FriendFeed Real-Time: IM Now Means “Instant Microblogging”

October 16, 2008 by 2 Comments

FriendFeed released its Real-Time feature yesterday. This feature is very cool. With real-time, all new content entries and comments to those entries post automatically, in real-time. You get this amazing flow of content and conversation.

In its simplest form, it allows you to passively monitor the river of content. “Passively” might understate one aspect of it. This feature could pretty much kill off productivity if you passively watched the river all day. Here’s a representative exchange. Robert Scoble tweeted about the feature, which got a funny exchange going:

Robert: Now that Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed are giving us “real time” views, I find I’m “Media Snacking” much more. Watching the streams…

Mo Kargas: Robert, do you believe this will adversely affect your productivity ?

Robert: Mo: yes.

The time-suck element of the Real-Time feature is directly proportional to the number of people you follow. If you’re monitoring the activity of more than 100 active users, you’re going to drown in the river.

My sense is that this new feature works best in a couple scenarios:

  • Monitor activities for a limited group of active users, or a large group of relatively inactive users
  • Leverage the feature for group-based microsharing

It’s that second use that is of interest. In fact, that’s the use case that FriendFeeder Casey Muller described in his blog – following the conversation during last night’s Presidential debate.

Group-Based Instant Microblogging

A few weeks back, there was a post on TechCrunch titled Twittermoms Shows Why Twitter Needs Groups. The post described the emergence of Twittermoms, a site for moms who have met on Twitter. Here’s one quote:

At its core, Twittermoms is basically a group for mothers who Twitter. Because of that, it highlights an interesting point: why hasn’t Twitter addressed its need for groups?

The problem for a lot of folks is that the ability to converse with a specific set of users is tough on Twitter. The @replies help, but you can’t @reply to a large group. And tracking the tweets of a specific set of users is challenging.

Instant messaging is pervasive and quite useful. You can converse with others in real-time. As soon as you post, the recipients see the message. It fits quite nicely with the real-time nature of conversation.

But IM is NOT the same as microblogging. See the post I wrote earlier for a table outlining the differences between IM and microblogging. In many ways, microblogging is a superset of IM’s features.

So we’ve had this situation for a while:

  • IM is great for real-time conversations, but lacks many of the valuable features of microblogging
  • Twitter is great for microblogging, but lacks the real-time nature and the ability to focus on a smaller set of users

Enter FriendFeed Real-Time.

FriendFeed Real-Time works with both Rooms and Lists. What does that gain you? Rooms can be set up for people to participate around a specific subject. For instance, there could be a FriendFeedMoms Room. Moms join the room, and they can talk asynchronously (Standard view), or in real-time (Real-Time view). Rooms are searchable, so all the useful information and conversations are findable, and persistent.

Alternatively, one could set up her FriendFeedMoms List. Just tag a bunch of userrs into this list, and voila! You now have the ability to focus on a specific set of users and what they’re saying. Put the List in Real-Time mode and you’ve got Group IM.

In both cases, you can see Likes and threaded comments as well, giving context to the conversations.

Looking at these use cases, you can why FriendFeed Real-Time combines the best of instant messaging and micoblogging…

instant microblogging

The fact that FriendFeed Real-Time Rooms and Lists can be opened as mini-windows, and embedded on other sites makes them particularly useful.

They Built It…Will People Use it?

Personally, I think FriendFeed Real-Time puts even more emphasis on the value of Lists for day-to-day useage. Real-Time Rooms will be great for episodic uses, such as the debates or Apple events. But conversing with a group of friends will be a lot easier with a smaller List of users.

Since WordPress now has this cool poll function, I wanted to see what you think. Take a second to weigh in, and multiple answers are fine.

See you on FriendFeed.

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22FriendFeed+Real-Time%3A+IM+Now+Means+%E2%80%9CInstant+Microblogging%E2%80%9D%22&who=everyone

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Would You Apply a ‘Dislike’ to Your Co-Workers’ Content?

October 10, 2008 by 4 Comments

On Digg, you can apply the “bury” rating to stories. On Amazon.com, you can apply a single star to rate something negatively.

Would you ever do that to the work of your colleagues?

I’m not talking the annual HR exercise of 360 reviews. I’m talking Enterprise 2.0 apps, which incorporate the features we see out in Web 2.0. The ability of people to rate the content they see.

A few social media sites have taken a binary approach to ratings: (1) positive rating, or (2) abstain:

While some others are incorporating the notion of negative ratings:

Out on the Web, where you’re interacting on platforms with thousands of anonymous or unknown people, negative ratings make sense and help bring some order to the scrum of content and products.

See Louis Gray’s post for a good perspective on this whole rating thing in social media.

Inside companies, things are a little different. There’s a vetting of other Enterprise 2.0 users, in the form of the hiring and annual review process. This automatically raises the average quality of contributions.

And there’s this….Enterprise 2.0 apps are used by people you know and work with. People you’re going to see in meetings, on projects and who have common connections. A negative rating to someone’s Yammer or wiki entry or social bookmark is a big deal. You’re essentially saying:

“Dude, this is bad. I mean really bad. So bad that I had to ‘dis you and let the rest of the organization know how bad it is.”

Personally, I’d have a hard time with this. In the most egregious cases, I’d apply the negative rating. But I’d strongly prefer to “work it out” in the comments to the original content.

My concern is that a negative rating turns into a basis for internal feuding and chills open discussion about ideas, information and observations. But in a large organization with a heavy flow of content, maybe the negative rating is the most efficient way to handle the value if information.

Perhaps I’m in the minority here. How about you? Would you give a thumbs down to your co-workers’ content via Enterprise 2.0 apps?

*****

See this post on DFriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Would+You+Apply+a+%E2%80%98Dislike%E2%80%99+to+Your+Co-Workers%E2%80%99+Content%3F%22&who=everyone

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Facebook Is Starting to Get My Attention Again

October 3, 2008 by 9 Comments

Facebook recently made its new design permanent, despite the protests of many vocal users. Where the old focus was on a slow newsfeed, ornamenting your profile and interacting through thrird party apps, the new design puts content and conversations at the center of the user experience.

I think Michael Arrington still has one of the best perspectives on it when he wrote The Friendfeedization Of Facebook back in July.  As he said there:

But it’s also clear that they like what they see at Friendfeed, which expertly combined the idea of an activity stream that was first popularized by Facebook with the microblogging trend introduced by Twitter. Users constantly add content that their friends read and comment on, which creates yet new content. The virtuous page-view creating cycle continues.

The attraction of FriendFeed for me is the ability to discover new things via the variety of feeds, and to engage others in conversations about a wide range of topics. I had stopped using Facebook because of the inane apps and the funky secret algorithm that controlled what went into the news feed. Movie trivia games and sheep throwing with old school friends just wasn’t that fulfilling.

Interactions from My Facebook Network Are Increasing

But recently, I’ve noticed activity in my Facebook network picking up. I generally don’t post anything in Facebook – tweets are my status updates, FriendFeed is my activity stream. In the past few days, I’ve had more interactions via those tweets than I’ve had in a while. Here’s an example.

Tweet: “Alternative theory…Palin’s interview with Couric was just to set the bar incredibly low for her upcoming debate with Biden.”

Responses from my network…

High school friend: “If so, she’s a genius.”

College friend: “Brilliant tactic IMO.”

Cousin: “I can hardly wait. It will be so cringe-worthy!”

Former co-worker: “hmmm, I have my fingers crossed. Sadly, Biden has the tendency to put his foot in his mouth too……”

As a point of comparison, here’s the response this tweet got on Twitter:

N/A: no one replied.

Now it’s not like I’m the most active Twitterer. But I’ve been more active there than on Facebook. Facebook had more interaction in this case.

And as one more point of comparison…here’s the response on FriendFeed:

5 Likes, no comments

Likes are great, they are the currency of FriendFeed. No conversations though in this case.

Facebook: The Value of Context and Better Interaction Hooks

Actively engaging in FriendFeed and (somewhat) Twitter, I’ve built up some context with my networks on those sites. And there are plenty of good conversations there. FriendFeed is still my favorite haunt.

What interests me with the Facebook experience is the variety of people from my life – classmates, family, colleagues – that commented on that tweet. I really haven’t maintained a strong interaction with those folks. But there’s an existing reserve of “context” from my past interactions that is the basis for interacting.

And Facebook really did take a page from FriendFeed, with commenting on various activities. I’ve been impressed with how non-FriendFeeding, non-Twittering people in my network have started using the new commenting functionality.

I don’t know if it will last, but early results are promising.

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Facebook+Is+Starting+to+Get+My+Attention+Again%22&who=everyone

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Tim O’Reilly Course Corrects the Definition of Web 2.0

October 1, 2008 by 14 Comments

eBay was Web 2.0 before Web 2.0 was cool.

Tim O’Reilly wrote a nice piece the other day Why Dell.com (was) More Enterprise 2.0 Than Dell IdeaStorm. In the post, he re-asserted the proper definition of Web 2.0. Here’s a quote:

I define Web 2.0 as the design of systems that harness network effects to get better the more people use them, or more colloquially, as “harnessing collective intelligence.” This includes explicit network-enabled collaboration, to be sure, but it should encompass every way that people connected to a network create synergistic effects.

The impetus for Tim’s post was that people leave Google and its search engine off the list of Web 2.0 companies. As Tim writes, seeing the power of what Google’s search engine did was part of the notion of Web 2.0.

Here’s a way to represent what Tim is talking about:

I like that Tim sent out this reminder about Web 2.0. Here’s how Web 2.0 has become defined over the years:

  • Social networking
  • Ad supported
  • Bootstrapped
  • Fun and games
  • Anything that’s a web service

This seems to have fundamentally altered Web 2.0. I’m reminded of a post that Allen Stern wrote back in July, CenterNetworks Asks: How Many Web 2.0 Services Have Gone Mainstream? In that post, he wondered how many Web 2.0 companies will really ever go maintream.

Check out the comments on Allen’s blog and on FriendFeed:

I would say MySpace but that really came before Web 2.0

mainstream – Facebook/hi5/bebo, Flickr, Youtube, Slide, Photobucket, Rockyou

Oh and you’ll have to add Gmail to the list as well.

I’ve yet to see one, really. 😉

Is eBay web 2.0-ish? [this was mine]

Agree with Facebook, MySpace, YouTube. I’d add Blogs as another 2.0 winner. I’d put eBay and Amazon as 1.0 success stories

A better way to ask this is “which web services since 2000 have gone mainstream?” Blogger. Flickr. Gmail. Facebook. MySpace. Digg. YouTube. WordPress. Live Spaces

Look at those responses! You can see a massive disconnect between Tim O’Reilly’s original formulation of Web 2.0 and where we are today.

One example I see in there: Gmail. Gmail is a hosted email application. Does Gmail get better the more people use it? No. There’s no internal Gmail application functionality that makes it better the more people use it. It’s just an email app the way Yahoo Mail is an email app. Being a web service and ad-supported isn’t, strictly speaking, a Web 2.0 company.

Terms do take on a life of their own, and if the societal consensus for a definition changes over time, then that’s the new definition. But the responses to Allen Stern’s post highlight two problems:

  • People discount or ignore key components of the Web 2.0 definition
  • Web 2.0 is slowly coming to mean everything. Which means nothing.

Finally, Tim’s post helps me differentiate the times I should use “social media” as opposed to “Web 2.0”.

What do you think? Should we go back to first principles in defining what really is “Web 2.0”?

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Tim+O%E2%80%99Reilly+Course+Corrects+the+Definition+of+Web+2.0%22&who=everyone

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How to Mess with Bloggers’ Heads Using FriendFeed Lists

September 18, 2008 by 4 Comments

Steven Hodson, blogger extraordinaire at Winextra, posted this on FriendFeed:

“Okay this is cool .. someone has setup a Curmudgeons list and I’m apparently part of the list ROFL”

Inside the blue highlight box, you can see a referring URL that someone used to get to his blog:

http://beta.friendfeed.com/list/curmudgeons

That is someone’s List on FriendFeed. They’re put him into a List called “Curmudgeons”.

You can customize your own referral URLs with FriendFeed Lists. The tags you use for a blogger will be seen by that blogger as they look at their referral traffic.

Oh the possibilities…

  • beta.friendfeed.com/list/brilliant
  • beta.friendfeed.com/list/dumbass
  • beta.friendfeed.com/list/stop-blogging-about-twitter
  • beta.friendfeed.com/list/free-trial-of-viagra
  • beta.friendfeed.com/list/can-you-come-upstairs-for-dinner-please

You can create a List, click through on it, and the blogger will see your special anonymous message. Lists are easy to create and delete, meaning you can do it as much as you want.

So have fun with your favorite bloggers – send ’em those subtle messages with the tags you use in your Lists.

But you don’t have to do that with me…uh…we’re cool, right?

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22How+to+Mess+with+Bloggers%E2%80%99+Heads+Using+FriendFeed+Lists%22&public=1

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Business Week Launches Info Sharing Social Network – Will It Float?

September 17, 2008 by 1 Comment

Business Week Magazine has entered the social networking world with Business Exchange. Business Exchange is built around the sharing of information and discussing it with others. Here’s how Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler described it:

“Business Exchange, a free online information hub, is a new initiative of BusinessWeek.com. It enhances the ongoing reporting and analysis of Business Week writers and editors in print and online by aggregating other sources of news and analysis (including other media brands, blogs, videos, and research reports). Readers can use it to track business trends, with hundreds of topics available at launch, or create a specific topic that’s not currently on the Exchange.

The best part is the social underpinning of this platform. Users (including our journalists and editors) can share their own knowledge about a subject to enrich each topic far beyond what any single person or search engine can accomplish.

Business Exchange is a mix of:

  • Social bookmarking
  • Forums
  • Social network

Business Exchange vs. FriendFeed

FriendFeed actually has a similar mission to that described by Business Week’s editor-in-chief. So I put together a quick comparison of the two sites:

FriendFeed feels like a hotbed of activity, the kind of site where you’re compelled to hit the F5 refresh button. Business Exchange is more staid, partly because it doesn’t yet have an active user base, partly due to its design. The key design points from the table above that make a difference are:

  • Bounce to the top – Adding a comment or a save doesn’t move an item to the top of the Business Exchange page for a given topic, losing that feeling of “what’s hot”.
  • Forced segregation of content – For a given topic in Business Exchange, you can look at News or Blogs or References. But you can’t take them all in at once.
  • View Saves by user – In the list of entries on Business Exchange, you can’t see how many times an item has been Saved. This information is available for an individual item. But it’s not an easy experience to see what others found valuable.

As seen in this discussion, community, conversations, variety and outstanding design are making a difference for FriendFeed.

That being said, Business Exchange is new and it’s beta. Let’s see what they are doing.

Business Exchange’s Features

Content is both streamed and added. Being streamed into Business Exchange seems like a nice bonus for a media site or blogger. Check out the difference below in the way these two items made it into Business Exchange:

The MyDebates post was “published” into the topic. The Soul of the Enterprise post was “added” to the topic. From what I can tell, designated media sites and blogs are automatically added based on either key words or tags.

Full Profile. You get a full profile page on Business Exchange. Work, education, picture and up to four links to other sites. It also shows your recent activity, which is nice.

Building a social network. You can’t search for other users. So you find them when they’re displayed as “Active Users” on the site, via the items they Save or Comments they make. It makes it a bit challenging to build out your list of subscriptions. Your subscriptions are simply a list, and you can click an individual to see their activity. There is not currently a way to see the aggregated activities only of your subscriptions.

Focus on Most Active. At different points on the site, Business Exchange gives a list of what’s most active. The home page tells you the most active Topics, and gives a list of Active Users. Each topic includes a list of Most Active, which does aggregate from News, Blogs and References.

The definition of Most Active inside a topic is probably based on the number of Views, Saves and Comments. You can see all of those stats for an item when you go to make a Comment. I like seeing those stats.

If You’re Business Minded, Check It Out

It’s early in the life of Business Exchange. Getting more users will, of course, make it a more interesting place to hang out. It doesn’t hurt that it hangs off the businessweek.com site, and that it can get periodic boosts from the print magazine.

I’m still learning the site, and maybe the Most Active tab for each Topic is the place to be.

My profile on Business Exchange is here. If you sign up, add me, and I’ll add you back.

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Business+Week+Launches+Info+Sharing+Social+Network+-+Will+It+Float%3F%22&public=1

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I’m Doubling Down My Subscriptions Because of FriendFeed Lists

September 11, 2008 by 10 Comments

As discussed here before, FriendFeed’s beta version includes the ability to tag users, putting them in different Lists you create. You can create your own programming channels.

I’m loving this feature.

One effect for me has to been to add subscriptions left and right. Why? Two reasons:

  1. Now that I’ve got themed Lists, I want there to be some good content in them! Right now, I’m subscribing to a lot of FriendFeeders who are into Enterprise 2.0 or who have an amazing eye for pictures.
  2. Managing a high flow of content is a lot easier. You can take users out of your Home feed, and tag them into different Lists. Check the Lists at your leisure, and you can see content for many, many more people. It doesn’t all just go flying by you.

Here’s my rendition of how Lists have changed the FriendFeed experience:

How about you? You started your Lists yet?

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22I%E2%80%99m+Doubling+Down+My+Subscriptions+Because+of+FriendFeed+Lists%22&public=1

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Riding Coach: A Day in the TechCrunch50 DemoPit

September 9, 2008 by 2 Comments

I spent a day in the DemoPit of the TechCrunch50 launch conference on behalf of my company Connectbeam. We didn’t debut at TC50 (two year-old company already has customers), but it was an opportunity to raise awareness among different communities.

I’ll say this: DemoPit is like flying coach, while the folks on-stage are flying first class. You don’t get the amenities or attention, but you still get to travel.

Here’s a quick summary of the experience.

Demo Tables

The tables are like 30 inches across. Not huge, but they were fine. Enough for a big display screen, a sign and a laptop. And that chip tip jar.

Wifi

Absolutely awful. The wifi was spotty early in the morning. Then it went down for several hours. That’s right…several hours. A bunch web-based companies without Internet access. Brilliant.

Jason Goldberg of SocialMedian went out for an EDVO card at the local Best Buy. He was back in business, so my colleague went out for one too. After an initial blue screen of death, we had Internet access again.

Late in the day, a TechCrunch staffer came by to offer another day to do demos since we had it pretty rough. Cool that they acknowledged the issue, and came up with a solution.

Demo-ing

Enjoyed myself when I could show off the product. It was great to take real-live data from someone visiting, punch it in the app and have it do all the cools things I said it could.

Lots of Visits by Tuesday-Wednesday DemoPitters

A lot of guys hitting the DemoPit on Tuesday and Wednesday came through the area on Monday. Smart. They wanted to see how we pitched, and find out what to watch out for (uh..the wifi).

Ashton Kutcher

Yup, Ashton Kutcher was in the house. He was up on stage pitching his start-up Blah Girls. You can read people’s tweet reactions here. It was amusing to see him on stage talking up his site. 10-12 year old girls might like it. Might…

Later this entourage-like crowd of people came through the DemoPit. It was Ashton Kutcher and Jason Calacanis’s were walking Jason’s bulldogs. There were several people accompanying them. Quite the scene.

And still later, Sarah Lacy was interviewing Kutcher. Do you think he got Zuckerberg’d?

FriendFeed Friends

I had a couple unplanned FriendFeed meet-ups, which was really cool.

Here are their handles on FriendFeed:

Weblebrities

Saw a few weblebrities: Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Stowe Boyd, Jason Calacanis, Dan Farber, Loren Feldman.

Big Companies

Three big communities were out in the DemoPit: Yahoo, Salesforce, MySpace.

Jason Goldberg of SocialMedian

Jason’s Social Median table had a steady flow of traffic during the day. And he did well with those DemoPit chips. People give poker chips to companies whose products they like. The company with the most chips gets to go on-stage at TechCrunch50 on Wednesday.

Social Media had a pretty good haul. Hope Jason makes it on-stage Wednesday.

Yammer

I liked TechCrunch50 participant Yammer. Enterprise Twitter.

On to Other Conferences

TechCrunch50 was tiring but fun. I enjoyed the scene. Next, Connectbeam will be at the KMWorld Expo September 23. And Defrag after that.

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=who%3Aeveryone+%22Riding+Coach%3A+A+Day+in+the+TechCrunch50+DemoPit%22

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Use FriendFeed Lists and Rooms As Your Platform for Information Flow

September 8, 2008 by 2 Comments

Fred Wilson tweeted this recently:

i want to follow less people and more keywords in my twitter timeline. can’t wait for summize to get integrated into twitter

I agree with this sentiment – selected topics from a broad population, and broad topics from a selected population. When it comes to learning about particular subjects, it’s right on. FriendFeed’s beta version now gives you the ability to do exactly what Fred Wilson suggests for any topic. I’ll describe how I’m using them to track developments in the world of Enterprise 2.0.

Streaming Keyword-Based Content into the Enterprise 2.0 Room

About three months ago, I tried a little experiment. I created the Enterprise 2.0 Room on FriendFeed.

Not having time to be a Room Community Manager, I set it up to stream in content related to Enterprise 2.0. I did this as a search on FriendFeed for “enterprise 2.0“.

Well, the idea was neat. The actual implementation pretty much blew.

Because a search on FriendFeed, piped into FriendFeed as an RSS? It produces a lot of recursive results. Made the room pretty noisy and not particularly attractive to follow.

So I’ve cleaned up my act. Here’s what’s up:

  • No more FriendFeed searches
  • Using Summize Twitter Search to source content
  • Using Del.icio.us tags to source content

I’m piping in RSS feeds from Twitter and Del.icio.us. Twitter is great for those little hits. The links to content. The expression of a single perspective. And Del.icio.us is great for leveraging what people decided was worth saving.

Here are the search terms I’m using for the two services:

  • Twitter: “enterprise 2.0”, “E2.0”, “social computing”
  • Del.icio.us: enterprise2.0, enterprise20

In Case You Don’t Want it in Your Home Feed

Rooms can be set so that their entries don’t hit your Main FriendFeed stream.

You can un-check the box there that says “Show me this room’s items on my FriendFeed home page”. This works fine for Original FriendFeed.

The other option is to use Beta FriendFeed. In Beta FriendFeed, Lists have become the cool new feature. I have to admit, I’m finding it a lot easier to manage content via Lists than Rooms.

You can create a List called Enterprise 2.0. Rooms can be added to Lists. As if the Room was some sort of person on FriendFeed, streaming all sorts of content. Cool idea.

So you can run the entire Enterprise Room through a List if you want:

As you can see in #2 above, I’ve taken the Enterprise 2.0 Room out of my Home Feed. It only pipes into my Enterprise 2.0 List.

The cool thing about using Lists is that you can supplement the Twitter and Del.icio.us feeds of the Enterprise 2.0 room with other people or Rooms you like. For instance, I’ve included the FriendFeed accounts of Dion Hinchcliffe, Charlene Li, Ross Mayfield, Thomas Vander Wal and others into my personal Enterprise 2.0 List. For people not on FriendFeed, I also have created imaginary friends to pipe them into my List, such as the tweets of Harvard professor Andrew McAfee.

The Future: Keywords + People

Repeating Fred Wilson tweet from above:

i want to follow less people and more keywords in my twitter timeline. can’t wait for summize to get integrated into twitter

That pretty much describes my List set-up of the Enterprise 2.0 Room + specific FriendFeeders.

If you’re interested in a single place to track the happenings of Enterprise 2.0, I invite you to join the Enterprise 2.0 Room. Then personalize things with your own List. If you think of any search terms or data sources I should add, please let me know.

And feel free to start your own Rooms and Lists for topics you care about.

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Use+FriendFeed+Lists+and+Rooms+As+Your+Platform+for+Information+Flow%22&public=1

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FriendFeed’s Progress Out of the A-Listers’ Garage

September 5, 2008 by 6 Comments

Photo courtesy of jo-h on Flickr

One of the earlier complaints about FriendFeed is that it is primarily the playground of the early adopter set, particularly the A-Listers. Remember the recent discussion around Allen Stern’s post about FriendFeed’s recommended members? That they are so heavily weighted toward the top A-Listers? Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Steve Rubel, etc…

Well, over the past month or so, I’ve noticed a trend where sub-groups are forming and are very interactive with one another. And these groups don’t have A-Listers.

This is healthy.

If FriendFeed is to grow, it will have to get beyond being dominated by A-Listers with their large number of subscribers.

The post that prompted me to realize this was by Morgan on FriendFeed:

My Friendfeed compatibility 3 months later – an evolution

He added his graphs which show other FriendFeed members with whom he shares the most Likes. The blue chart on top is today, the green chart from three months ago:

Notice the change? Three months ago, his experience on FriendFeed was dominated by the A-Listers: Scoble, Michael Arrington, Chris Brogan, Loic LeMeur, etc…

But now look. Today, he tends to track more closely with everyday folks on FriendFeed. One person in that blue pie chart, Kyle Lacy, has even started a Facebook group for his friends: The FriendFeed Night Crew (click here to see the group logo on FriendFeed).

This is just one sub-group of which I’m aware. I’m sure there are others.

Consider this a small marker of FriendFeed’s progress out of the A-List garage.

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22FriendFeed%E2%80%99s+Progress+Out+of+the+A-Listers%E2%80%99+Garage%22&public=1

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How Enterprise 2.0 Fosters Innovation: Stop Groupthink

September 2, 2008 by 20 Comments

I’ve had a chance to read some interesting research about innovation. In this case, whether more quality ideas emerge…

  • When people are in group sessions; or
  • Thinking independently

The background of this research ties into a well-known corporate activity: group meetings. I imagine most of us go through the ritual team meetings. Team meetings are good for a lot of things, but innovation may not be their highest and best use.

Turns out, research says that companies would be better off if employees had a way of coming up with ideas on their own, not in group meetings.

Here are three separate findings:

Via Marc Andreessen’s blog, the findings of researchers as related by Frans Johansson in The Medici Effect:

Via MSNBC, the findings as reported in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Via MIT Sloan Management Review, research published by INSEAD Business School

These observations about brainstorming ring true to me. I’ve been in enough meetings to know that strong personalities and prior relationships can hold sway over a group. The quote above by the Indiana University associate professor describes a dynamic I’ve seen time and again. An idea suggested early in the session gets traction, and becomes the focal point of the brainstorming. At some point, groupthink takes over. Maybe it’s exhaustion, maybe it’s an inability to focus on the other ideas anymore.

Yes, good ideas can emerge. But often, the whole exercise feels forced, and in my personal experience, employees don’t expect much from these meetings. Particularly if they’re run by outside consultants.

It Turns Out Group Brainstorming Does Have Its Attractions

The INSEAD paper referenced above does have some good news about group meetings. The paper studied two types of brainstorming groups:

  1. The traditional model, assembling a group of people.
  2. The other group took a “hybrid” approach, working on ideas by themselves before coming together to share their thinking.

The quote I selected above is from the research. But the study also has this to say about the two types of brainstorming:

Which technique yielded the best ideas? Strictly speaking, the traditional brainstorming groups consistently came up with the very best idea — and the very worst one, too. In other words, the quality of their results varied much more than those that came out of the hybrid groups that combined individual and group idea generation. However, the hybrid groups produced more ideas that were, on average, of higher quality. Nonetheless “for the very best idea, you need to have a pure brainstorming group,” notes Girotra. “Random interactions are likely to produce better-quality ideas.”

A few thoughts from that quote. One, the best idea can emerge from the group brainstorming, but I suspect it takes a truly motivated group. People need to come to meetings energized, ready to participate in a rapid-fire exchange of ideas and counter-arguments. In my experience, most meetings aren’t like that.

Also, how does that research that both the best and worst ideas emerge from group brainstorming play out there? Who doesn’t want the best ideas to emerge, but are you ready to put up with the worst ones too? Is there an argument for maintaining a larger number of ideas that are consistently above average?

Why can’t we get the best of both worlds? I want a higher quantity of good ideas, and I want the best ideas to emerge. While avoiding the worst ideas, if possible.

Enterprise 2.0: Hybrid Between Individualism and Group Dynamics

The graphic below describes the way Enterprise 2.0 captures the advantages of both brainstorming styles, group and hybrid:

Source Ideas: In the model above, the bottom level speaks to the core driver of Web 2.0: user-generated content. In this case, employee-generated ideas. Applying the familiar design and functionality of the consumer web (e.g. Twitter, Flickr, FriendFeed, WordPress, etc.) allows the easy creation of ideas.

Filter Ideas: Something I’ve learned by participating in social media is that your peers are amazing filters. Find a group of people with common interests – but with different opinions – and you’d be amazed at how the most useful stuff floats to the top. Happens in blogging, photos, videos, tweets etc.

Execute Ideas: After all this idea creation and filtering is done, the ideas need to be executed. Here’s where the group dynamic becomes a huge plus. Most ideas in a corporate setting will touch a number of areas, and the group makes it happen.

The key to getting the best of both worlds – more ideas of better quality, identification of the top ideas – is to create a culture where ideas are rapidly created and evaluated, while also letting advocates gestate their ideas to fix areas of weakness.

The ‘Source Ideas’ part of the model speaks to the best of brainstorming as researchers have found, in the above quotes. In my own experience, it’s hard to find those channels for new ideas, either fully baked or based on a hunch. You’d typically have to email someone, or call a meeting with several folks. Coming up with new ideas is challenging enough…you then have to go through workplace Olympics to see an idea get discussed and considered.

‘Filter Ideas’ gets to the heart of what makes group brainstorming powerful, when it works. The rapid creation and analysis of ideas helps everyone. Different points of view, people seeing unique opportunities with an idea or recognizing weaknesses…all are vital to the corporate innovation process. Currently, this can only happen in a group setting, but the group brainstorming dynamics have to be “right”.

Enterprise 2.0 has this figured out. Ideas are easily created and shared. Proponents and opponents can develop analyses of ideas. Simple commenting is very powerful, while longer form blogging can lay down foundational elements. Proposed ideas and discussions live longer than the one hour everyone is together in a conference room.

I know this, because I see it everyday in places like FriendFeed, blogs and Twitter. The diverse opinions, knowledge, creativity and world views result in some really good ideas and perspectives.

I’m not prescribing the particular technology to capture the best of individual and group brainstorming. There are different ways to approach that. What matters is letting the employees try this out for themselves.

Groupthink has its place. A unified group taking on the challenges of the market is vital. But groupthink should kick in after the innovation processes have occurred. First, a healthy scrum of ideas, ultimately filtered to the ones that a company will execute. Then everyone working together with a common sense of purpose.

A utopian vision? Perhaps. But like all stretch goals…if you get halfway to them, you’ve accomplished a lot.

*****

If you want an easy way to stay on top of Enterprise 2.0, I invite you to join the Enterprise 2.0 Room on FriendFeed. The room takes feeds for Enterprise 2.0-related items on Twitter, Del.icio.us and SlideShare. To see this room, click here: http://friendfeed.com/rooms/enterprise-2-0

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22How+Enterprise+2.0+Fosters+Innovation%3A+Stop+Groupthink%22

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FriendFeed Lets You Tag Users: Now Expertise Finds You

August 29, 2008 by 3 Comments

FriendFeed’s new beta version is out. There are a number of new features there, which are well described by Bret Taylor on the FriendFeed blog.

I want to focus on a particularly powerful new feature:

The ability to tag the people to whom you subscribe.

In an earlier post, On FriendFeed, We’re All TV Channels, I described people as programming. Via our lifestreams, Likes and comments, we send a stream of content downriver to our subscribers. People make their subscription decisions based on that river of content.

Tags are logical progression in distinguishing people based on programming. FriendFeed has made it very easy to set up channels based on tags, and seek out different content depending on your mood. My initial set of tags are shown above.

On Twitter/FriendFeed, I asked this question:

What’s more valuable in the realm of information discovery? Finding relevant content, or finding people with relevant expertise?

The preference was generally for expertise over content. Marco made a good point:

find the expertise and the content will likely follow

I like that. It well describes the value of FriendFeed’s new user tagging feature.

In fact, FriendFeed just filled a gap in the way people find information.

Here’s what I mean.

Social Media Filling Gaps in the Ways We Learn

The diagram below describes a spectrum of learning that has been enabled by the Web.

On the left is the search revolution led by Google. Google’s search was a revelation when it started, and it’s still going strong. On the right is a method of learning that dates back at least to Ancient Greece: question and answer.

Social media fills the gap between the two. Social bookmarking (Del.icio.us, Diigo, Ma.gnolia) was a very innovative approach. What content have other users found useful? Rather than depend on Google’s crawlers and algorithm, you could turn to the collective judgment of people. What did others think was useful?

Social bookmarking continues to be really good for directed searches, and serendipitous discovery.

But how about a different form of finding information?

I like how Mary Anne Davis described a shift to having the expertise of others brought to you, in the form of lifestreams, in this comment on FriendFeed:

A curated life. Lots of choices and more friends who I trust suggesting what they are passionate about influencing how I might spend time reading, listening or watching.

There are three reasons lifestreaming will emerge as an important new source of knowledge:

  1. A lot of good information and opinion occurs in conversational social media (e.g. Twitter). But this media isn’t usually bookmarked, and it doesn’t rank highly in search results.
  2. There are times you’re not actively trying to learn about a subject. But taking in a curated stream of content can be helpful down the road.
  3. You may not even know the questions to ask or the breadth of information you don’t know. Following the lifestream of someone who has knowledge about a subject is a great way to educate yourself.

The value of these lifestream apps really kicks in when there a lot of users. FriendFeed is growing, but you had to accept all lifestreams combined (which has its own merits). With the new tagging capability, you can set your “programming” the way you want.

I initially wasn’t sure about the new design of the FriendFeed beta, as I liked the spare quality of the original. But I’m warmed up to it now. Tagging people’s lifestreams….cool idea.

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22FriendFeed+Lets+You+Tag+Users%3A+Now+Expertise+Finds+You%22

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