#MongoDBworld CharityMajors (@mipsytipsy) @Parse closing keynote

Charity Majors @PArse / Facebook

http://2.healthca.mp/1o0LHa0

Parse hands the backend – Push notifications, Analytics and a ton of other server-side services and deliver at scale.

Parse has 270,000 mobile apps running on Parse – all hosted on MongoDB.

All Software is a pain!

MongoDB + Ops

Reliability

Reliability – MongoDB is not immune to crashes. The key to resiliency is the Replica Set. You only have to be concerned about the service.

Horizontally scalable services means no Pets. You are dealing with a herd. Cattle not pets. No hand crafted server pets because pets will always die.

Charity – A Battlestar Geek – Your life is without meaning without BG!

Design for High Availability from the outset.

You can’t design in high availability AFTER the fact.

Ops people hate software because they have to plan for failure. It is going to happen.

Flexibility

When you change a schema EVERYTHING break! Why do you want a schema????

Data model Flexibility is critical

Workload flexibility is also critical to flexibility.

When you have hundreds of thousands of apps you have everything. You can’t optimize for a specific load.

Every App must be performant AND must be able to scale.

ONE re-usable solution is better than multiple platforms optimized for specific systems. Engineering workload is a limiting factor.

Choose ONE SINGLE Reusable solution.

Automation

Make repetitive annoying tasks made easy.

Scalability is about more than handling tasks really quickly.

The replica set allows you to take out nodes and work on them.

Parse is dealing with 100′s of Terabytes every month.

MongoDB works for Parse:
- Flexible
- Resilient
- Automation friendly

Automation needs operations best practices to be shared. Operations is still young.
Parse has published open source tools

Parse launched these tools today:
- Mongo Proxy http://2.healthca.mp/1q68STL

• Mongo Flashback http://2.healthca.mp/1o0LFiu

Allows the replay of workload profiles. Replay in line with original snapshots, or as fast as possible.

Both tools are written in GO.

via WordPress http://2.healthca.mp/1jM956X

#med2 - Social Networking in isolation

"Live" Blogging from Medicine2.0

Paula Hicks - Trinity College, Dublin - Virtual Community for kids with Cancer

Fascinating Irish example of using Social Media for children in Isolation wards. SOLAS - Keeping young transplant patients connected to friends and familiar places while in isolation.

Age range 3-17 although primarily designed for 8-12 years.

Integrated SMS texting to SOLAs platform because they aren't allowed their cellphones - and you know kids use text!

Music composer, audio books - came from kids themselves. may be too tired to read but can still listen.

There is value in extending SOLAS to a wider community of hospitals to help kids find others with similar issues.

Add more medical information. Issues of power and control.

Funding - always an issue.

Jacqueline Bender, Center for Global eHealth Innovation

Facebook - Awareness-rising, fundraising and support for people affected by Breast Cancer

Women, Breast Cancer & Internet

Largest form of cancer among women.

1% of canadians are survivors of Breast Cancer.

Extensive support needs

Information and support from peers is highly valued.

Women use Internet to cultivate relationships.

• 96 breast cancer websites.
• 84 from North America. 76 from USA
• 45 have public or semi-public profiles.
• 20 social network sites.

Facebook: 300 million users. 120M users/day. 2/3 outside college. Over 35 users growing fastest.

Users modify profiles as they transition through life stages.

Can FaceBook be a health resource?

Facebook groups - 637 related to breast cancer. Analyzed 621

• Fundraising 45% of groups - of which 81% for charity walks
• Awareness 38%
• Support-a-site 10%
• Support=7%

Motivations:

Support Groups = 66

• For anyone 49%
• For self/loved one 38%
• For walkers 8%

For anyone - who knows someone who has survived, battled or died of breast cancer.

Altruistic Youth?

Approximate ages (interpret with caution - obtained by deduction):

• 53% unknown
• 26% college students
• 18% high school
• 3% post-grad

Geographic Location:

• 49% USA (group creators)
• 35% Canada
• 2% Australia

Andrea Meier, Bret Shaw, Judy Feder, Eulalia Puig Abril

E-Patients Communities and Chronic Illness

Aim was to understand how people with chronic diseases seek help and support online

What are their preferences for Web 2.0 resources.

Use this information to design future web-based support communities.

60% of people in the room are (or involved with someone) affected by chronic disease.

Health information Seeking

71.7% found health care provider recommendation difficult to find.

Health Insurance information difficult to find 79%

Doctors presentations on the web difficult to find 57%

Social Support - 81% found discovery of people with similar experiences was hard to find.

Preserving the Twitter hive mind

Twitter is having a rough time. The Denial of Service Attack is one thing. Then Facebook goes for the jugular by spending $50M to acquire FriendFeed. I have also written about Twitter's loss of memory. Yes, our collective hive mind has disappeared, or it is being held to ransom behind the walls of fortress Twitter.

My advice to you is that a topic is worth following in your Tweetdeck or Seesmic twitter client then grab the RSS feed for the search term and drop it in to your RSS Reader. I have taken my most frequent searches and added them to my Google Reader. It is easy to do and means you can go back and search on your comments and mentions.

The Direct Messages I receive already arrive in my email inbox. The only thing I haven't found yet is a convenient way to archive my Sent Direct Messages. Does anyone have any ideas on how best to do that? I suppose I could look at using OAuth and set up a routine to regularly connect and retrieve Sent DMs.

Free is just too high a price to pay

Robert Scoble seems to be on a roll at the moment. His commentary on the the Twitter ecosystem are fascinating. Last week he discovered that the Auto-follow had made him dumber. Now he is being more selective and as a result the quality of his feed has risen dramatically. His latest post is about the demise of tr.im from Nambu and the shortcomings of the Twitter platform. It is well worth a read.

The took two things from Scoble's post:

1. The Network Effects keep pulling us back
2. Put your stuff in more than one place.

When Twitter has a bad day, like the Denial Of Service attacks last week, we just wait. Just like how Scoble can't get thousands of his followers to meet him on FriendFeed, each of us is daunted at the prospect of persuading our tens, or hundreds, of followers to move with us to another platform.

Facebook and Twitter probably both recognize this fact. It is not just the followers but how about all the ecosystem components I have connected to my Twitter account. Brightkite, TwitPic, Bit.ly, Delicious. The list goes on. Every application adopted makes a user more "Sticky." The adoption of OAuth by Twitter and Facebook's Connect feature make the respective networks more essential to us.

The need to put our information in more than one place has been driven home to me when Twitter Search "Broke". It is more likely that Twitter deliberately hobbled search in order to manage their resources more cost effectively. We now have access to only a couple of weeks of tweets. This means that the collective thoughts from numerous conferences, camps and meetups have vanished.

This tells us Twitter may have stumbled on yet another business model option. They could choose to charge us for access to that collective hive mind. Would you pay? I would certainly think about - but only if Twitter let me pick up those searches as an RSS feed and republish them freely on my blog, or other sites I use.

The actions of Twitter warn us that "Free" is often too high a price to pay for services from a startup. It may be too high a price to pay from even established companies, like Google.

Free services on the Internet are a wonderful thing. But be wary. You always need an alternative. Put your information in more than one place.

It also means that, if you are serious about your personal brand on the Internet, you need to invest in a domain and look at the tools you depend upon and purchase or use Open Source code on servers in your domain. There are examples of open source URL shorteners.

I think I need to look at my blog here on blogger and how I can reduce my dependence on bit.ly. I may also have to revisit implementing identi.ca (laconi.ca) on my own platform.

  

The Mi-Fi is a game changer

Verizon is launching the Novatel Mi-Fi this week. It is a game changing product. I currently have an original iPhone and a MacBook Pro. I have been considering getting a wireless broadband card so that I can access Twitter and Facebook more easily. The Mi-fi changes the choice dramatically.

I use Twitter as a major source for news and to stay in contact with people. However, Twitter's web site is now blocked by the Internet filters at work. Twitter is not the only blacklisted site. Facebook, YouTube and a plethora of video sites are on that list.

Since I spend much of my time in the Baltimore area the new XOHM Wi-Max service is an interesting option. It is a relatively low cost service with no long term contracts to sign. They currently offer a "Pick 2" option which could give me a home wireless broadband modem and a usb modem for $50 per month.

Another option is an AT&T 3G Wireless broadband card that I can tie to my iPhone contract. The cost is $60/month for 5Gb of bandwidth.

Verizon offering the Mi-Fi competes with that same service. $60/month for 5Gb of bandwidth. But I get a portable wi-fi zone. This offers intriguing possibilities. Broadband is not limited to one device. It will work with any Wi-Fi device. This means:

• I might not need to upgrade my iPhone (unless Apple launches a dramatically improved iPhone next month)
• I could Skype from my iPhone via the Mi-Fi to call anyone from anywhere
• I can connect my MacBook Pro to the Mi-Fi by the Wi-Fi link. Connecting via Wi-Fi on a Mac is a breeze.  
• I could replace the memory card in my camera and use Eye-Fi Memory Cardand allow my camera to upload photos to the Internet automatically
• If Apple announces a new iPod TouchI can connect that to the Mi-Fi and use it like an iPhone without needing to sign up for a new AT&T contract.

With the Mi-Fi Verizon doesn't need to sell the iPhone. They could just start bundling the Mi-Fi with an iPod Touchand they have an interesting product offering to compete with AT&T. Would Apple care - Probably not if it means more sales for the iPod Touch.

When Apple finally provides background processing for the iPhone and iPod Touchit will create intriguing possibilities. I could then use an iPod Touchwith a Mi-Fi and a Skype-In phone number and I have an iPhone like device I can carry with me.

Yes, The Mi-Fi really looks like a game changing device.

Web2Open and HealthCamp

The Web2Open area is already shaping up to be the "Conversation Mashup" place to be. The buzz is building.

@JayParkinson is a great example of creating solutions using the simplest of tools like Google Calendar and a web site. Grew 300 patient practice in 3 months.

HelloHealth a little bit of Facebook, A little bit of Electronic Medical Record, A little bit of zipcar.

A simple tool for connecting with your doctor. Email, IM, Video chat, text messaging. Phone integration too.

eg. Track blood sugar via phone status messages to the doctor.

HelloHealth takes 7% of transactions.

"Low overhead to connect doctor with patients. Like zipcar - rent your doc's time."

In MA universal healthcare means the demand side is fixed. The result is a 52 day wait for a Doctor visit.

HelloHealth is trying to address the supply side.

"Enhancing Communication lowers risks against having a disconnected Doctor."

Is this any different to when the phone was introduced.

Question from the audience: One third of 18-35 year olds have a chronic illness.

Oldest patient is 88 and the youngest is 2. Average age of patients is 35. They do not deal with Medicare. 35% of people over 70 are online daily. 90% of doctors use computers.

HelloHealth will be launched in 2009. The platform will include ratings. It doesn't provide delegation of records - that is coming with the next iteration.

HIPAA is not an issue because the Patient is in control of the record but HelloHealth is a HIPAA compliant platform.

Patients can print their last few visits. A secure PDF can be created.

"Why waste resources integrating with 1980's HealthCare technologies"

An API will become available. Google Health integration

DayDum - super simple way to track everything about your life. Fascinating possibilities to track information about ourselves.

There is a $250B out of pocket health care market. That is the market HelloHealth is going after.

HelloHealth is self-selecting. Passionate doctors are coming because they want to provide better care to their patients.

"Doctors patients come from walk-ins and word of mouth."

Advertising - tried it in New York, Timeout etc. but had very low conversion rates. The best way to recruit patients is to put your name out there and let people talk about you.

HelloHealth provides Doctor profiles - like Facebook that introduce the doctor, their philosophy etc.

"HelloHealth is an EMR with a Social Network."

Existing PHRs are horrible and doesn't give you the data you want. HelloHealth is designed to look like a personal Health Blog. Labels, tagging etc. are provided.

"There is no front desk because you have direct access to your doctor."

"50% of HelloHealth office visits are on-line." The typical patient visits 2.5-4 times per year.

People respect the access when you give access to a Doc's mobile phone. More respect than if calling a 1-800 number.

System allows sharing for second opinions. The patient is alerted when this happens - because the patient is in control they then approve access to their record to enable the second opinion.

HelloHealth Integration

Medgle is integrated with HelloHealth it is a platform that provides information datapoints around a diagnosis. eg. Asthma. This guides the doctor and patient on what datapoints to capture around a particular condition.

Change:HealthCare tracks spending and can associate cost.

Using Twitter feeds to track real-time information.

SocialWeb at Web 2.0 Expo

What has been happening with Data Portability on the Social Web. ie. OpenID, OAuth, etc.

The workshop is being run by @chrismessina, @daveman692 and @jsmarr

I will twitter comments from this session using the tag #w2e_sw

If you want to build new and innovative services you don't want to frustrate your users by asking for a bunch of account related data. If the data is out there go and get it. Don't Re-Key!

You need standards to enable mashups. Alternatively, you need consistent formats.

If standards exist - use them!

http://www.oxyweb.co.uk/blog produced a world map of popular social networks. This struck me as a great parallel to the HealthCare world with incompatible/competing health care players.

Functional sites, like Friendfeed, Twitter, last.fm and Dopplr represent specialist services. They have the opportunity to create combined value but they need a social graph to create this.

Facebook solved this for many, as long as developers were prepared to live inside facebook.

Activity streams are an emerging standard. No logo yet.

XMPP is not that popular yet, although it is one of the pipes that Twitter implemented and search.twitter.com leveraged.

Partuza is an Open Social - social Network site that uses Apache Shindig.

Pinax is a platform for rapidly developing websites using social tools such as IM, chat,

The emerging theme is "Connect"

Facebook Connect, OpenSocial Connect.

New building blocks:

• Who you are
• Who you know
• What's going on

These are aspects of the social ecosystem. These create the virtual circle of sharing/knowing.

The anatomy of "Connect":

• Profile (id, accounts profiles)
• Relationships (friends, followers)
• Content
• Activity
• Goal (search and discovery)

Most sites are building on the Open Stack:

• MySpace
• Yahoo
• Google
• Plaxo
• Microsoft

Supporting:

• OpenID
• XRDS-Simple
• OAuth
• PortableContacts
• OpenSocial

Facebook is different but is matching these standards.

Why do this?:

- Why do people have to:

• Create a new account on every service
• Re-create their profile
• Give away their password to every site that asks
• Re-discover their friends
• re-friend their friends
• Learn new ways to share and communicate

Why do developers have to?:

• Deal with forgotten passwords
• create another profile form
• Support every new service API that emerges
• Force members to invite everyone they know
• Implement and unsafe method to import contacts
• Create widgets for incompatible social networks
• Manually interpret feeds for activity streams

Industry trends:

• User control of data
• User centric web services
• Locatin based services
• Real time content delivery ubiquitous connectivity
• Interoperable app platforms
• content aggregation and syndication
• increasing quantities of data to work with
• democratization of digital media creation tools

How do customers benefit:

MySpace has built login with OpenID and OAuth to compete with Facebook Connect.

OpenID popup extension is being developed to simplify the user interface, ala facebook connect.

The emerging issue is that once an item has been made "public" on a social network it can't be withdrawn. If you withdraw an item it may still exist in other places that were connected to the original publishing location.

Demos:

• Eventbox

Now for the technical stuff:

OpenID Demo:

Mapquest (owned by AOL). You can sign in to mapquest with OpenID.

In 2009 there are over 30,000 sites that let you login with OpenID (Relying sites). Growth from 20,000 in August 2008 and 10,000 in Jan 2008. (source: http://blog.janrain.com)

Implementing OpenID as a relying party (ie. accept OpenID)

Internally you need to map one or more openIDs to an internal account.

The OpenID User experience

Directed Identity is emerging as one solution to avoid need for users to know URLs.

At least there aren't too many major providers so the button option is still feasible.

Once people have become known to a site it is possible to tailor re-sign in based upon where a user has come from. eg. If they arrive from Gmail then assume a gmail account.

Personal Discovery standard is emerging, driven by EU demands.

The browser knows who you are so this may be a way to simplify login. This moves away from web sites trying to guess which accounts you use.

The Popup extension is emerging as a technique. The challenge is to avoid spoofing. People don't look at the URL bar.

Remember - you can use email address as an indicator of which OpenId providers to support.

Different sites have different account preferences. This leads to sites supporting multiple standards. eg. OpenID + facebook. At least supporting OpenId means you automatically support Yahoo, AOL, Google, MySpace and other popular sites.

Microformats are also important.

Microformats enable webpages to be an API.

Semantic information can be embedded in a page. Some of the oldest standards are hCard (vCard in HTML)

Use CSS classes to markup and style the data. Very simple way to markup information in existing web pages.

This is ideal for database driven sites because you can edit one output web page and apply a microformat to every database record that is displayed through that web page.

Twitter supports hCard and includes the rel=me setting. If you want your blog to be the top search result on your name in Google then add this value to your blog. Simply add rel="me" to a relevant link on your blog.

Discovery

The more you publish the more you need a way to identify what you are publishing as yours. Our desktop is moving out in to the cloud.

Identity enables discovery. XRDS-Simple "the name is more complex than the concept"

XRDS - defines services.

eg. OpenID, PortableContacts

eg. OpenID points to one service. PortableContacts points to Plaxo.

WordPress OpenID plugin supports creating XRDS file.

XRDS-Simple can be used for a personal discovery or for sites to publish their service endpoints

LRDD - Link-based Resource Descriptor Discovery (emerging work)

Authorization

Authorization is important so you don't have to make data public to make it portable.

Will OAuth work in a mobile mode? Yes!

iPhone example is FlightTrack Pro works with Tripit. The iPhone app uses OAuth and Safari to authorize the app on Tripit.com.

OAuth is a protocol for developing password-less APIs.

Plaxo was recently bought by Comcast. Comcast saw a 92% success rate with login using OpenID in collaboration with Google.

The Plaxo-Google connection uses a hybrid. They do the OpenID dance and also handle the OAuth token acquisition at the same time. They also collect and notify user on the basic information that will be used. eg. name and email address.

The Comcast-Google test worked so well that the business folks at Comcast wouldn't let them turn the experiment off!

OAuth can be used asynchronously to allow one user to give permission to someone else to gain access to their information. eg. Dave allows Chris to see his phone number in his contact record.

Relationships and Contacts

Rather than have to support writing to address book APIs for each major service they instead implement a standard protocol. That is PortableContacts. This builds on OAuth and vCard standards.

GMail now supports Portable Contacts. ie. No Google specific code is required to use information from the Google Addressbook.

OpenSocial REST People Protocol is now PortableContact compatible.

vCardDav compatibility is coming with IETF.

Linking Accounts

The XFN Microformat is being used to link accounts and services.

Add a Rel=Me link to connect pages on services..

You can also use Rel=Contact to identify friends.

Google's Social Graph API does this in a simple form. A demo is available.

Activity Streams

Activity Streams are in the realm of "LifeStreaming"

Friendfeed support approximately 59 services. Each was hand coded by Friendfeed.

Activity Streams is about creating a protocol that can be leveraged across sites.

Social Discovery. eg. Plaxo Pulse, LinkedIn network updates, Facebook status updates.

Messaging: Twitter, Yammer, Eventbox (desktop app)

Brand/Personal Monitoring: GetSatisfaction's Overheard searching Twitter.

Primitives: Active, Verb, Object

Actor, Verb Object (context)

Build on Standards

Use ATOM for lists. (aka feeds)

Activity Stream is using a derivation of ATOM to share streams.

Activity Streams is targeted to go in to OpenSocial.

Check out http://activitystrea.ms for the latest info.

Gadgets and OpenSocial

Allow applications to be added tomultiple sites. Write a gadget once and allow in to run on multiple sites. Over 700M users acorss multiple sites support OpenSocial from Myspace to Plaxo to Ning oor Orkut etc.

Shindig is an Apache incubator project for gadgets in OpenSocial.

You can also build OpenSocial apps in the Google AppEngine.

This standard simplifies Engineering integratin and allows developers to focus on PRODUCT integration - ie. How to fit in to the target environment. eg. Ning is different from MySpace.

Next Steps - Homework:

1. Markup existing Data

2. Stop leaking passwords

3. Support OpenID and OAuth

These tools are mature enough to enable simple integration across sites and business partners.

Check out theSocialWeb.tv for the latest news in the space.

Gary Vee explaining how Howard Stern doesn't get new media

Update: I tracked down a recording of this broadcast- check it out here.

I just caught Gary Vee broadcasting live on UStream.tv. He was listening in on a Howard Stern radio show talking about facebook and myspace.

Live Streaming by Ustream.TV
Gary wasn't dissing Howard Stern, he holds him in high regard for monetizing his personal brand. However, he does go on to explain how Howard is sounding like old media and isn't positioned to capitalize on the new social media.
I will have to see if I can track down a recording of that live stream. Gary Vee totally nails the situation.
Fascinating stuff.

Get With The Connected Enterprise

This Thursday November 6th, 2008 at 11:00am Eastern Time I am participating in a one hour free Webinar on the Connected Enterprise. Join Lee White (EQuint Consulting), Michael Lee Stallard (E Pluribus Partners), Lee Bryant (Headshift) and myself for what should be a fascinating discussion about the adoption of collaborative tools in the enterprise. We should each be bringing a different perspective so it should make for a great discussion.

Here is the key bit of information, https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/999220840 the registration link

What we aim to address is how social tools can be used within companies to improve organizational productivity.

Join me for the Webinar.

If you have questions before the event you can always message @ekivemark on Twitter. Include #connected in your message so it is easy to pull the questions together.

How can brands make friends on the Social Web?

Vidar Breske led the session on Brands on Social Networks.

"Social Networks are about relationships not product or content"

Relationships transcend the transaction.

Big brands have the challenge of history. Newer brands have the opportunity to create the image but start with little brand recognition.

The challenge is to avoid the "race to the bottom" but this may be self-correcting.

I made the point that there is a difference between engaging "in the flow" or "outside the flow"

In the facebook context a brand can sponsor an application or can create an application of their own. however the other context is being alongside the conversation or engaged in the conversation.

It is okay to push content if it is relevant and contributes value to the conversation. The positive perception of adding value contributes to the rising acceptance of the brand in that social context.

Authenticity is key. Relevant is critical.

One question is do you create the network or go where the network is.

Fake Steve Jobs

Happy to be here at the peak of the Web 2.0 Bubble.

Chris Heuer took some flack for founding the Social Media Club.

Gee - He is absolutely cracking up the audience. I think there are going to be a few more readers of fakesteve.

I am sure people will be buying his book too: Options

Why it works? It's the audience!

Dan realizes he has created a platform where other people can perform. The community of readers participate actively, very actively.

Audience involvement is the future of media. 

In the next 10 years the big media companies will move in to this space. They are starting to get the Internet.

The Media industry is focused on the destruction of their industry and risk missing the explosion of participatory media.

This was one of the most entertaining yet thought provoking sessions of the Expo. Way to go Dan!

Namaste!

Bringing Facebook, Wikipedia and Del.icio.us in-house

Jeffrey Mann of Gartner presented this session and the issue is how to present the benefits to executives.

Consumer software can solve tactical issues such as shallow and broad content needed by many people. Applications such as Facebook and Myspace can be used to identify where people are. These social tools can mobilize groups quickly. Just look how Twitter gets used to pose questions and get quick answers.

When do you benefit from using social software:

1. When the number of ad hoc meetings increase
2. Projects involve members that span geographies and divisions
3. Okay ... let's think of other pointers

Enterprise transactional software can be considered "anti-social" software. I sometimes wonder if Sharepoint is verging on being "Anti-social" by virtue of how it imposes structure on what are often unstructured activities.

As enterprises we have to recognize that our people are running their lives online. Why is our work life different? It isn't it is just that enterprises have been slow to adopt these new applications and services.

The benefits of Enterprise Social Software

Leverage informal interactions. Identify patters from implicit actions. Enable Emergent Structure. The fear to be dealt with is that the emergent patterns will cut across the formal structures in an organization. 

Social Software brings multiple benefits:

• Volume turns from a liability in to a benefit
• Leverage the wisdom of the crowds
• Tap in to one to one and many to many interactions
• A visual navigation mechanism can emerge driven by the evolving structure
• There is a low barrier to entry both in terms of cost and effort.
• It adapts rapidly as information is captured.
• Many small insights become more valuable than one big idea.

Meetings, meetings, meetings.....

Social software drives a constant stream of updates and fewer status meetings.

Social software enables constant communication and less latency

Social software drives email to become a shared resource. Discussions move online and drive out inaccuracy. 

Locking out Facebook, YouTube and other consumer sites from your enterprise network may save on bandwidth but at the same time it cuts off access to an incredible pool of knowledge. Find critical expertise outside the organization. Grab that "how-to" video to solve a problem. Publish a video to promote your own products. 

Four lessons from Social Software

1. Volume matters
2. Reputation matters. Anonymity is not good especially in an enterprise context
3. Participation matters
4. weak ties with a large group via many channels.

This is almost counter to traditional deployment methods. Starting small is counter productive.

Reputation and the lack of anonymity is the simplest form of governance.

Weak ties enable wider participation and will cause the status quo to be challenged.

Strong governance needs to be carefully balanced. The stronger the governance and control the greater the inflexibility for the future.

Even Gartner is saying "Don't block Facebook and YouTube, etc." At the very least it can make recruitment of newer, younger talent harder to do. At the very least your customers may be there - why aren't you?

Internet filtering is a technical response to a management problem. Is it a case of managers being afraid to manage?

Best practices. The best guidance is to avoid over-engineering 

1. Open and easy to use
2. Expose connections through rich profiles, tags and bookmarks
3. Bridge to email to introduce people and enable incremental formalization
4. People first - target novel and non-routine activities
5. Provide initial structure - avoid a blank slate but keep the structure flexible. Role it out in a guerilla mode - avoid the big bank.
6. Lead by example: reward with attention. Get the senior management on board.

Successful Shifts

Move from technical controls to social controls. 

The system is responsible > WE are responsible

Required fields > wiki edits

Security roles and rules > sign-less traffic

Key performance indicators > do the right thing

It's Tough ... Especially letting go.

There can be a loss of control.  You have to watch for compromised quality and the stupidity of crowds. Once again Social controls come in to play. WE (not They) are responsible.

Interestingly in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Social Software Socialtext is one of the few companies in the visionary quadrant - it just needs to scale it's ability to execute. Recent partnerships with Microsoft and IBM may help that scaling effort.

 

Where to start

• Experiment
• Rethink blocking policies
• review your culture - is it ready for change
• Appeal to self-interest
• Anticipate problems that come from open information access
• Expect more products from enterprise software providers and expect them to build social functionality in to existing products.

Inverting the Social Network

ReadWriteWeb covered a recent presentation by Kevin Marks of Google on the Social Cloud. Utilizing the Social Graph is currently something that is in the realm of developers. They dream up new applications that leverage our shared connections and Google's OpenSocial API makes it easier to deliver these applications to a variety of Social Networking sites. This is all well and good but I believe that adoption of OpenSocial could lead to a new phase in Social Networking. Let me explain... In the current evolution of Social Networks we have the different sites competing to be the leading social network. This has seen Facebook extend beyond its college roots to a more general audience. However, I am convinced that we as individuals separate out aspects of our persona by using different sites. For example, I tend to use Facebook to stay in touch with family and close friends whereas my professional network is on LinkedIn. If OpenSocial reaches a critical mass and makes it easy for us to join up and connect with friends on new sites then we could well see the next phase of Social Networking. This is a world that may be hinted at by Marc Andreessen's Ning. A world of niche social networks that address specific aspects of our persona. Our network of connections may exist in our address book, or in a networked resource like Plaxo, but we will enhance that core web of personal connections with discrete networks that address particular interests. When you think about this, it points to a world that turns the current Facebook model on its head. It is this view of the future that drives my interest in Data Portability. We should be the owners of our social cloud of connections. That information should not be held hostage by the sites we use. This is a fascinating debate on a vitally important issue. It is an issue that the vast majority of people do not fully comprehend the ramifications of.

Spock - Social network power tool

Back at the Web 2.0 Expo in the spring Spock launched. For those of you that have not checked it out Spock can be described as the Web's Who's Who. In the nine months since it launched it has grown significantly in richness. One of the things I have realized is that an awful lot of LinkedIn users are also on Spock. 

In the last few weeks I have spent some time looking around on Spock. I realized that I am one of the top 500 Spock users. That was a big surprise. All I had done is tag people that I discovered with tags that were relevant to them.

I have also been using Plaxo and Plaxo's Pulse service. Plaxo is a great way to keep up with what friends and colleagues are doing. The biggest benefit I find from Plaxo is the integration it provides with the address book on my Mac. This integration keeps me up to date when people I know, who are also on plaxo, update their contact information. 

Now, I have been following the tales of people like Robert Scoble on their use of Facebook and hitting the limit of 5,000 friends. I have also been experimenting with Facebook and MySpace but get frustrated because some of the locations I work from actually block FaceBook and MySpace - Luddites!

There has been a lot of debate about the merits of Facebook versus LinkedIn. Personally, I believe they are complimentary, more than competitive. However, during all this experimentation I think I may have stumbled upon an incredibly powerful solution for social networking. What is that power combination?

LinkedIn + Spock + Plaxo.

LinkedIn is a great service for professional networking. Spock is a great people search engine that helps you discover people on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Pownce, Twitter and other social networks. Plaxo provides great feeds to keep me up to date on friends activities and posts and more importantly keeps their contact information up to date. I still realize that the majority of people I want to connect with have LinkedIn accounts. Each of these services plays a vital role. Let's take an example of what happens.

I can do a search for people with similar interests on Spock, for example Enterprise 2.0, I can find a link to people's LinkedIn profile. You can reach out with Spock and request a Trust relationship. The next step is that you progress to creating a relationship with LinkedIn. One of the neat features with LinkedIn is the ability to download a vCard to add to your address book. This is when Plaxo kicks in. If you download the vCard and add it to your address book it typically contains a person's email address. The background integration with Plaxo then discovers if this person is on Plaxo and you can suddenly find that address record populated with additional contact information, depending upon what information the person has chosen to release through Plaxo. 

This is incredibly powerful. I had been thinking that I would need to choose between Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo as my social network of choice but with the addition of Spock in to the mix I realize I don't need to choose and the combination of services becomes even more powerful.

When you think about it. Spock is demonstrating the potential that Google is grasping at with their OpenSocial initiative. If you haven't checked out Plaxo or Spock, do so. You owe it to yourself if you need to network. As you move in to 2008 it will supercharge your abilities to network.