Confessions of an eBiz Junkie

Twitter as a Business Tool?

From past posts, you may know that we've been exploring different ways to leverage Twitter as a business Tool. We've set up Tweet accounts for EMCCorp, EMCWorld and a few others. We used Twitter as a tool to communicate with attendees at our recent EMC World event. As recently as this morning, I was discussing the validity of Twitter as a business tool with one of our senior executives.

I can certainly appreciate the complexities of introducing new tools, especially when adoption of said tool is quite high - perhaps beyond expectations. However, I've been experiencing more and more issues of late. Yes, I've been following the Twitter blog - and I know the team is working it. However, it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to tout Twitter as a relevant and legitimate tool while such issues continue to plague. I've seen the infamous 'over capacity' screen at least 5 times this morning.

Our EMC World experiment with Twitter was a good one. Twitter adoption among attendees wasn't as high as I would have expected, but there were enough to make the experiment interesting. We were fortunate not to experience any major issues during the week long event... But, if things had been as unstable as they seem to have been in recent days, I'd have considerable egg on face and would be backing away from my attempts to legitimize the tool in the enterprise.

The current state of the state may be fine for casual users... But really needs to tighten up if enterprise adoption is a desirable outcome for the team.

 

Alltop - All of the Top Stories

Friend and fellow blogger Adam Cohen turned me on to Guy Kawasaki's latest project, Alltop. Alltop's tag line - "We've got all of the top stories covered all the time". I'd describe the service as a user friendly aggregator of relevant blogs organized around high level topics.

A screenshot of the main page:

Getting added as a source was as simple as drafting up an email with a brief description of who I am and what my blog's all about. The folks @ Alltop are very much open to feedback as they look to evolve existing categories and build out news ones. Once identifying a category that's of interest, you can jump right to it by going to (subject).alltop.com - In my case, Socialmedia.alltop.com.

An interesting approach on aggregation. Guy has a long track record of delivering interesting and innovative thinking. Thanks to the folks @ Alltop for being so responsive and for being open to suggestions for other future categories... Alltop.com is definitely something to watch.

EMC World and Twitter

Walking the halls here in Hopkinton, there's a buzz in the air... EMC World in next week. This years event will see a record crowd, with over 9,000 customers, partners, technologists, journalists and analysts assembling from across the globe.

With some late breaking conflicts, it looks like I will not be in attendance this go. Probably just as well as I'm not 100% sure the statute of limitations has expired from last year's incident.

What's most exciting to me is the focus on Social Media this time around. A year ago, SM was but a concept in the fortune 500 space. Yes, we had flavors of forums here and there - but most had yet to embrace it as a core part of their business strategy. That's changed - and demand is bubbling up all around - EMC World is no exception.

Twitter in the Enterprise

Me - "Hi. My name is Len and I have a problem.

The Crowd (in unison) - "Hi Len..."

I think I might be on the road to becoming a Twitterholic.

I have to admit, when I first signed up to Tweet, I saw it as a bit of a novelty. My first impression, and many early Tweets supported the thinking, was centered around point in time activity (I'm having eggs for breakfast or Man do I hate shiny things..." ). Not sure if I just didn't see it then or if the Twitter crowd has helped evolve the overall behavior of the community.

It's since become a critical part of my day-to-day activity. I use it to gather business intelligence, ask questions to a wide variety of subject matter experts and expand my overall network.

IMO, the opportunities afforded by Twitter to the enterprise are huge.

EMC World Bloggers Unite!

It looks like I'll be attending EMC World this year - along with fellow EMC bloggers Mark Twomey, Barry Burke, Bill Petro and Steve Todd.

I thought we'd try something a bit different this time... I'd like to round up all of the attendees who will be blogging, Twittering, Flickr'ing, Utter'ing or (insert your favorite trendy tool here) their way through the event...

I want to gauge interest from the community and will work out logistics based on how many folks sign up... If two of you sign up, Storagezilla and I will be hanging out in the parking lot of the Manadalay Bay with a six-pack of Schlitz for a meet & greet and a game of kick-the-can. Any more than that and we'll find a formal venue where we can get together and have some fun...

I've put together a Wiki for sign-ups. If you'll be @ World and want to get together for a blogger meet & greet - please sign up here (The password to update is community). We'll use this Wiki as main point of information sharing as we try to pull something together.

There's also the EMC World community for attendees. If you haven't already signed up - check it out. There's a cool 'people finder' like app that let you find peers with similar interests and get together for a chat. Discussion forums are also available to help you interact with the minds behind the event and other attendees to help shape the breakouts and talk about what you'd like to see @ the event.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Edit - One more thing, Twiiter users, be sure to follow Twitter.com/EMCWorld for real time news & info during the conference...

The Candidates and the Community

I received a LinkedIn request today and followed the link to accept... And there he was, Senator John McCain asking me "What is the biggest challenge America faces?".

I've been impressed with the way the candidates have embraced Social Media to connect with the voters...

Caffeine + Sugar Snacks = Big Ideas

Thanks to Sean for pointing this out... Starbucks has a new community offering - My Starbucks Idea. Much like Dell's IdeaStorm, it's a vehicle that encourages users to share ideas around improvements for Starbucks while the community at large has the opportunity to vote on the different ideas.

While there's some debate as to whether or not this is the most appropriate way for Starbucks to stick a biscotti in the Social Media pond, I applaud the move. Having sifted through the different posts, there's clearly consumer demand for such a channel. Some of the suggestions are top notch. The trick now, and I think at the center of the debate, is a) Was Starbucks ready for the this much feedback and b) How do they respond.

Will be interesting to watch.

Blogs Abound

EMC has had a presence in the blogosphere for well over a year now. We'd originally started out with a small handful of key voices, and the experience to date has been quite positive.

This week, we've extended our presence considerably by adding several new employee blogs. In the interest of full disclosure, most of these folks aren't new to blogging. Like myself, the majority have been doing it for some time. For others, our internal Social Media platform was a great way to test drive blogging and hone their voice before going public.

So what?

Welcome to EMC World - Online

EMC World is an annual event where Customers, Partners and anyone else interested in EMC get together to gain insight into the entire portfolio of software, platforms, solutions, and services. It's a unique opportunity to sit down with EMC product teams and understand where things are headed. There's something for everyone with traditional EMC topics (storage, backup, replication, etc.), security focus with the gang from RSA, ECM with Documentum and virtualization from a little group you may have heard of - VMWare.

While I always look forward to this event, something special happened this year... Something that helped validate we're on the right track. Our Events Team put some time on my calendar awhile back and told me they wanted to go social...

Staffing the Corporate Web Team of Tomorrow

I've been in this line of business for awhile now. Adequately resourcing a corporate web team has been a challenge for everyone I've ever spoken to. However, I think the corporate world has made leaps and bounds in recent years understanding the criticality of the online channel and resourcing appropriately.

I believe we're at a turning point. One that will require a rethink of the typical eBiz organizational structure. We've all heard the notion that the typical .COM platform is dead... Surpassed by the emergence of all things social. I think this a bit dramatic - But not completely off base.

The majority of companies I've talked to organize primarily around their web properties. .COM gets a team, Extranet gets a team, Intranet gets one, and so on.

EMC is getting some buzz for our internal work in the social space, thanks to some of the experiences Chuck, Mark and myself have posted. As a result, I've had a few companies calling on us for an experience POV. In most instances, people have a toe in the water with one or two people looking at implementing social networking in their respective company. But it's always grass roots and with much hesitation.

Over the weekend, I considered just how critical user generated content had become in my daily life...

I recently vacationed in St John. Skipping the 'official' travel sites, I headed immediately to TripAdvisors user forums to understand the good and the bad for the island. Is it a worthwhile place to go? What's the general driver for people who vaca here. etc;

I found a nice little villa, and again used Google Blog search and the Expedia forums to find opinions of those who had been there. Did I briefly look at the official villa site? Yup... But took it with a grain of salt.

I also wanted to make a purchase on Amazon this weekend. A brief look at the formal product description followed by an hour digging into the user reviews. I realized I would no longer buy a product without reading the thoughts of existing customers.

Clearly the emergence of Social capabilities is invasive. With the footprint already quite strong in consumer markets, it's quickly becoming an expected offering across all segments.

With this trend, the traditional organizational model for .COM's must change. In tomorrows model, the focus on social capabilities will be primary, not secondary as they often are today. Put differently, assume you have a staff of ten running a .COM site and one or two people driving social media. Tomorrow those numbers will likely flip - with much more focus on the social aspects of the web property and much less on the messaging, editorializing, creation, etc;.

I suggest now is the time for eBusiness executives take a hard look at their current org structures while considering the inevitable focus to a more consumer to consumer approach. Social engagement and interaction will be the foundation of tomorrows corporate presence, unlike the Web 1.0 approach of pushing information unidirectionally from the brochure-like sites of yesterday.