

I'm not a numbers guy, and I'm trying to stay a bit back from the SAP Global Survey conversation, at least while I'm conducting interviews, but I will say that overwhelmingly, FaceBook has been the most mentioned tool of social media.  This includes, generic words, such as "blog" or "online video," as well as brands like "Twitter" or "Technorati."  As far as MySpace goes, as it nears registering its 200 millionth user, it seems to be forgotten among those who have joined our conversation.

SAP Global Survey: David Weinberger

[David Weinberger Keynoting at New Communications Forum. Photo by Shel]

Along with being a co-author of the legendary Cluetrain manifesto David Weinberger, is my favorite speaker on the social media circuit.  That's because he is among the most passionate and knowledgeable of us. If you have not yet read his new book, "Everything is Miscellaneous," hurry up and read this interview he gave me for the SAP Global Survey. Then click on my Amazon Affiliate button over on the right side of this page and buy his book. Here are my questions and David's answers.

1. David, how have the social media changed the world since Cluetrain was
published?

Social media have continued to do what the Web's been doing from the beginning: Enabling people to connect. But with the growth of  social networking sites and all the rest of the loosely-defined social media consortium, the relationships themselves have some more visibility and persistence. In one sense, it's the story of the growth of metadata.

2. Where do you think it's going over the next 5-10 years?

Other than saying that we'll continue to connect and continue to innovate ways to manage the increasing scale of our social connections, I don't have any idea.

3. What are the biggest barriers to social media adoption in business?

Social networks can look like distractions from the "real" work of business. Sometimes that's the case, but more often, increasing the richness of social relationships makes organizations more robust, resilient, and innovative. Then there are the privacy issues, although generally those are manageable, within a reasonable tolerance.

4. Do you see business adoption trends forming in similar or different ways
along geographic lines?

There are obviously differences in how different cultures adopt technology. Am I missing the point?

5.  What tools do you think will emerge as the most popular in business over
the next 5- 10 years?

Jeez, if I knew that...! In the shorter term, a business has to be in a state of denial to miss the immediate benefits of using a tagging system to enable knowledge sharing and social networking software to enable expertise to emerge.

6. Here's a simple one for you. How will social media change the fundamentals of business over the next 5-10 years.

It will leech  authority  from corners of the institution that don't deserve the authority they've had. It will change the nature of leadership -- ask yourself what leadership looks like on the Web and assume that that's what it's going to look like in your organization. It will form alliances with great value and weight among employees and customers. It will cure cancer and make everyone's feet smell like clover.

7.  What do you think will happen in business as the Online Generation replaces the current generation in the workplace and in the marketplace?

They'll value loose ties as the enabler of advancement (of the business and of careers). It will look like slacking to their older generation bosses. But it's what knowledge work is going to become.

8. Could you comment on the business future of two specific social media
power tools: online video and social networks?

I can comment, but I can't comment interestingly.

Video will enable person relationships, helping the social network to loosen, scale and deepen, all at the same time.

The existing, popular social networks are setting expectations for how we want to deal with the cloud of people we now move among. Business isn't just going to use FaceBook and the like. FaceBook and the like will be the new face of business -- first internally but eventually inside and out.

10. Additional comments?

I have never made a true prediction.

Frank Paynter Takes Issue With Doc's Survey answers

Doc has received a lot of favorable comments on the blogosphere for his answers to my SAP Global Survey questions, but it is not unanimous. Frank Paynter at Listics seems to be wondering what Doc was smoking when he launched ProjectVRM, now an ongoing Harvard Law School undertaking to develop Vendor relationship management tools to counterbalance the enterprise CRM tool sets.

Says Frank, "Doc is a big-time bourgeois individualist, a self-reliance kind of guy, so VRM is likely not really about a reciprocal to CRM."

In conclusion, Frank huffs, "Now perhaps along with the communications revolution that we’ve brought to the world with our little network, there is also waiting in the wings a manufacturing and distribution revolution that will play into these VRM dreams. Some mash-up of Just In Time manufacturing of consumables and Fed-ex… If we’re agile we’ll deliver the network that addresses those supply-side changes as the market evolves to feed our individual demands for unique products and personal and private service. Maybe then I’ll be able to anonymously order up a dayglo orange Ford Model T and a case of black enamel colored mac and cheez."

Since this is a survey, I will keep my views uncharacteristically to myself. But what do you think? The bigger the crowd, the greater the wisdomas James Suroweiki would say, so keep those cards and letters coming in.

SAP Global Survey: Doc Searls

[Doc Searls emphasizes a point at Supernova, while Cluetrain co-author David Weinberger listens. Photo by Shel]

In 1999, four technology thinkers, Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Christopher Locke and Rick Levine collaborated on a project.  The result was "The Cluetrain Manifesto," addressed to the people of Earth. In steadily increasing numbers, the people of Earth have benefited ever since. While the SAP Global Survey is attempting to examine the varied views of where social media is going, there is universal agreement that Cluetrain is where it all began. The following is an interview with the inimitable Doc Searls:

1. You are one of the founding fathers of whatever it is that is going on now...

And what is that? If it's Web 2.0, I demand a paternity test, and I am sure it will reveal, in the immortal words of Michael Jackson, "the kid is not my son. " If what's going on now is the Live Web, and I think it is, we shall get to it shortly.

2. How would you say the business world has changed since you and your co-authors wrote Cluetrain Manifesto?

First, the business world now runs on the Net, pretty much. Second, the business world knows that it can't get along without the Net, which helps. Third, the biz world is *beginning* to realize the Net brings, as we said in Cluetrain, a revolution in demand at least as big as the one in supply -- and not just because the demand side has joined the supply side with stuff like YouTube and BitTorrent and eBay.

In the original website version of Cluetrain, Chris Locke wrote, "we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it."

Recognizing a situation and dealing with it, however are two different things. The "dealing" has barely begun. Which brings me to what has not changed. First, we have a long way to go in equipping the demand side to express two things:

1) its independence from supply-side customer entrapment schemes -- all that crap that's devoted to "owning" and "locking in" customers, which business (and even customers) still call "consumers"; and

2) new ways to engage with vendors ways that are useful and enriching for both customers and vendors, while respecting the privacy needs of both parties. This is what ProjectVRM is all about. VRM stands for Vendor Relationship Management. It's the reciprocal of Customer Relationship Management, which is the field that has been devoted to customer entrapment for far too long, and which has borne nearly the full weight of "relating" to customers -- and entirely on terms supplied by vendors. Customers need to be able to set terms as well, and to relate in ways that work for both sides. ProjectVRM is headquartered at the

Berkman

Center for Internet and Society at

Harvard

University. It's a project I started, though it is no longer mine alone, which is terrific.

[Editor's note--It appears that immediately following subnmitting his responses to this survey, Doc made his current entry on the Project VRM blog entitled--"Why surveys suck."]

Second, in the

U.S. we have come to regard the Internet as a "service" that works as gravy on top of our telephone or cable TV connections. Billing from our local cable/telco duopoly supports that assumption, monthly.

Meanwhile, the Net itself remains as it was designed to be in the first place: a simple set of ways to connect devices over any distance with as close to zero cost and hassle as possible, and with minimal interference from the companies that own the "pipes."

If we were to write Cluetrain today I'm sure we would make a strong case for regarding the Internet as a public good with enormous "because effects." That is, far more money would be made because of it, rather than with it.

This is, in fact, already the case, though it is barely recognized. The telcos and cablecos have Congress, state legislators and even citizens convinced that the Internet is something that belongs to them and that they can do with what they please. This is a Bad Thing.

I'm not sure we require legislation to correct it (which puts me at odds with my friends in the Net Neutrality camp), but I am sure it needs correction. How is an open question. I'm rooting for local action, especially by small new businesses that bring the Net to citizens without hauling cable-type TV along.

3. What is the biggest surprise to you on how social media has developed?

I've got to admit that I don't like the term "social media." When I  hear or read it, I tune out. My problem isn't with the word "social," but with the word "media." It's a loaded word, framed by a hundred  years' experience with pre-Net "media" that reduced everything to "content" (another word I dislike) that was then "delivered" somehow. There is a a sense of distance to "media" that I believe diminshes our understanding of the Net. It's a bugaboo with me, and I'll admit to being pretty much alone with it.

4.You described the term Web 2.0 as the name for the next bubble. Do you still think this is true? Is it true of social media as well?

I've said "Web 2.0 is what we'll call the next crash," as well as the current bubble. and I still believe that. Social Media as a "meme"

may sink with the same boat. The more useful distinction is between the Live Web and the Static Web. The Live Web today is branching off of the Static Web. Much of what we call "social" happens there, though I dislike the "media" term because it's old and freighted with concepts inherited from TV, radio and all that.

To understand what I mean, consider what we're saying when we call the Web a collection of "domains" and "sites" with "locations" and "addresses" that we " build" -- and where we look for "visitors" and "traffic." We're saying the Web is real estate. We conceive it in terms we've borrowed from real estate and construction.

The Web was designed by Tim Berners-Lee in the first place as a way to share and edit documents that we write and publish. Later, we added syndication to that publishing-based vocabulary. Thanks to time-stamped RSS (really simple syndication --thanks, Dave Winer, for that one) feeds, everything in the syndicated section of the Live Web is chronologically based. There is an implicit date-ness to your basic blog URL:http://blogname.com/year/month/day/post. That post has a Permalink. Think about "perma" in a chronological sense.

The whole blogosphere is chronological. What's latest is on top, but what's older does not merely scroll off the page into oblivion. It goes into a time-based archive. What's more, Technorati and Google Blog Search both update their search engines within minutes or even seconds of when an RSS feed is posted. That's live.

For all its texty nature, email is also relatively live, because it is date-based. Same with texting, instant messaging, Twittering and other time-based practices. For an illustration of how the Live Web differs from the Static Web, go to Google Blogsearch. Notice how it gives you a choice to "Search Blogs" or "Search the Web."

Why make this distinction? Are blogs not part of the Web? Oddly, there is new stuff on Google Blogsearch that does not appear in regular Google Web searches. What you find on Blogsearch and Technorati is literally "too new for Google." Meaning: too current, too *live*. Google's main search engine crawls and indexes the entire Web, but regards and presents it essentially as something static.

If a site (a static notion) changes, Google indexes and caches that, and wipes out the old stuff. Then it replaces the last index of that site with a new one if it finds changes. Yes, Static Web search embraces and appreciates the changing nature of the Web's "content," but it treats what's current as a static thing with no history. Google's view is fundamentally static, not live. Blogsearch, however, does have a live view, but it's a secondary one. After you get your result (which is relevance-based), then click on "date view", and there it is, organized chronologically.

Technorati, which was born to search the Live Web, defaults to a date view. It still does not have a relevance view (Google Blogsearch's default), though it does filter by "authority" (a term I don't like, because it's too loaded -- but it was borrowed from Google long ago and is still around).

 

By the way, Technorati was invented by David Sifry as a research tool for a story about blogging that he and I were co-writing in late 2002. The rest is history. I'm still on the advisory board.

Anyway, I'm a voice in the Web 2.0/social media wilderness about the Live/Static Web distinction, but I'll keep yelling. Forgive.

5. How has business fundamentally changed because of social media? How will it change in the coming years?

The walls of business will come down. That's the main effect of the Net itself. Companies are people and are learning to adapt to a world where everybody is connected, everybody contributes, and everybody is zero distance (or close enough) from everybody else. This is the "flat world" Tom Friedman wrote "The World is Flat" about, and he's right. Business on the whole has still not fully noticed this, however.

6.What similarities and differences do you see in the adoption of social media in different sectors of the world?

The big difference is between the U.S. (or perhaps North America) and the rest of the world, in respect to the devices used. Our cell phone system is relatively primitive compared to those in Europe, Asia and even Africa;We text (as a verb) far less. And we use computers far more. Our orientation to the Net is still browser-based rather than any-device-based. I think phones are inherently more personal and social than computers. On the other hand, computers are more open than most phones -- even those overseas. But in the long run progress toward constructive openness will happen on both.

7. What tools do you see increasing in power? Which do you see decreasing?

In general tools that increase freedom and choice are what matter. The ones I care about are the ones we're working on with ProjectVRM. They have to do with independent individual-controlled identity and the ability to express preferences, choices and demand, across whole markets rather than just within vendor silos. I see CRM as we understand it now -- ways to own and manage the creatures called consumers changing utterly once VRM comes along. I believe this will change business itself, and markets along with it. That change will be profound, and positive. Or we'll be proved wrong and join David Weinberger (my Cluetrain co-author and a skeptic about independent identity and VRM) in what he once called his "trough of despair." Right now the VRM glass is .0001% full. I'm looking forward to seeing it filled the rest of the way in my lifetime. Since I turn 60 this month, we'd better hurry up.

8. You have written and spoken extensively on your vision of an Intention Economy. Could you describe it briefly and talk about how social media ties into it? Do you see evidence on it moving from a vision to a reality?

The intention economy is one based on what customers actually want. It is one that removes the guesswork that requires advertising, PR, promotion and most of what we still call marketing. It is what happens when we equip customers with means to tell whole market categories exactly what they want, and have vendors compete to give it to them -- and not to have to enter a privately owned silo or a walled garden (e.g. eBay or Amazon or Orbitz) to get it. It's an open market ambition of mine. And it's part of what VRM is all about.

The upside for customers is getting what they want,without having to fly like a bee from flower to flower, visiting a series of vendor silos that are all customer traps. The upside for vendors is getting rid of guesswork about what customers actually

I think it will work because the Intention Economy is based on what people with money in hand actually want. Not some kluge based on creating demand" and "managing attention" and other marketing jive like that.

9. Do you see social media emerging differently in d ifferent parts of the world? Please describe.

 

I think cultures are social in different ways. As the Net opens up and gets cheaper everywhere -- especially on mobile devices, we'll see how that plays out. Right now I can only guess. And I won't because it's the 4th of July and already the guests want to kill me for sitting in a room typing rather than coming out to the pool and drinking beer and getting social in the real world.

10. Do you see social media adoption taking different routes in small and medium sized businesses, v large enterprises?

Sure. But again, the time thing.

11 Additional comments?

Let's have a beer sometime. Thanks for the chance to ramble and rant!

Ramble and rant all you want, Doc. Just name a date for the beer. I'll buy the first two.

 

Ben Casnocha, Chris Yeh & My Lesson in Mentoring

[Chris Yeh, a mentor's mentor.  Photo by Shel]

I'm reading "My Start-Up Life" by Ben Casnocha who started Comcate, Inc. a successful software company serving public agencies, when he was a 14-year-old 9th grader. I have not yet finished reading it, but can already recommend it to anyone interested in entrepreneurship. It is the best memoir I've yet seen on the start up experience.

Much has been made about how young  Ben was, and I think that is interesting, but the I think what's remarkable is not his age but his quiet display of experience, wisdom, balance and humility he has acquired by age 19.

The book extensively covers what he gained from the many mentors who have been in Ben's corner. he talks about the two-way nature of the richest mentoring relationships. For me this is timely . Ustream CEO Chris Yeh has contracted me as a company advisor. But a key part of my assignment is to serve as co-founder Johnny Ham's mentor. This is the first time I have been compensated to serve as a mentor and I take the assignment seriously.

I just had not realized until about an hour ago what that had to do with Chris and Ben.

I knew that Chris and Ben connected. In fact, I met both of them at the same event, and new they were partners in Silicon Valley Junto, sort of a Silicon Valley discussion group for thinkers.  But it was not until about an hour ago on Page 119, that I discovered Chris was not onlyone of Ben's mentors, one who taught him about the importance of finding balance in your life, but he also wrote a guest essay that appears in the book.

So, to my surprise, I learn that Ben's mentor has contracted me to be mentor to the young founder of the company he heads up. That's a lot of triangulation. But what really impressed me is that Chris did not mention that he was Ben's mentor.  He knew I was reading the book and did not mention his own contributions to it. He just let me discover it for myself.

I think I just got a lesson from a master in a golden rule of mentoring. It is wise to help set the course. But the navigator has to find his own way.

Thanks Chris.

Trying out Comment Moderation and a request for simple arithmatic

I dropped the Typepad CAPTCHA feature that required you to match a string of text that was difficult to read. When I just opened comments up, I noticed a slight uptake on the number of people commenting, which confirmed my belief that CAPTCHA gets in the way of conversations.

Of course, you know the problem. The problem is that I have wasted far too much time taking down %$#@*&& spam comments every day and I cannot keep up with it.

So now I may be embarking on the ultimate conversation killer.  I am going to moderate comments.  You post them, then I read them and let them go up or not. This will work well only when I am in interrupt mode and can put them up fast.

Michael Sippey, if you are reading today, let me repeat what I think is the simple solution: Use simple math equations. Ask readers to solve problems like 1+3=? Josh Hallett does this as do several other bloggers and it seems to work well.

Scoble Responds to SAP Global Survey

[Robert Scoble with Camera at the Maker's Faire. Photo by Shel.]

According to Technorati, Robert Scoble is the world's 35th most popular blogger.  If you slice it down to the category of technology or technology business, he is in the top half-dozen. There is no person I know who has a better ear for the sound of social media's heartbeat than Robert Scoble. He simply knows what's going on.  He finds out by tirelessly conducting conversations with geeks everywhere all the time and he has some clear answers for the SAP Global Survey.

The following are his views on what is happening and is about to happen.  The executive summary: Have a FaceBook strategy.

1. You are a recognized industry leader and pioneer. How has social media changed since you first got involved?

It's gotten faster and the world has gotten smaller. Today I have thousands of friends on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce. When the Mexico City earthquake happened earlier this year seven people were on Twitter WHILE THE EARTHQUAKE WAS HAPPENING! That was a very different experience than, say, 9/11 where lots of people were online, but mostly talking through IM.

2. How would you describe the state of social media today?

        Expanding and expanding fast.

3.  Where do you think it is going over the next five years?

        Video and mobile. Video and mobile. Video and mobile. Video and mobile. Video and             mobile. Video and mobile. Video and mobile. Video and mobile. Video and mobile.

        I think I said that enough times. Heheh.

4. When I first discussed this survey with you, you said all I had to do was look at FaceBook, Kyte.tv and a few others. Just what did you mean by that.

I've only been on Facebook two weeks and I have 2,000 friends there already. On Kyte.tv my video channel has been visited tens of thousands of times (and it, too, is only a few weeks old).

5.  This is a Global Survey.  What is your perception of how social media is evolving in the world's different regions?

Watch http://www.twittervision.com and you'll see every country in the world represented. It's growing extremely fast everywhere.

[Scoble and son Patrick at home, checking out what's happening online. Photo by Shel]

6. What differences --if any--do you see in how small to medium business is adopting social media v. huge corporations.?

Small ones usually do a more human job of communicating. Employees at small companies take more risks, generally, by doing something different. Look at "Will it Blend" over on YouTube. Would a big-company executive have done what that guy has done?

7. This is, of course, an SAP Survey.  Hugh MacLeod told me that the lines between social media and SAP's core application, ERP are getting very blurry.  Do you agree?  If you were advising SAP on strategic adjustment, what would you tell them?

I'd agree. I've seen enterprises pick up social software. BEA's application now has wikis and tagging and blogging built in. So does Sharepoint from Microsoft.

For big companies the marketing challenge is to appear small and nimble. It's why, if SAP announced an iPhone version tonight, the world would pay attention. The problem with big companies is that they move too slowly to really capitalize on the attention of the early adopters. By the time SAP adopts Twitter it'll be old news and not many people will pay attention.

So, how does SAP build one hot feature in every quarter? That's what I'd try to do.

8.  How will businesses reach your son Patrick?  What will they need to get his attention, gain his loyalty and make him willing to tell others about their goods and services?

Copy Apple. Er, understand what Steve Jobs and Apple has done. Whatever Apple is doing they are reaching young people very effectively.

But, right now I'd have a FaceBook strategy. Every startup in the valley is having to articulate whether or not they have a FaceBook strategy and if they do, what it is.

Does SAP have one?

9.  What social media tools are on the rise and which are sinking?  Is this the same or different worldwide as far as you know?

Hot: Facebook.
Hot: iPhone.
Hot: Twitter/Pownce/Jaiku (Pownce is hottest this week).
Cooling: blogging (Twitter is taking a lot of attention away from it).
Hot: Photosharing services and Scrapblogging stuff.
Steady but not sexy: Wikis.
Cooling: Second Life.

Tom Raftery Answers SAP Global Survey Q's

My friend Tom Raftery is a highly visible Cork-based blogger respected for his views on all matters related to IT, particularly social software. He has followed Hugh MacLeod's lead and posted his answers to my SAP Global Survey questions on his own blog and like Hugh, his answers are rich in insight and advice.

Tom reports that Irish business adoption remains slow partly because of poor broadband availability. However, some tools are starting to get noticed, thanks in part to the current Irish economic boom. Of course, the fastest adoption is by tech companies.  He says there is a good deal more happening behind firewalls rather than through them.

He predicts that Irish business desire to more greatly access US and UK markets will spur social media growth because of the high social media adoption rate in those large and lucrative markets. Of interest to SAP, will be Tom's forecast that RSS enabled slices of ERP will emerge and be of great value.

Most social media in Ireland is for personal use with social media and online video dominating. professionals use social media to promote personal, rather than company brands. Tom also notes how his success as a blogger and business podcaster have contributed to his personal success, generating speaking invitations in America and in the EU.

Thanks Tom.  You've added value and insight to the conversation

Kami's answers to the SAP Global Survey

Kami Huyse is author of Communications Overtones, one of my favorite POR blogs and is principal of my PR Pro, which assembles teams to serve the social media needs of clients in the Southwest. I asked kami for help on the SAP Global Survey because she works in a region and with clients far different than my own. While I dwell in the tech-centricity of Silicon Valley, Kami's clients are not. They just use technology for getting the job done in other areas.

Here are kami's answers:

1. By my count, you have only been in the world of social media for a little more than a year. In that short period of time, how have you seen it change?

One year and seven months.  I have often measured  social media time in dog years.  In some ways, each week seems like an eternity with all of the changes.  One of the most striking has been the rise of the social networking spaces, such as MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter and YouTube.  These platforms have matured in over the past year in ways that didn't seem possible before.  People are collecting "friends," but I wonder if the focus is as firmly entrenched in the idea of building relationships as it was when I first started.  The scale of social media has expanded to such an extent that it no longer encompasses just early adopters.  Social media have now broken into the consciousness of the general public.  Even if you don't create content or read blogs, the mainstream media is following and quoting those that are influential in the realm of social media.  It is hard to escape the fact that the content creators have also become gatekeepers.

2. In Texas and the  Southwest, who, in general, is coming into blogging and social media? What about business and the enterprise?

Some of the most notable corporations in Texas to take up blogging have been Dell's "Direct to Dell" blog in , Dallas and Southwest Airlines "Nuts About Southwest" blog in Houston.They have been great examples for many of my clients and other communication professionals.  When I first started exploring social media in 2005, none of my clients incorporated any of its elements, but today all of them participate at some level -- even if it is only monitoring.  One of my clients, SeaWorld San Antonio, just completed a social media campaign centered around the opening of its new ride, "Journey to Atlantis," that incorporated YouTube, Flickr and a purpose-built website.  We are now reformulating that site to broaden its scope.

3.  What tools do you see business embracing? Why?

First, I see businesses very interested in monitoring what is being said about them in blogs, podcasts and other social media.  Some of the tools we use to do this are RSS feeds from Technorati and Google Blog Search.  We also add in must-read blogs and podcasts that are culled daily via an RSS reader.  My clients are very interested in online publishing tools like Wordpress and Movable Type, but they are just as likely to go with a more proprietary solution.  In other words, they are interested in results, in solutions that meet their business needs.  The only difference is that now they are open to social media tools as a part of that mix.

4. When it comes to social media issues, who is most influencing business decisions?

I tend to work with the top communication and marketing professionals at the Director and above level.  However, in every case where a company incorporates social media there has been buy-in from the topmost level of the organization.  In organizations where we don't get that buy-in, the program moves slowly, if at all.

5. What do people talk about on the social media that you follow?  In business circles what are the conversations that you see grab hold, and which do you see just sort of trail off?

Most companies aren't interested in a "blog," or at least the word "blog."  But, when you explain that through social media they can reach stakeholders they could not previously reach, that brings intense interest.  So, I have launched a "news" site, with comments, and have reached out to stakeholders by providing them coveted content.  This kind of language seems to play well in the C-suite.  Business hasn't changed. In general, it is ready to do whatever it takes to communicate with customers and getresults.  We just have to be willing to explain social media in a language they can understand and show real business results.

6.  Can you give me some examples of how your clients use social media?

Yes. I've already mentioned SeaWorld San Antonio and your readers can also read the case study, I posted  last month.  Another client, eDrugSearch.com, is using a blog as a way to reach out to the healthcare blogging community to help people make their own decisions about their health.  I am working with another client, Fizzy Meals, to launch a blog where Fizzy provides insight into healthy eating.  I also have clients interested in a two-way communication mechanism for Internal staff, especially in a crisis.  The platform would include SMS (text messaging), e-mail blasts, a RSS-fed news module, forums for employees to ask and receive aid, and other features.  It would also have a public-facing news platform that would spring into action as needed.  Other clients just choose to monitor what is being said about them.

7.  What trends do you see taking off in general and in the business sector?

Businesses are very interested in results. This is nothing new.  What's new is their willingness to consider social media as a part of their business strategy is very new.

8.  How, in your opinion, has blogging changed business communications?

I am not entirely sure it has changed it much yet.  I do think there is a breed of communicator today that understands that, to be effective, we need to build relationships.  However, I am concerned that some people are just going through the motions and not seeing the true power these tools have given us to engage in a two-way conversation with our stakeholders.  This is very different than collecting "friends" that you will never know and pushing out content in the hopes that it will win eyeballs.

9.  Lets play visionary. How will social media have changed business five years from today?  How about 10?

Ah, the role of visionary.  If I had a magic wand I would insist on world peace. That being the impossible dream, I would settle for getting along a little better.   In all seriousness though, social media has already started to change the fabric of the way that people gather and consume news.  If you look at the statistics, the younger generations no longer rely on television as their main source of information.  They do rely on the Internet and their cell phones.  However, over the next five to ten years, the Baby Boomers, who do love television, will be working through the system, so I don't think television, newspapers and other more traditional forms of media will die. However, I do think they will evolve.  We see this already.  Publishers are already becoming producers, witness the offering of viral video at the "Wall Street Journal," the "New York Times" and the "Washington Post."  Conversely, television producers, such as CNN, are putting more emphasis on their Web properties.  Business will follow this trend and become content creators.  I think that this is the Golden Age of content and parsing it out will be the big challenge.  With so many voices, there will be a growing crisis of attention, and the companies that can solve that problem and win a share of the attention will be the real winners.

KD Paine Reports on meeting Barak Obama

KD Paine went to one of those "meet-the-candidate" things that New Hampshire is famous for and gets to look Barack Obama in the eye.  The result is Obama gets another committed supporter and we get this fine piece of citizen journalism from KD.

Ken Camp answers Hugh's SAP Global Survey Q's

Ken Camp who has Digital Common Sense took the questions I sent to Hugh MacLeod and posted his answers which are decidedly different than Hugh's.

As far as I'm concerned, this could not be better. First Hugh posts his answers rather than send them back to me, then Ken Remixes the questions with his own answers and not the conversation is going all over the place. Ken's answers will most certainly get integrated into the SAP Global Survey.

Please feel free to take these very same questions and answer them on your blog. Just send me a link, through my email, or better, by posting a comment. If this thing spreads like a meme, no one at SAP will be unhappy, trust me on this. My tag is " SAP Global Survey."

You can even ignore the questions and just post something addressing these general issues:

• How is social media developing in different sectors of the world? We are interested by tools, by users, by company size or any otherslices you think of.
• What does this mean looking forward at the near term future?  How should businesses adjust. How will the enterprise adopt, adapt or resist the impact of social media?
• SAP is of course concerned with ERP, enterprise software and small-to-medium businesses. What insights do you have in that area?
• Above all, SAP aspires to be recognized as a social media thought leader.  We are looking for really big thoughts about the future of markets, business, culture, and Hell, let's throw in world peace

Google Acquires GrandCentral

Through Pat Phelan, I also learned that Google has acquired the very promising startup company GrandCentral Communications, a VOIP player that let's you integrate and manage all your phone numbers. In the VOIP community, many observers had tagged GrandCantral as the most promising of the very promising current class of VOIP player.

Google does it again. While other big companies create their own business barriers or spread peanut butter too thin, Google is watching and cherry picking the best and the brightest of entrepreneurial efforts.

Can You have too many friends?

My friend Pat Phelan sent me a link to Friendwheel a Facebook application what shows you a graphic wheel of your friends and their connection to each other. Then he sent me the link too Jeff Jarvis who was told by Friendwheel he had too many friends.  I imagine ol' Jeff is really choked up about that.

Actually, I was pondering an issue with Facebook friends at the precise moment Pat sent me the link.  As a rule, I only list people I actually know, or who connect to be people I know and trust.

Lately, I've received a lot of  requests from  people who I don't know, who live and work in different areas than me, who share no  mutual friends with me.  When I ask them why we should link up, they  say flattering things about  the book or my blog.

I'm very ambivalent.  On one hand,  I consider  listing someone as a form of endorsement, on the other, these people seem to have friendly intentions and I hate hurting people's feelings. On one hand, there is power in having a large network.  On the other, I would hate to have my name associated with someone who used it to misrepresent themselves.

Any thoghts out there in radioland?

SAP Global Survey Questions for you

I started using Linked In and FaceBook to ask questions of my friend networks applicable to the SAP Global Research survey on social media that I'm conducting. The responses have come fast and are generally of high quality. The length and style reveal the essential difference between the two social networks. There were no significant social networks when Scoble and I blogged early Naked Conversations chapters. We would have been able to have a lot more conversations with a lot more people and that would have been valuable. 

But it dawned on me, that I should be asked my questions here as well. Below is the first.  If you wish to answer, please leave a comment here. The larger the crowd that gives me input, the more valuable the wisdom of my report.

Question #1.

How do you think social media will change your life at work and at home over the next five years?

Scoble iPhone Story shows traditional media can still thrill

[Jeremiah Owyang and Robert Scoble admiring huge SJ Mercury News' Page 1 story and picture of Robert and son Patrick, who got to Apple Store at 3 am to be first in line for iPhone. Photo by Shel.]

By now, you probably know that Scoble and his son Patrick were he first in line to get the iPhone at the Apple Store in Palo Alto.  despite the fact that a guy named Steve Jobs showed up on the scene, media attention centered on Robert and Patrick.They were ubiquitous.

I thought it was cool that Ustream, a company I represent, had video online before Podtech, a company where Scoble works. It was a little later that I discover NPR a traditional broadcaster had scooped them both.

In fact, of all the things Robert has done, no single incident has stirred as much traditional media attention as being the first Apple hometown denizen to actually buy this new elegant device. Co-authoring naked Conversations didn't come close, nor did leaving Microsoft or joining Podtech. Nothing like being the first in line and having a highly quotable kid with you.

But what surprised me just a little is the excitement traditional media generates. In the course of the day, a half dozen of my friends contacted me to tell me that Scoble's picture was in one paper or on TV or somewhere. My mother in law, eying the Mercury story at a barbecue yesterday in Robert's backyard wanted to know why I hadn't gone down there so that I could have had my picture in the paper.

For those of us who are champions of Citizen Journalism, and new media. For those of us who talk so easily and freely about the death of the Metropolitan newspaper in most US cities, there is some cause to pause. There is something about getting your picture in the aper and your face on the traditional tube that still electrifies us all.

Hugh MacLeod is 1st to answer SAP Global Survey Qs

[Hugh MacLeod draws his signature cartoons on back of business cards as Robert Scoble watches with admiration at a San Francisco Blogger dinner last month. Photo by Shel.)

Gaping Void's Hugh MacLeod is the first to answer my questions for the SAP Global Survey I announced a week ago.  To my surprise he answered the questions on his own site, a move that is nearly as brilliant as his answers.

he talks about the difficulty of predicting and the surprises of the recent past. He sees a migration away from blogging and into social networking and explains why. He observes on the cultural differences between, people and businesses in the US, UK, France, Germany and even Denmark. He observes how people are using lots of tools in lots of ways and describes business decision-makers that he encounters as being in the "head-scratching phase." He even has narrow and specific advice for my client SAP.

There's a lot more over at his site, not to mention yet another great cartoon. Plus I now get to tell the world that Hugh was my first.

If you would like to contribute to this survey please either comment here or email me at shel@itseemstome.net.