Bing.com Tweets
July 2, 2009
Short honk: I noticed on July 1, 2009, that Bing.com has begun adding Twitter messages to its search results. The Google looks a bit flat footed in this area, although Google Wave was a good demo. Bing. Is it the real thing? You can find more information in IT Pro’s “Bing Integrates Twitter Data into Search”.
Stephen Arnold, July 2, 2009
SharePoint and Social Computing
June 29, 2009
You will want to read “Social Computing in the Enterprise. Microsoft Vision for Business Leaders”. You can download the Microsoft white paper from the SharePoint Web site. What makes this paper most intriguing is that it plops into the gap between the hyperbole about social computing and the information I saw this week that most business executives don’t do Web logs or other types of social computing. You can get a general sense of this somewhat surprising state of affairs in Computerworld’s “Top CEOs Still Shunning Twitter, Facebook”.
I don’t think Microsoft wrote its white paper in response to the news that CEOs “shun Twitter”. I think Microsoft wants to position SharePoint as a social operating system. The white paper employs routine rhetorical methods to create a need for a SharePoint solution. SharePoint, by the way, is not positioned as complex. Other approaches are complex. See page 10 for more along this line:
This complexity makes it difficult to apply traditional structured project management and collaboration solutions. Social computing can help optimize the performance of teams by adding a dimension of unstructured collaboration. This provides a forum for cross-disciplinary dialogs and authentic, spontaneous conversations between people in previously isolated areas of the company that can expose best practices—and call attention to inefficiencies and duplication—more rapidly.
So, SharePoint as a social operating system. Two references to the word “search”. I wonder what happened to the potent relationship mapping tools in Fast ESP. Any thoughts?
Stephen Arnold, June 28, 2009
Social Networks and Security
June 28, 2009
Short honk: An azure chip consultant took me to task because of my skepticism about the security of social networks in the enterprise. I direct said azure chip consultant to “Study Shows High Vulnerability of Social Networkers”. No study is definitive, but I find the results interesting. One example: “A third of those polled said they include at least three pieces of personally identifiable information in their profiles.” Great for best pals. Not so great for some enterprise tasks.
Stephen Arnold, June 28, 2009
Twitter History
June 27, 2009
Short honk: Quite useful history of Twitter. I want to snag this diagram before it slips away. If you want to see the growth of Twitter, this diagram is useful. Navigate to “The Story (So Far) of Twitter”.
Stephen Arnold, June 27, 2009
Facebook Streams
June 25, 2009
You will want to work through this somewhat disjointed discussion of Facebook in ReadWriteWeb’s “The Day Facebook Changed Forever: Messages to Become Public By Default.” For me the most important point was:
In time, though, people may very well decide they are comfortable with their social networking being public by default. That will be a different world, and today will have been one of the most important days in that new world’s unfolding.
The reason? More content flows to monitor and mine. Goodie. Love those social postings.
Stephen Arnold, June 26, 2009
XFN Enriches Dataspace
June 25, 2009
Short honk: I don’t want to lose this item. I am not going to explain it. A Google Profile can now explain the owner’s “this is really I” tag. You can read about the syntax but not much about the usefulness of this tag in a dataspace in Brad’s Life write up in LiveJournal. Why waste computational cycles when real me tags can be explicit and specifically provided to hook together an individual’s digital instances.
Stephen Arnold, June 26, 2009
Twitter Research Tools
June 25, 2009
Short honk: Useful list of 100 Twitter tools for research. Read “100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Twitter Research” and snag the ones that meet your needs. Save the link. The www.seledctcourses.com Web site is adept at making information hard to find.
Stephen Arnold, June 25, 2009
Yahoo in a Pickle
June 24, 2009
27/7 Wall Street published an eye opener called “Why Yahoo! Will Never Recover”. Categorical negatives are absolute and I think “may” might make an equally compelling headline. That’s small potatoes. The meat of this write up was:
Yahoo!’s most important strategic blunder is likely to be the refusal of CEO Bartz to form a search partnership with Microsoft quickly after taking the top job. The industry has known for months that Microsoft was about to launch the next generation of its search product. Bartz and many experts believed that Microsoft did not have the product development and engineering expertise to build a highly competitive search engine. This turned out to be an underestimation of Microsoft’s resolve, its willingness to invest great sums of money on risky ventures, and the prowess of its developers.
You must read the rest of the analysis to assess the impact of this review of Yahoo. The one point that I think warranted more beef was Yahoo’s fragmented technical infrastructure. Yahoo has many problems, and the odds of revitalization of the company are long, long indeed.
Stephen Arnold, June 24, 2009
Why Social Information Becomes More Important to Investors
June 22, 2009
Few people in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, pay much attention to the publishing flow from financial services and its related service industry. Most of the puffery gets recycled on the local news program, boiled down to a terse statement about hog prices and the cost of a gallon of gasoline. The Wall Street Journal has become software in the last two years with about 20 percent of the Friday edition and 30 percent of the Saturday edition devoted to wine, automobiles, and lifestyles (now including sports). I am waiting for a regular feature about sports betting, which is one of the key financial interests in Kentucky.
Asking your pal at the local country club is not likely to get you a Bernie Madoff scale tip, but there are quite a few churners. Each is eager to take what money one has, recycle it, and scrape off sufficient commissions to buy a new Porsche. As the deer have been nuked by heavy traffic in the hollow, zippy sports cars are returning to favor. A Porsche drivers fears no big bodywork repair by smoking a squirrel.
I read with interest “Washington Moves to Muzzle Wall Street” by Mike Larson. I think Mr. Larson puts his photo on his Web site, and he looks like a serious person. Squirrels won’t run in front of his vehicle I surmise. He wrote:
he Obama administration revealed a sweeping series of new proposed regulations and reforms — all designed to prevent the next great financial catastrophe. The plan is multi-faceted and complex. Among other things, it aims to increase the Fed’s power, regulate the derivatives and securitization markets more effectively, protect consumers from the potential harm of complex financial products, and more. It’s been a long time in the making, with input from key policymakers, consumer groups, academics, and others.
After the set up, Mr. Larson reviews the components of the Administration’s plan. He observed:
I’m hopeful we’ll see meaningful action this year. More importantly, I’m hopeful that policymakers who are empowered to take new actions to police the markets and protect consumers actually exercise them. That’s the key to making any of this stuff work. It’s unclear exactly when these provisions will start to impact the disclosures you get when you take out a mortgage, or when you’ll be able to protest to the new consumer protection agency should you get shafted on a financial transaction.
His story trigger my thinking. One angle that crossed my mind was that the information generated about the US financial circus may get sucked into the gravitational pull of this initiative. The reason is that money is a form of information. Regulate the money, the information stream is affected.
One consequence is that the type of information generated by social networks, Web logs, Facebook posts, and other “off the radar” sources is likely to become more important. If I am right, the value of companies that can make “off the radar” available or better yet in a form that makes sense of many data points will go up.
My first thought is that if the Wall Street crowd gets muzzled to a greater degree, then the underside of reportage–bloggers like me–may become more important. Just my opinion, of course.
In the months ahead, I want to noodle this idea. My thoughts are exploratory, but I have decided that my preliminary musings will be made available as a PDF which you can download without paying for the information. Keep in mind that the editorial policy in the “About” section of this Web log will apply to free stuff that I am not forcing anyone to read.
Stephen Arnold, June 22, 2009
Associated Press and Facebook
June 22, 2009
Ryan Tate’s “AP Tells Reporters to Muzzle Facebook Friends” may be an indication that the Bozeman Syndrome is spreading. Bozeman, as you may recall wanted job applicants to provide user names and passwords for social networking site. I have a short item about this that will run in the future. Bozeman’s officials changed their minds, but the idea, in my opinion, may have meme power. (For information on the Bozeman request KTVQ, a Montana news outlet, offered up “Bozeman City Job Requirement Raises Privacy Concerns”.)
Mr. Tate’s story is not directly connected with Montana. But I perceive thin shoots of reaching toward the idea that an employee may not have tight control over social network memberships or participation. Mr. Tate wrote:
Someone sent us the Associated Press‘ guidelines for staff social networking and, in keeping with company tradition, they’re on the paranoid side. You should probably read them, since basically everyone in the world must now follow them. The AP’s Facebook and Twitter policies are less draconian than, say, Bloomberg’s, but that’s not saying much. They do sound, on the whole, reasonable, until you stop and ponder a few of the specifics.
My hunch is that this idea will find a quick uptake because some senior managers see social networking participation as falling within their span of interest. One of the goslings manages my social network participation, and I wonder if such control is possible. I delegate it, and I can think of several work arounds. When I squeeze a tube of super glue too firmly, the substance gets out of the tube. The metaphor may apply to social network controls.
The information can be “out there” and real time search tools allows me to find it. What’s missing is the “real” name of the person or software pumping out the content. So, what’s more important: finding the person who sent out the info or the info itself? Maybe both. Will stopping one ensure stopping the other?
Stephen Arnold, June 22, 2009
