Social Business #Fail?

Some very sober points on how Social Business could possibly avoid the fate of Knowledge Management.

The thing that struck me while reading this post is the fact that we seem to be backing into developing tools that really meet the requirements of their users. As my colleague Larry tweeted regarding this article:
  

"natural collab experience" = support my work-dont just push "social"

Although culture and change management in the enterprise play a factor in the success of collaboration within an organization, I'm also struck by the way social software is being developed in both the enterprise software and consumer spaces. As Ms. Buczek points out, collaboration in business goes beyond the firewall, and those who "get it" are turning to consumer tools to get things done. But while the consumer developers are trying to attract enterprise and figure out the "new e-mail" (which looks a lot like e-mail from 1990), enterprise software vendors are busy trying the reconstitute social media in their own style with a 1990's development model.

And so it goes, the primary ingredients that Ms. Buczek enumerates,

1. Integrated interfaces
2. Cross-organizational interaction
3. Streamlined identity
4. Device agnostic tools

fall by the wayside to serve the bipartisan consumer versus enterprise approach to software development and delivery. As Ms Buczek notes, there are lots of places we can start.

Your new job: maintaining your digital social reputation

It was only a matter of time that a service would pop up to help employers do background checks on your digital social life. According to a recent Forbes article:

The FTC determined that Social Intelligence Corp. was in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This means a search of what you’ve said or posted to Facebook/Twitter/Flickr/blogs and the Internet in general may become a standard part of background checks when you apply for a job.

The firm, Social Intelligence, keeps reports for 7 years for legal reasons but does not reuse them. This apparently allows you to clean up your digital trail. Or maybe you don't have to. I mean if you're a jerk it will come out sooner or later when you show up for work. All this does is make it easier for employers to figure that out before they hire you. Of course I'm waiting for the discrimination suit; which is most likely why Social Intelligence is keeping reports for 7 years. There are reasons why employers can't ask certain personal questions (i.e., your age) in interviews.

It is a good news is that employers need to disclose if they are doing a "social background check". I don't know about you but something about that phrase sounds really wrong. So at least there's transparency and the option to opt out of the check (and likely the job).

Since the checks can only access public information your new job might just be to make sure that privacy settings are always current on your social networks, especially if you're job hunting. The wild card is when someone else tags you or posts about you. Yet another reason to keep tabs on your social tools.

It's not always about being first

NPR interview with Malcolm Gladwell on innovation. Debunking personal computing myths and how complex innovation is not always realized by the developers. In other words, sometimes it's good to make a good idea better.

BTW if you have a New Yorker subscription you can read the related article "Creation Myth:Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation."

Why it makes sense for Microsoft to buy Skype - and why they'll have a very hard time making it their own (Andrew's Blog 05/12/2011)

A very nice synopsis on the VoIP technology and why Skype works so well.

From a tech perspective, if you start by agreeing that voice and video over the internet is going to be important over the next decade, you're halfway there.

Andrew's bits at the end are very insightful:

What this means for Microsoft

With Skype, Microsoft gets the ONLY successful VoIP alternative that users have accepted, that works through firwewalls, and that can be purchased. Nobody can "own" SIP or h.323. IAX2 solves many of the problems with those other protocols but it's open source. Open source presents many problems for Microsoft because they can't just change it the way they want without sharing their changes and they can't keep competitors from duplicating their work.

Where Microsoft will get into trouble with Skype

While Skype works amazingly well from an end user perspective, that very connectivity presents problems for Corporate firewalls. First, Skype is very hard to block. ...Second, Skype's communication is a kind of peer-to-peer hybrid model. ... If you're using skype, your own system becomes part of the routing network for the global Skype data. Corporations, with their very fast (and expensive) network connections, can accidentally become "Supernodes" on the Skype network ...This kind of connectivity works extremely well in an open and free client for end users, but once Microsoft is behind it, the game changes. ... End users at home are going to resent carrying data for other people in corporations. Changing the connectivity protocols in Skype would be messing with the very thing that makes it successful.

I agree with "but once Microsoft is behind it, the game changes" comment and it will be interesting to see just how that game changes. Breaking out two Skype networks (consumer and corporate) could disrupt the efficiency of Skype today, since corporate "supernodes" are clearly a benefit. How will corporations get behind purchasing a service that uses the customer's network for other customers? Compliance and risk issues come to mind here.

While I "get" that owning all the proprietary, really-good, successful technology is a good thing for Microsoft I'm still curious how Microsoft will take a technology that is based on methodologies and architectures that are the antithesis to the design of most of its corporate technology. Of course there is the Online division, which fits better, but my brain cramp there is that Microsoft spent the last decade streamlining its platforms so they would be ubiquitous in the cloud or on-premise. If Skype only landed in Online then we get an anomaly (let alone the Lync challenge). That's smacks of an IBM Lotus acquisition. Then again, there is the Entertainment division, which I see Skype fitting into nicely.

Why it makes sense for Microsoft to buy Skype - and why they'll have a very hard time making it their own (Andrew's Blog 05/12/2011)

Does Lotus really know? And does it matter? - vowe.net

The subtext on the product quality in this tread is most interesting to me:

Lotus Connections just became IBM Connections. Sametime may be next. Portal has always been WebSphere. Lotus as a brand has been toned down even at Lotusphere. And business cards now read "IBM Collaboration Solutions".

vowe.net: Does Lotus really know? And does it matter?