After two failed registrations using firefox, I actually succeeded (with Ms-Internet Explorer) in registering with the Reddot site and was able to download their “Reddot in the Web 2.0 paradigm“  whitepaper

Again, I am disappointed about the contents of this Web 2.0 whitepaper from a WCM vendor. It’s really unclear to me how this ‘whitepaper’  is going to help Reddot customers embrace the potential that the Web 2.0 might offer them. They center their story around social computing (which is actually a good start), but they loose me when I arrive at section 2.1: Business Objectives. Strengthening of relationships and creation of transparancy? Collect and publish information in the company? Sounds very Web 1.0, and, where is the link with the bottom line? It’s a very open ending to call these business objectives …..

No word of the key message brought by the Web 2.0: “It’s the conversation, fool!“.

Word of advice for any organization that wants to get started with Web 2.0: start by reading some good books on this topic. The thing is they won’t have Web 2.0 in their title. Some suggestions? The Cluetrain Manifesto, Naked Coversations, the Groundswell and Purple Cow. These 4 will give you a lot of ideas and insight. Want to get really started? Get a good consultant that lives and breathes this ‘web 2.0 domain’ ……….

really, I did not quite already on this new attempt at a blog. I was in the Ardens in Belgium for a few days. A very nice cottage, with WIFI offering very good access to the Internet. But, I did decide to not spend (too much) time on online/marketing/blogging stuff, so, no posts ……

I wil pickup in the coming days, and try to reach a daily quota of at least one post again.

Browsing some of the WCM vendor’s sites here in the Netherlands, I found they all have a Web 2.0 whitepaper. I figured they (Tridion, GX and Smartsite) were caught in a me too strategy, so I decided to download and compare them. Turns out there is a big difference in the whitepapers of these three vendors.

The Smartsite whitepaper is really stuck on a feature level story: we have Web 2.0 features such as tag clouds, blogs, collaboration and mash-ups. No story whatsoever on how Smartsite will help you tap into the potential value of Web 2.0 (let alone what this value might be).

The GX whitepaper starts of nicely but quickly moves to why GX is the best bet for a Web 2.0 strategy:  their component based approach allows you to add functionality and applications to the site. Hm, two immediate questions come to mind: 1) how do functionality and applications relate to content management? and 2) doesn’t this put GX in head-on competition with portal and application server vendors (such as websphere and sharepoint to name two).

The Tridion whitepaper gives a decent spin on what Web 2.0 is, and what the value for organizations might be, and, how they can try and tap into this value. There is one thing missing though: how is the Tridion product going to help in this?

I am still missing a good story on how WCM vendors reposition themselves for the Web 2.0. They have all been focussed on creating an efficient broadcasting process. Now that Web 2.0 forces organizations to join the online conversation the question is how these WCM tools will help them in that. Will they? How will they support them in listening, and creating the right response for the conversations that are taking place? I think it will not suffice to just add Web 2.0 features such as blogs and tag clouds, and it looks like this is what they are doing. I am missing something here? If you think so let me know, I am going to digg deeper into this in the meanwhile.

I have been using an HTC s710 Windows Mobile Smartphone since May 2007. I really love the concept of the sliding keyboard, which allows me to use this phone as a mobile email workstation. You can get quite fast at typing at this keyboard. Since November 2007 I am actually using two of them, one private and one from my employer.

The bad news: both of them suffer from random freezes, shutdowns and restarts. The first one started having this behavior after slightly more than a year, the second one after 5-6 months. Searching online reveals that I am not the only one suffering from this kind of behavior with this phone.

I got so frustrated with this that I decided (temporarily) to move back to my old Nokia 6230i. I am loosing a lot of functionality with this, but realibility is number 1 on my list of desired features …..

So, where do i go from here? Nokia N95, iPhone?, Nokia E71? Phone and Email are my two most important applications. I am using Emoze for pushing my email account, so this should be available on my future phone. Selection process has started Any tips and suggestions are more than welcome!

(originally posted in Dutch on August 20th, 2008)

Twitter is a nice example of innovation driven by technology. For those not yet familiar with Twitter: you can send messages (tweets) with a maximum of 140 characters, everyone that subscribed to your ‘tweets’ will automatically receive all your updates (most often via SMS).

My first encounter with Twitter left my clueless as to why anyone would want to use this. 140 characters? Receive updates via SMS? What is the use? Another great example of technology push: geeks will love it, but there is no broad adoption as the value is unclear to the average joe.

The value of Twitter for Organizations

I’m still not a real Twitter adept, but it is clear by now that organizations can no longer ignore what is happening in this new communication channel. Why not? As the the Cluetrain Manifesto already stated: ‘Markets are conversations’. Marketing and PR have changed by now, organizations can no longer simply broadcast their corporate message into the market. They need to engage in the conversation that is taking place. In order to do this step 1 is to listen (the Groundswell nicely elaborates on this as well). Key question of course is: how? With all the conversation taking place on Twitter, how can I monitor all these tweets to see who is saying what about my products or markets?

Step 1 – Listen: what’s being said on Twitter

Twitter is offering search functionality (after the acquisition of summize) which allows you to search through all tweets. This offers organizations the opportunity to regularly monitor what is being said about their product, markets and services. Take my old employer for instance, a query for Tridion will return a lot of results, here are two examples:

A positive example: “My apologies Tridion. One-hour support response for business hours only. Thanks to Andre for his assistance.”

A negative example: “Back from a usergroup meeting. Tridion is just as bad as it was 3 years ago….How can someone work with that crap?”

It does not take a lot of thought to come up with actions that you could take for these tweets. A good example of an organization that is actively using Twitter is Comcast. The New York Times has a good article on how Comcast is not just listening to the online conversation but also taking actions. The article also shows that the tone and style of the (re)action need to be carefully chosen. The online user might feel like ‘big brother is watching’, which will undermine the potential positive impact of the actions taken.

Step 2 – Joining the conversation on Twitter

This step starts by claiming your name on Twitter, which can be a challenge as anyone can register a ‘name’. As a result, many brand names have already been ‘hijacked’. This posting contains a good overview of brands and their presence on Twitter. As this post also shows, not everyone is making the distinction in listening and joining the conversation. My advise: get your name(s), actively listen, and use the POST method to determine if and in which way your organizations wants to embrace the conversation on Twitter. In short summary this means: first get the social technographics of your audience clear, then determine your objectives, and based on these develop a strategy & plan how you want to engage in the online conversation.

Het is niet de eerste keer dat ik dit ga proberen. De eerste keer is al heeeel lang terug, met Radio Userland van Dave Winer. Daarna nog verscheidene malen met andere oplossingen, waaronder Tridion, een tooltje van XS4all, Sharepoint, en al diverse malen met Wordpress. Geen van die keren heeft stand gehouden, soms hield ik het een paar dagen vol, soms een paar weken. Dit keer heb ik wel gekozen voor een onderwerp waar een hoop over valt te lezen en dus ook te schrijven. Time will tell.