Confessions of an eBiz Junkie

Google Search Going Social?

In a seemingly 'by invitation only' experiment, Google is toying with adding social interaction to their current results scheme. Reactions on blog posts seem to be mixed. Personally, I couldn't be more excited by it and hope they open up the experiment soon as I'd really like to join the fun.

Comparisons have been drawn to offerings such as Digg or Mahalo, but this seems to sit somewhere in the middle. While there are legitimate concerns around the impact to SEO and the risk of people 'burying' legitimate information in an organized fashion (think a competitors site), my experience continues to suggest that social networks are self-policing and these end of the world scenarios generally don't come to fruition.

Where I think this gets really interesting is if / when results can associate themselves with my social circle of friends. In other words, it's great that seven million people have favorably rated a result - but how about when I can narrow that down to the rating by my online peers whom I have a relationship and trust based on common interests.

I applaud Google for the move and think it highlights their focus on the evolution of their core offering.

Social Media and Enterprise Adoption

Yawn - followed by snooze button - followed by inevitable stumble out of bed.

Following my morning bowl of oatmeal, I jump on Twitter and advise the world (who's waiting with great anticipation, btw) that I'm off to work.

I'm stuck in traffic, so I proceed to IM my team / peers with thoughts on the day ahead.

Once in the office, I fire up NetNewsWire and check the thousand posts that came out overnight. Naturally I'll jump into a few of the discussions and provide my $.02.

At this point, I often get distracted by a handful of the posts and go check out the latest in hip webby tools. This usually takes up a bit of time.

I then take a look at our internal social media platform to see what's transpired over the course of the night. Perhaps I'll jump into a few discussions, shore up the "How-To" wiki or start a pithy blog post.

Off to Facebook to see what's new with the gang - Check out my groups, upcoming events, etc...

Log into email - oh wait, I have a LinkedIn request... Off to LinkedIn... Hmmm, I don't remember working with this guy??

OK - Finally time to check email. It's noon????? Wow. What happened to the day? OK, lunch first, then email. Walking to the cafe, I announce to the world through Utterz that it's all about the Beef Barley Soup today... Can't wait.

In a recent post, Jeremiah Owyang suggested that 2007 was all about figuring out what Social Media meant to the enterprise. I agree. Many companies are beginning to invest by putting a toe or two in the water. SM is extending beyond the PR team and is beginning to find it's way into the inner workings of the corporation.

The behavior above is not conducive to enterprise adoption. I'm a 'knowledge worker', this stuff is part of my job. But what about the countless masses who could certainly benefit from Enterprise 2.0 but could never dream of investing the time necessary to truly tap the potential.

While individual tools are great, it's the sum of the parts that will really change the business landscape. Before we get there, however, there needs to be much integration. We need to take the use case above and turn it into a seamless and integrated experience. Of course, things like single sign on and transportable preferences will be paramount, but that seems to be well understood with the recent surge in social graph discussions. It will be interesting to watch... Will vendors rally to provide one stop shop solutions for all things Enterprise 2.0, or will the concept of Open Social dominate the enterprise landscape with distributed development with open API's?

Facebook ads and brand loyalty

There's been much written about Facebooks ad announcement. Erick Schonfeld did a nice job livebloging from the event. It will be interesting to watch how this plays out... The obvious risk is that users are driven away by in-your-face advertising with the inevitable 60pt blinking text, auto-play audio clips, etc.

More likely though, I see legions of brand loyal consumers propagating the message to their finely targeted prospects, err, I mean friends. I spent some time with Greg Selkoe, creator of Karmaloop.com some time back. These folks had built a small army of brand supporters - a team of people who would promote through email, IM, MySpace, etc;. In return, Karmaloop offered certain percs - be it featured designs, discounts, visibility through the eCom storefront, etc;. It was masterful... By far the most effective social advertising I'd seen to date.

I believe similar will play out on Facebook. Look at some of the partners who have already signed up - Coca-Cola, Verizon, Sony, Blockbuster, CBS... I see Coke (as example) offering percs to consumers who rally around their brand. Perhaps product discounts, special 'insider' widgets, cool 'members only' avatars, etc; - And all the user has to do to take advantage is acknowledge their support of the Coca-Cola brand. It's word of mouth / peer pressure advertising at it's best. Equally as interesting will be watching how far  companies are willing to e-recruit their legions of free advertisers.

The game changes, yet again.