Ansible 2.0

Killing the press release

Through his blog,  NetSells Blog , my friend Glenn gives me a heads up on an important SEC decision to allow companies to make use of corporate website, blogs and other electronic content to satisfy public disclosure of information requirements. SEC Speech As reported in the TechCrunch Blog the allowed use of a company's public online presence to satisfy SEC disclosure requirements could dramatically shift the balance between print and Internet-based media as primary channels for corporate communication to the public and investor communities. The impact is likely to be felt beyond publicly traded companies as regulators increasingly accept electronic information provision as a substitute for the printed page. It would seem to be one more nail in the coffin of the traditional press release.

Science Friday on Second Life

Are you a fan of Science Friday on NPR? You can now sit in the amphitheater, see Ira Flatow (Ira Flatley inworld) on Second Life and pose your questions during the show.
Science Friday Community

Take a look at the map of the Science Friday island

A growing number of companies and organizations - including membership organizations - are experimenting with the use of Second Life and other virtual worlds for meetings, conferences, education, simulations, community and other applications.

Be my friend

When I joined a social network, my life changed. Suddenly everyone wanted to be my friend. Hey, this is great, right? Even people I don't even know want to be my friend. They really see me as a shining light. Well, maybe ...

According to a recent eMarketer article, 80% of SN users report receiving unwanted invitations to become friends. Many of these come from self-important individuals who compete over the number of friends in their network. I've run across several in Linked In who have more than 5,000 ... close friends, I'll bet. But many come from people who are building marketing lists to send unwanted advertising messages, or worse, from people who are trying to lure unsuspecting "friends" into revealing personal information on linked websites.

The largest social networking services - Facebook, MySpace and Linked In - reportedly are taking steps to try to manage this. Two-thirds of the respondents in this research said that they would consider switching social networks if the levels of spam and unwanted invites got to be too much.

Private social networks set up by companies and non-profits are generally easier to police simply because there are far fewer users. However, the same dynamics may be at work, especially as a successful site starts to grow at a rapid pace. The question is, what can be done about it?

Virtual Worlds

Growing out of gaming technology, virtual worlds enable people to interact with one another in a visual world. Unlike flat social communities, these 3D worlds use avatars and objects to create an environment in which the user can move about, talk with others, form groups, create, and engage in the virtual equivalent of many aspects of real life.

Boundary Issues

Does you organization have boundary issues? With Web 2.0, traditional boundaries are falling like dominoes. Just as Web 1.0 blurred the boundaries of proprietary versus public domain content, and those of work and personal time, the social web blurs the boundaries of proprietary communities and the differentiation between our business and personal relationships. Social networks include groups focused on work-related or serious policy or social issues, but are commingled with groups about weekend party adventures. We may meet our friends in our online communities to engage in either or both conversations, and we now use these communities to stay current with developments in these friends lives, both personal and professional.

With the loss of access to information resources as a critical member value point, the importance of the community of members has become that much more important. But the emerging online tools and models represent a major threat to the proprietary value of a membership community.

My take is that in order to stay relevant, membership organizations such as associations must find new ways to define the value they provide, and base the membership value proposition on what a member gains through membership that would not otherwise be possible. Access to one another is simply not enough. We need to leverage these relationship just as we learned to leverage rather than sell information content. Organizations that fail to achieve this goal face an increasingly risky future.

2008 - The year of SharePoint ... or not?

One of the biggest sources of buzz in 2007 was SharePoint MOSS. Larger companies and non-profits have been jumping on the SharePoint bandwagon to gain productivity through its integrated set of solutions. A tool that promises to run your intranet, public website, and extranet, and provide content management and collaboration all in one application certainly has an appeal. Conferences like the one taking place in March in Baltimore and special pre-conference seminars on SharePoint have started to crop up everywhere. SharePoint is seems is destined to take over the market.

Or is it?