Collaborative Thinking

Understanding Twitter & Social Dynamics

Stephan Baker's blog post plus link to the BW Online story below:

Here it is. Got held up a bit because BW Online wanted to run an edited version. This is what I sent Tuesday night. Please suggest fixes and adds.

It’s easy to laugh at nonsense on Twitter, the micro-blogging rage. “my nose is leaking,” writes someone called Zapples. “so imma go to sleep now…” But I’ve heard lots of similar drivel (and even produced some myself) on the phone—an important technology if there ever was one. The key question today isn’t what’s dumb on Twitter, but instead how a service with chicklet-sized messages topping out at 140 characters can be smart, useful, maybe even necessary.

Here's why I'm looking. In the last few months, the traffic on Twitter has exploded, growing far beyond its circles of bleeding-edge tech enthusiasts and hard-core social networkers. Businesses such as H&R Block and Zappos are now using Twitter to respond to customer queries. Market researchers look to it to scope out minute-by-minute trends. Media groups are focusing on Twitterers as first-to-the-scene reporters. (They were on top of the May 12 China earthquake within minutes.) Loads of new applications and services are growing around the Twitter platform, leading some to suggest that the micro-blogging service could become a powerhouse in social media.

Blogspotting The Twitter Story I've been working on - BusinessWeek

The Geo-tagged Life

Interesting and innovative. Would be nice to see this implemented for participants within a VoIP call, web conferencing, etc. as well as video broadcast:

Seero - Putting Video on the Map

Seero.com is a geo-broadcasting platform for users to broadcast and experience destinations around the world. Seero fuses live and on-demand video with GPS mapping to create a rich and unique user experience. Our goal is to shake the foundations of how you see video with a platform that promotes exploration and geographical awareness.

Seero's Features

Broadcast live video and archive it for on-demand playback.

Track GPS position in real-time and archive a course for playback with video.

Explore the world and discover video through an innovative geo-navigational interface.

Geo-tag your video clips to showcase the destinations where they take place.

Experience location specific factoids and feeds with a video broadcast.

Seero - Putting Video on the Map

The Dawn Of Federated Social Networks?

The road to data portability and a universal social graph across social networks and web sites is paved with good intentions. But we are still very early in the evolution of such efforts (with some prior bad memories to erase - as this NY Times points out). Without proper controls and credible services related to identity, intermediaries, relationships, information ownership/stewardship, decision rights, authorization, privacy, compliance and so on - I am pretty sure that the law of unintended consequences will kick in at some point (especially in more serious use case scenarios).

For now, an initial level of irrational exuberance is natural - and to some degree that's a good thing - it's nice to see progress as long as we remain pragmatic about how complex this challenge really is... the question is my mind is whether these competing solar systems will next move to a federated model for interoperability as we have in the world of instant messaging and presence (e.g., similar to Microsoft and Yahoo! or similar to enterprise environments and consumer IM/presence networks) - or will we see a different type of interoperability model emerge that balances user needs with the business models of these vendors.

Three’s Company Or Three’s A Crowd? Google To Launch “Friend Connect” On Monday

Well, regardless, we’ve heard from multiple sources that Google will launch a new product on Monday called “Friend Connect,” which will be a set of APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites.

MySpace launched Data Availability on Thursday, a competing product. Yesterday, in a suspiciously timed pre-release announcement, we heard about Facebook Connect, another similar product (with a nearly identical name to Google’s Friend Connect).

Like Data Availability and Facebook Connect, Google’s Friend Connect will be a way to securely send personal profile data, including friend lists, presence/status information, etc., to third party applications, say our sources. The primary benefit of these services is to allow users to maintain a single friends list and to coordinate social activities across different sites that perform different services. See my post on the Centralized Me for more of my thoughts on this.

Three’s Company Or Three’s A Crowd? Google To Launch “Friend Connect” On Monday

Facebook to open the gates with 'Facebook Connect' | The Social - CNET News.com

Social network Facebook announced Friday the debut of Facebook Connect, a new technology for members to connect their profile data and authentication credentials to external Web sites. It makes the company the latest major Web site to embrace the concept of data portability.

The formal announcement was made through a post on Facebook's developer blog by senior platform manager Dave Morin, who has been one of the company's most visible evangelists in the developer community over the past year. Facebook Connect will launch within the next few weeks.

Through Facebook Connect, members will be able to use their Facebook identities across the Web--profile photos, names, photos, friends, groups, events, and other information. Facebook profile content, for example, could appear on other social sites, and Facebook event listings could theoretically connect with external event and invitation services.

Facebook to open the gates with 'Facebook Connect' | The Social - CNET News.com

Facebook 'Connect' To Let Users Share Profiles -- Facebook -- InformationWeek

A day after rival MySpace announced it would let users share their profiles and other personal data across the Web, Facebook said it would do the same in the next several weeks.

The new features, called Facebook Connect, were introduced on the company's blog as the next iteration of Facebook's platform for developers building applications to run within the social network. Facebook Connect would make it possible for developers to build applications that connect to Facebook from other Web sites. Facebook users, however, would maintain control over their personal data and would have to agree to share it.

Facebook 'Connect' To Let Users Share Profiles -- Facebook -- InformationWeek

Facebook Developers News

Today we are announcing Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect is the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to "connect" their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site. This will now enable third party websites to implement and offer even more features of Facebook Platform off of Facebook – similar to features available to third party applications today on Facebook.

Here are just a few of the coming features of Facebook Connect:

Trusted Authentication
Users will be able to connect their Facebook account with any partner website using a trusted authentication method. Whether at login, or anywhere else a developer would like to add social context, the user will be able to authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted.

Real Identity
Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.

Friends Access
Users count on Facebook to stay connected to their friends and family. With Facebook Connect, users can take their friends with them wherever they go on the Web. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites. Developers will even be able to dynamically show which of their Facebook friends already have accounts on their sites.

Dynamic Privacy
As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that users' information and privacy rules are always up-to-date. For example, if a user changes their profile picture, or removes a friend connection, this will be automatically updated in the external website.

Facebook Developers | Facebook Developers News

A Display Of Sportsmanship Worth Noting

Having coached Little League/Ponytail softball for 11 years, this story just struck me as an inspiring and selfless act that deserves attention (it has gotten a lot of coverage). The teams involved were battling for a playoff spot. The player who was hurt (Sara Tucholsky) was a career .153 hitter and this was her first home run - ever. She was a senior and it was senior-day. The opposing player (Mallory Holtman) who came up with the idea to help her was the all-time home run leader for the conference. While the team that carried her around the bases eventually lost the game, they accomplished something much more important.  Watch the video - it will make your day.

Actual Video

Additional Stories

What is sportsmanship

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

By Travis David Sports Writer

Central Washington's Liz Wallace (left) and Mallory Holtman (right) are pictured carrying Western Oregon's Sara Tucholsky around the bases. Tucholsky was injured as she tried to round the bases on her own after a home run. (Submitted photo).

... As I was skimming through espn.com the other day I came across a very touching sports story involving sportsmanship in the positive way. The story came from a Western Oregon and Central Washington (Div. II) softball game on Saturday in a Great Northwest Athletic Conference game.

Western Oregon senior Sara Tucholsky stepped to the plate in the top second inning in a scoreless game. The senior was batting a woeful .088 on the season heading into the game. Then on an 0-1 pitch she belted a three-run homer over the center field fence for an early lead. The homer was the first of Tucholshy's career.

As Tucholsky was approaching second base when rounding the bases, she realized she had missed first base, and as she was circling back to touch the base, her knee gave out, collapsing just short of first base.

Before head coach Pam Knox motioned for a substitute runner to take the place of the fallen batter, opposing first base man Mallory Holtman, who is incidentally the career leader in home runs for Central Washington, and Central Washington's shortstop Liz Wallace picked up Tucholsky and carried the injured player around the base paths, helping her gingerly touch each base and giving way to a swarm of Tucholsky's teammates waiting at home plate.

At the time it was made clear that if Tucholsky could not round the bases on her own power a substitute could be brought in and take over at first base, giving her credit for only a two-run SINGLE and not a home run. But Holtman, a senior herself, playing on senior day knew that her and her teammates could help and it still count as a home run.

Greene County Daily World: Story: What is sportsmanship

The New World of Work

Insightful interview with Dan Rasmus who shares his perspective on globalization and its impact on business and the workplace. Note: requires Silverlight to be installed.

One of the other interesting things that Dan talks about is the different types of generation that are now in the workplace and the expectations of these workers and also how they are accustomed to work and how technology can complement these new styles.  Delving into mobile working and the concept of "always on, always connected" world,  Emma asks what the opportunities and challenges are for doing business in this new and exciting environment.

Partner-TV: telling it like it is : Partner TV: The New World of Work

Learning From Media Interaction Patterns

Interesting approach towards collaborative learning:

NBC News' educational arm NBC Learn has launched iCue: part social network, part news source for students age 13 and up, built upon NBC's vast video news archive.

iCue's learning environment is based on a concept called CueCards, which are video clips and related news stories fashioned into virtual trading cards. The content of these will focus on US history, government, and politics, as well as English language study and composition. CueCards can be collected, annotated, traded, indexed, and even integrated into games.

The collaborative learning platform was developed based on research from MIT's Education Arcade group, which continues to monitor iCue's usage in an ongoing study that users can opt into. MIT Comparative Media Studies will watch how the site is used to learn how to build a better learning environment for modern classrooms.

BetaNews | NBC launches 'social education' site iCue

The Times They Are A-Changin'...

Worth reading (or at least scanning), the entire report (registration required). There's also this link Global CEO Study: The Enterprise of the Future. Note: right now the registration link seems broken but I assume someone will notice and fix it.

IBM Global CEO Study: CEOs Battle to Keep Up With the Pace of Change

... Overall, 83 percent of surveyed CEOs expect substantial change in the future, an increase of 28 percent in just two years. However, CEOs report their ability to effectively manage change is increasing at a far slower pace.

... CEOs point specifically to their own customer base as the source of the most important changes they will have to address, as two new and more demanding classes of customers emerged: the 'information omnivore,' and the 'socially-minded' customer. Of all the trends identified in the study, surveyed CEOs plan their most substantial increases in investment in response to these customer sets.

... The "information omnivore" craves all types of information and often broadcasts its views and expectations worldwide via the Internet. These customers are swapping passive roles for much deeper involvement. "Consumers" are becoming "producers," often creating entertainment and advertising content for their peers, while demanding flexibility and responsiveness from companies with whom they choose to do business. Although these customers are more demanding, the majority of CEOs do not see them as a threat, but as an opportunity for differentiation based on meeting the heightened expectations of this group, and capitalizing on new market opportunities that will emerge.

... CEOs agreed that customer expectations around corporate social responsibility ('CSR') are increasing, and that CSR will play an important role in differentiating an enterprise in the future. Customers are coalescing around organizations' CSR profile -- including, but not limited to "green" initiatives -- and are increasingly demanding socially-minded products, services, and even supply chains.

... Overall, the CEOs see opportunities in CSR and are using it for their competitive advantage. They indicated that CSR is critical to maintaining current market share.

... Eighty-six percent of the CEOs surveyed plan substantial changes in the capabilities that distinguish leading organizations -- their knowledge and asset mix. CEOs expect to carefully calibrate business model designs based on principles of global integration, which includes global searches for sources of expertise, resources and assets that can help it differentiate.

... For more information on additional findings from the study, visit www.ibm.com/enterpriseofthefuture.

IBM Global CEO Study: CEOs Battle to Keep Up With the Pace of Change

The "Cognitive Age": Revisiting Information & Media Literacy

An interesting string of thoughts across the articles below. I'm not sure the term "transliteracy" will catch on, but the issues and questions raised in the compendium of articles below are worth contemplating in terms of educational strategies for youth as well as expected skills/competencies of a next generation workforce.   

The Cognitive Age - New York Times

The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.

The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?

The Cognitive Age - New York Times

Video: Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody

... I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse."

Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

It's also become my motto, when people ask me what we're doing--and when I say "we" I mean the larger society trying to figure out how to deploy this cognitive surplus, but I also mean we, especially, the people in this room, the people who are working hammer and tongs at figuring out the next good idea. From now on, that's what I'm going to tell them: We're looking for the mouse. We're going to look at every place that a reader or a listener or a viewer or a user has been locked out, has been served up passive or a fixed or a canned experience, and ask ourselves, "If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen?" And I'm betting the answer is yes.

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody

Transliteracy: Crossing divides

Transliteracy might provide a unifying perspective on what it means to be literate in the twenty-first century. It is not a new behavior but has only been identified as a working concept since the internet generated new ways of thinking about human communication. This article defines transliteracy as “the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks” and opens the debate with examples from history, orality, philosophy, literature, and ethnography. We invite responses, expansion, and development.

Transliteracy: Crossing divides

Two Projects, One Mission: Harvard and MIT join forces to prepare youth for the digital age

Harvard researcher John Francis describes a unique collaboration between Project New Media Literacies, lead by Henry Jenkins, and the GoodPlay Project led by Howard Gardner. This begins a five-part series of posts about how to teach core media skills alongside the roles and responsibilities of good cyber citizenry.

Spotlight on DML | Two Projects, One Mission: Harvard and MIT join forces to prepare youth for the digital age

Volunteerism: Employee Participation Helps Companies As Well

The news release below makes an excellent point: aligning external volunteer programs with internal training and professional development activities can be very synergistic with strategic talent initiatives. Skills-based volunteering could also help develop leadership capabilities that supplement succession planning needs. Adopting such a broader approach might additionally include consideration of how volunteer programs should be connected to corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs to reinforce those efforts as well.

This type of management perspective on a complex organizational challenge can also help build a business case for use of social media to augment those volunteer programs (e.g., social networks, communities, and other social applications) and potentially bridge them to internal systems.

Missing Out: New Deloitte Survey Finds Most Corporations Overlook Cost-Effective Opportunity to Unlock New Training and Development Resources

The national survey of Fortune 500 human resource managers found that, while training and development is perceived as vital to corporate success, many managers are laboring under shrinking or flat budgets, underscoring the need for cost-effective innovation. One solution could be found in an unlikely place — the company's volunteer program. Fully 91 percent of respondents agree that skills-based volunteering (which involves the contribution of business knowledge and experience to help nonprofits increase their capacity) would add value to training and development programs, particularly as it relates to fostering business and leadership skills. However, only 16 percent make it a regular practice to intentionally offer these opportunities for employee development, suggesting a missed opportunity to boost learning in a way that offers substantial benefits.

"Talent development is one of the most critical priorities facing corporate America today," said Barry Salzberg, chief executive officer, Deloitte LLP. "By intentionally linking two often unconnected areas like community involvement and training, innovative companies can meet strategic business goals, save money and, at the same time, release new resources for the community. It's powerful."

According to the American Society of Training and Development, corporate America invests heavily in training and development, spending more than $100 billion a year. The 2008 Volunteer IMPACT Survey revealed that the slowing economy and threat of a talent shortage are placing increased pressure on talent development programs, often without added financial resources. Eighty-seven percent of human resource managers surveyed agreed that their company’s training and development program is under pressure to develop the next generation of leaders, yet 70 percent indicated that their budget either remained flat or decreased over last year. Skills-based volunteer activities are perceived as a cost-effective development option; only 2 percent of total respondents believe that incorporating skills-based volunteering into talent development programs would cost more than traditional training and development options.

"Skills-based volunteer programs provide valuable experiential learning opportunities for employees that build business and leadership skills without the expense often associated with traditional corporate training programs," said Evan Hochberg, national director of community involvement, Deloitte Services LP. "As leading companies become adept at leveraging their community investments to drive key business goals, corporate community involvement programs will be positioned to deliver more business value and social impact."

Missing Out: New Deloitte Survey Finds Most Corporations Overlook Cost-Effective Opportunity to Unlock New Training and Development Resources