8 posts tagged “microsoft”

Taking advantage of the new web in business - after all it's ultimately about the bottom line for business - is increasingly important. Forrester thinks that E2.0 could be a $4.6bn industry in the next five years. [Correction - make that $1.8bn - thanks Niall]

Enter Google - the world's biggest brand and cool enough and relevant enough to be more than a verb: Google links Gen X and Y. The former know its the de facto search engine, and for e-mail and maps, and the latter for a host of innovative applications and mash-up fodder.

Google has launched a new sandbox for iGoogle - and Scott Gilbertson believes it looks suspiciously like a proto-type social networking site. Scoble called it earlier this month, when he wrote how Google's five year plan to get into Enterprise was taking shape. Microsoft won't be too far behind.

Facebook has a real threat as heir-apparent to becoming the default social media homepage.

Forget whether people ask if Facebook is for business or for the older generation. Microsoft's investment shows that Facebook is not only for business, but can be viewed as the final proof of life for Web2.0.

The move was widely flagged, the reasons are fairly sound, and include this insight from Jeremiah Owyang:

"...imagine fluidity between enterprise collaboration tools. We already know that many Microsoft employees are using Facebook, and this is becoming an identity tool that Microsoft has always wanted (remember Passport?). Microsoft will experiment with connecting Facebook, looking for alignments to daily work and personal lifestyles, and combine where appropriate."

Hopefully, this move will add a little more credibility to the reasons why companies should allow Facebook-style networking into the enterprise.

And just in case there is any doubt that Microsoft doesn't get social media, have a look at this video.

It seems as if Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer just doesn't understand social networking. Robert Scoble - former Microsoft employee and co-author of Naked Conversations - covers the issue deftly. His thoughts may remind you of your boss. Here's one quote from Ballmer reported in The Times:

"I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people."

Yet Ballmer, who will never live this down, may not be quite so naive, says Matthew Ingram, given Microsoft's recent talks with Facebook and what happened to eBay/Skype.

While Ballmer plays dumb, the likes of Yahoo are making real progress.

Enterprise2.0 will not go mainstream until Microsoft, IBM, Sun and Google come together. Fat chance? They already seem to skirting around the edges of late. As Steve Larsen said to Shel Israel @Demo; "Constraint spawns creativity."

The E2.0 constraint is  the fear, uncertainty and doubt that the agents of calcification are using to delay the inevitable. Meanwhile, the behemoths sense an all-out land grab may not be a zero-sum game. Enter open source.

Gartner says that open source is impossible to avoid. That will bring the behemoths together and that will deliver Enterprise2.0 solutions that the vast majority of companies will see as the future of choice. For now, as uplifting as the E2.0 success stories collated by Bill Ives are, it is only the start of the beginning, as all these examples are despite what happening with the big guns.

Microsoft may finally have woken up, although it might be ganged up on by the others (and copying them) while tryng to deal with an operating system that is, says Hamish Newlands, a "late, bloated and unpopular failure".

Meanwhile IBM is giving away Symphony to rival Office, Google is some way off from a PowerPoint alternative, though it shows it's social creds with Shared Stuff, and there's excitement about the Flock social browser from Firefox.

If open source can get them main players to come together, maybe we can soon look back at some point in the future and say that that was the tipping point for E2.0.

I am a fan of Andrew Keen's Cult of the Amateur because of it's relevance in a corporate environment. Not breaking news. And many who criticise his ideas are cut of the same cloth as those who call Microsoft 'evil', whom Hugh MacLeod loving calls "uncurious and intellectually lazy"

In recent months, however, many a curious and intellectually agile person has lined up to kick Andrew in the proverbials (no back-linking here!). To that distinguished list is added Euan Semple, who says in Feeding a Troll (ouch!): "I didn't think his arguments were convincing and certainly didn't reflect the views of many of the people he was attacking".

The Keen video is here. It might have been simpler just to point to Geek and Poke.

A week may be a long time in politics, but trying to keep up with the pace of change in social media is just as mad. Even as mid-size companies get to grips with Web2.0, and corporate blogging reaches a tipping point, up pops an interesting look at what the blog of the future could be like!

The pace of change can be seductive and/or discouraging, yet really understanding what can help you, how and how to do it is critical. A few luminaries have shone their torches recently on information about systems that should help when considering these key questions:

• Chris Brogan on Facebook
• Jeremiah Oywang on Twitter
• Bill Ives on Wikis

You might be waiting for all of separate systems to be fully integrated, easy to update and simple to find. Maybe you are waiting for Microsoft's unified communications product Live Communication? In the meantime, social media is here and now, and no longer something that only your secretary should know about.

The three parts of the communication mix that I have been thinking about recently are: social media (no, really), employee engagement and signature experiences. For sure, they are not mutually exclusive: if companies use social media to identify and/or reinforce their signature experience, then employees should be more engaged and all that that brings.

Example: Hugh MacLeod's Microsoft's Blue Monster. Started upon request for a group of Redmond employees, the Blue Monster and its tag Change the world or go home has, since January, become the unofficial mascot of Microsoft.

The mascot invokes a signature experience of passion, says Sarah Perez on her Friends of Blue Monster blog: "The Blue Monster represents the vision and the passion of the company's employees: so passionate about what they do, if they can't make the world a better place, they should go home."

There are lots of anecodotes about why companies should embrace social media - here's one that is grounded in first life reality!

There is a gathering this weekend of about 400 geeks to look at how to improve Apple's iPhone. Real people having a real meeting, exchaning ideas and thoughts about a subject they feel passionately about. They must do as they are doing it on their own time. It's like Social Media - The Play.

So when the roll-call takes place who's not sticking their hand up in the air to show that they are listening and/or that they want to take part? Microsoft is there. So that would be Apple.

The conversation is going to carry on regardless, the geeks will have their own thoughts about their trust in Apple and the world will keep on turning.