“… community dynamics [still] require a long-term view. Communities – and I don’t mean flash mobs, groups of 10 people, or event attendees because those are not communities – take time to develop and flourish. Measuring communities based on quarterly earnings calendars is a bad way to go but most businesses are focused on short term performance. We are under such intense pressure to show results that we often abort efforts that play out over longer periods.

Read more at The Social Organization…

This short conversation between a division leader within a Fortune 500 Company and a consultant is a must-read for everyone who’s interested in social networking for the enterprise! Actually, I experienced exactly the same situation not so long ago. The wording was different but the content and the idea were identical.

“… there isn’t one company yet there is one brand. All the companies serve the customer but never in a coordinated fashion rather a splintered effort. The customer doesn’t know who is in charge of what but when dissatisfied with overall service they simply distrust the company while you say it isn’t your fault.”

The sum of social networking + social knowledge management + social watch + collaborative innovation is what we, at b-spirit, call social intelligence in the enterprise. It happens inside the company, across business units, divisions and departments, across the orgchart and regardless of the hierarchy; simultaneously it establishes crosslinks outside of the company with customers, prospects, partners, subcontractors, media organisations, even competitors.

Most companies still go for the internal and siloed approach, restricted to one department or unit. They still do not understand (or at least they pretend to) that such closed projects in closed groups are most likely to fail simply because they will be superseded, sooner or later, by larger and more global initiatives. Problem is: the loss of time and efficiency is often proportional to the loss of customers.

CMS Watch has officially published its Enterprise Social Software Report 2008: Networking & Collaboration Within and Beyond the Enterprise which is available for download.

The report evaluates 20 Social Software vendors against eleven common scenarios, with 250 product screenshots across 450 pages.

In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered the educational benefits of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The same study found that low-income students are in many ways just as technologically proficient as their counterparts, going against what results from previous studies have suggested.

“What we found was that students using social networking sites are actually practicing the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today. Students are developing a positive attitude towards using technology systems, editing and customizing content and thinking about online design and layout. They’re also sharing creative original work like poetry and film and practicing safe and responsible use of information and technology. The Web sites offer tremendous educational potential.

[...]

Now that we know what skills students are learning and what experiences they’re being exposed to, we can help foster and extend those skills. As educators, we always want to know where our students are coming from and what they’re interested in so we can build on that in our teaching. By understanding how students may be positively using these networking technologies in their daily lives and where the as yet unrecognized educational opportunities are, we can help make schools even more relevant, connected and meaningful to kids.”

Christine Greenhow, learning technologies researcher in the university’s College of Education and Human Development and principal investigator of the study

Via ScienceDaily.

From vnunet: “A survey of 1000 office staff has found that nearly a third of younger employees would consider quitting their job if Facebook was banned in the workplace.

The survey by IT services firm Telindus found that 39 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access applications like Facebook and YouTube.

A further 21 per cent indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban.

The problem is less acute with 25 to 65 year-olds, of whom just 16 per cent would consider leaving and 13 per cent would be annoyed.

[...]

Companies are increasingly looking to ban sites like Facebook because they clog up corporate networks and take up employees’ time.

Interestingly, the survey revealed that employees would be supportive of a ban if it made other network functions faster.”

Some straightforward tips about why it can be useful to adopt Twitter in companies and for business purposes…

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Adopting Twitter from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Traction TeamPage, the award-winning social software for the enterprise, offers powerful blogging, wiki and document management features, all in one. Whether you’re one team or want to connect hundreds of customers, suppliers, partners or internal groups, Traction TeamPage is your best choice for Enterprise 2.0.

In case you still wonder what such a platform can be used for, take a look at the examples of applications below describing where the implementation of TeamPage brings great value, including some relevant case studies.

- Program and Project Management

- Product Management

- Corporate Communication

- Operations Log

- Community of Practice

- Internal News and Information

- Exception Reporting

- Human Resources

- Public, Investor, and Customer Affairs

- Law Firms and Litigation Support

- Account Team Communication

- Law Enforcement and Intelligence

- Personal Notebook

Still confused? Not yet convinced? Need further information? Don’t hesitate to comment or to contact us directly!

The 17-18 June OECD Ministertial Meeting in Seoul (Korea) will focus on the future of the Internet economy. Government ministers from more than 40 countries, global business leaders, international government organisations, technical experts and academics are meeting to work out how the Internet can improve the world.

“The Internet is a key infrastructure for global economic growth and social development. Three major trends – Convergence, Creativity and Confidence – are influencing the policy environment for the Internet Economy. Each of these trends reflects significant shifts in the use and functionality of the Internet. Collectively, they represent a major transition in the evolution of the Internet and the economic system that has developed around it. Therefore, it has become increasingly necessary that policies supporting the Internet Economy be carefully crafted and co-ordinated across policy domains, borders and multiple stakeholder communities.

Ministers and stakeholders meeting on 17-18 June 2008 in Seoul will consider social, economic and technological trends shaping the development of the Internet Economy. They will forge broad principles that can provide an enabling policy environment for the Internet Economy.”

Moreover, everyone can join the discussion and tell the leaders and opinion shapers in Seoul what they think via a dedicated YouTube channel.

This feature provides WebDav access to folders on the server, so you can do version control of documents in your repository. This quick demo shows how to access those documents natively in the Mac OS Finder without having to go to the web interface. It’s useful for people who handle files frequently.

Traction Software: Mounting shared folders on Mac with Quicksilver from jibbajabba on Vimeo.

The Applescript that’s needed to mount the shared folder volume is shown below. This script basically tells the finder to open your server, but with Quicksilver accessing the script, you don’t have to first navigate to the finder to get there.

using terms from application "Quicksilver"
on process text share
tell application "Finder"
mount volume "REPLACE WITH YOUR SERVER NAME" & share
end tell
end process text
end using terms from

Via Urlgreyhot.

Intranet 2.0 strategies do exist. As defined by the 2007 Global Intranet Strategies Survey, an annual worldwide survey of intranets, the companies most likely to have a 2.0 strategy (11%) are Class 1 and the very large organisations with over 50k employees.

Applications are open for the 2008 survey.

Via Globally local - locally global.

Attracting and retaining talent are two major challenges for HR these days. If you think about it, talent managment really starts from recruiting through on-boarding; and carries on until the employee is comfortable with the culture, is made to feel at home in the organization, and is equipped with the tools to be productive.

Read more at You 2.0 - How Web 2.0 empowers YOU…

There are a number of reasons why a corporation or a not-for-profit should adopt Intranet 2.0 tools. Enhancing communications and collaboration with employees, and improving employee investment and retention are primary considerations. But there’s another more pressing need: snooze or lose.

While the intranet still plays poor cousin to the all-important website, intranet 2.0 cannot play backseat to any organization looking to differentiate itself from the competition.

Read more at IntranetBlog.com…

Last week, SixApart announced its new free open source antispam solution for TypePad. However, it is not the only way to prevent spam comments on your TypePad weblog.

Word and IP Banning

From Control Panel > Site Access, you can use the Word and IP Banning feature to stop comments before they reach your blog. You can set rules based on the originator’s IP address or URL or email address, or let the system check the content of the comment for specific keywords or phrases that are inappropriate.

Comment Moderation

Via Weblogs > Configure > Feedback you can decide to review all incoming comments before they are published on your weblog. This option is not only useful to prevent spam but also to make sure that the comments comply with the terms and conditions of your weblog (if any) and the tone is adequate.

Auto-Close

Spammers often target posts that are older. Therefore TypePad offers an auto-close feature via Weblogs > Configure > Feedback. Auto-close will automatically close the comments to your posts after a specified period of time. You can choose between several time frames, ranging from one week to one year. This eliminates the need to go back to a post and manually close the comments - the system will do it for you. Note: some people who are using Advanced Templates will not see the feature for another month or so. SixApart will roll it out shortly.

Via The Official Everything TypePad weblog.

Traction TeamPage, the professional combination of wiki, blog, tagging and social networking capabilities, is now available in version 4.0.

If you are developing products, communicating with customers and sales partners, collaborating with key suppliers, tracking business issues, and competitive intelligence, Traction TeamPage is for you. If you want to make your business work like the web, Traction TeamPage 4.0 is the best Enterprise 2.0 product to get the job done.

Traction TeamPage 4.0 new features include:

Personal Profile Pages: Curious about a person you’re collaborating with? Personal Profile Pages answer your questions and introduces Social Networking in the context of business collaboration. Each profile page creates a virtual blog including contact information, a self-authored description, optional picture and favorites, and a permission filtered roll-up of that individual’s contributions across all projects.

Page and Comment Moderation: Traction’s moderation model allows for free collaboration, or controlled approval of new articles and comments and draft edits. If you enable moderation in a project space, you add the capability to distinguish work in progress drafts versus published versions of pages and comments in that space. With TeamPage 4.0, people with permission to read drafts in one or many project spaces can view, navigate and search the entire TeamPage server seeing latest draft versions of all content, or click the published button to view, navigate and search the latest stable versions of all content. You can set permissions for each project space to grant or deny rights to post, read, edit, reject or publish drafts to any individual or group.

- With draft and publish permissions widely granted, TeamPage moderation supports wiki style collaborative editing of drafts spanning many pages - or projects - while keeping “latest stable” published versions available for reference until consensus is reached.

- With publish permission closely held, TeamPage moderation supports open collaboration followed by formal review and approval of important wiki content.

Access to the moderation history and Tractions’ broader Audit Trail is also controlled per project space using permissions granted to individuals or groups. This means that members of groups participating in draft collaboration can see all of the draft history, discussion and content of any draft version, while groups who aren’t part of the working draft collaboration only see the edit history and content of published versions.

This makes it possible to support a “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” rule within one or more projects for lively discussion and unconstrained wiki collaborative editing to establish a consensus (spanning many wiki pages if necessary). When a consensus is reached, you can document the decision by publishing the specific draft pages that documents the new consensus - or a legally binding agreement.

Page Name Management and Name History: Traction’s unique Page Name history - combined with TeamPage 4.0 Page Name Management and Moderation - makes name linking simple for everyone, and “fearless refactoring” possible for wiki experts.

TeamPage 4.0’s Link tool makes it simple to create a name link by typing a few letters of the page name and choosing a match from a dynamically generated list of names. You can also create a link by choosing from a list of pages that match a content pattern, or link to a Traction view, document attachment, personal collection or query.

When you change page names, incoming by-name links automatically update to show the new name. If you move the same name to a different page, the by-name links follow - with no broken links or lost comments. Page name history is an industry first, making it possible to understand “what happened” as you refactor and reorganize wiki pages.

When you really need to understand how a page has evolved, Traction’s Audit Trail goes far beyond basic wiki edit history. You can browse the history and attribution of edits, moderation actions, page name changes, comments, tags added or removed, incoming and outgoing cross-references, incoming and outgoing email actions.

And more: TeamPage 4.0 also adds E-Mail Notification for immediate notification on new post or edits - including rules to fine tune the kinds of events that interest you (works for Jabber IM notification too), Article Templates to create new pages with boilerplate format and content (such as a status report or product template), self-registration, inline filtering and sorting of TeamPage accounts defined by external LDAP or Active Directory queries, and many other features for TeamPage users and administrators.

You can read the PR annoucement here.

b-spirit is an official partner of Traction Software, please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any questions about Traction TeamPage.

Six Apart just announced the Release Candidate1 for the new version of Movable Type v4.2. However, it is not the final version. The final version is expected in the very near future.

This new version takes the top three most frequently requested features from the MT community and builds them right into the platform:

- A faster and more efficient user experience

- More design options and more powerful templates

- An anti-spam solution

To know more about the features of the new 4.2 version, please visit www.movabletype.org.

SixApart launches TypePad AntiSpam, a free Open Source antispam service for TypePad.

The upgrade is free and automatic. The service is also included in Movable Type 4.2 Release Candidate 1 and is available as a free plugin for any user of MT 3.3 or later.

For users of other platforms, TypePad AntiSpam is a free plugin. Users of WordPress 2.3 and 2.5 can download the plugin for free, it is 100% Akismet API-compatible and both services can coexist.

Gartner just published a report on what the top ten disruptive technologies should be for 2008 to 2012.

1. Multicore and hybrid processors
2. Virtualisation and fabric computing
3. Social networks and social software
4. Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms
5. Web mashups
6. User Interface
7. Ubiquitous computing
8. Contextual computing
9. Augmented reality
10. Semantics

Two interesting comments taken from the PR annoucement:

“… business IT applications will start to mirror the features found in popular consumer social software, such as Facebook and MySpace, as organisations look to improve employee collaboration and harness the community feedback of customers.”

[Gartner recommends that CIOs establish a formal mechanism for evaluating emerging trends and technologies, set up virtual teams of their best staff, and give them time to spend researching new ideas and innovations, especially those that are being driven by consumer and Web 2.0 technologies.]

“The CIO then needs to act as a conduit from the business to the technology. He or she needs to see how it might be possible to use these technologies to solve a problem the business has identified.”

Greg Lloyd, President and co-founder of Traction Software, interviews Harvard Business School famous Professor Andrew McAfee about Enterprise 2.0. The interview includes questions from 3 topics that were submitted in advance from the recent Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Tokyo.

Topic #1: How companies benefit from Enterprise 2.0 adoption

- What is Enterprise 2.0 and what is the difference between Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0? (starting 1′43″)

- Do you see the benefits of Enterprise 2.0 leading to more intense and effective competition between companies and what are the common behaviors and characteristics of the companies that are successful in applying this technology? (starting 4′14″)

- Could you discuss some of the areas in which companies may gain benefits in being more responsive, in sharing knowledge or in collective intelligence? (starting 6′45″)

- Do your business clients in the United States ask you to quantify the benefit of Enterprise 2.0 introduction and how do you answer that? (starting 8′33″)

- Do you believe that there is a lasting benefit and advantage to be gained by reducing the action time and accelerating decision making and may Enterprise 2.0 technology help? (starting 12′48″)

Topic #2: How business executives respond to Enterprise 2.0

- There seems to be several patterns of communication and collaboration that Japanese companies seem to handle very well. How do these patterns match with what you see in Enterprise 2.0? First, from the US perspective, Japanese companies seem to be very skilled in developing and maintaining valuable long term relationships with their suppliers, customers and partners; they have these co-developers in many cases. How does Enterprise 2.0 help maintain and extend these relationships? (starting 14′08″)

- In your Fast Forward talk, you made a point also of there may be boundaries if for example a company is collaborating with one customer in developing new product, they may be also collaborating separately with a different customer who is a direct competitor. (starting 15′48″)

- A second part on Japanese communications patterns. In the US, Japanese companies are very well known for their early adoption and successful application of management theories such as continuous improvement. Do you believe that Enterprise 2.0 principles can help develop continuous improvement methods in Japan? (starting 16′32″)

- In Japan, enterprises are very nervous about liability, leakage of inside information, protection of personnel data obtained by the enterprises and this can be a very difficult barrier for Enterprise 2.0 collaboration, especially between companies. Based on your experience, how serious do you believe these risks are and how would you advise Japanese companies to evaluate and manage the risk? (starting 17′52″)

Topic 3: Patterns of successful Enterprise 2.0 adoption

- What are the success factors of technology? (starting 21′05″)

- The second area that you addressed in your Fast Forward talk talks about the management practices and management support practices that are important for success. (starting 26′05″)

- The third area that you talked about were the elements of company culture that are important for success. (starting 29′06″)

- There also seem to be some examples that you used on the relationship between bottom up, people at the working level whishing to make things work better with very strong top level management support to break down barriers. You used the example of the US Intelligence community. (starting 31′19″)

The future prospects of Enterprise 2.0

How have your concepts of Enterprise 2.0 changed since you published your paper in 2006? (starting 34′22″)

- You’ve said several times that software and technologies must be easy to use. It’s often a very difficult problem to make things sufficiently easy to use. There are aspects of boundaries and permissions and security and collaboration. How do you see the technologies that support Enterprise 2.0 evolving and changing over the next 3 to 5 years to beat what you think are real business requirements? (starting 36′39″)

Via Traction Software.