Web 20

Previously, we talked a bit about how the best search engines are like the best newspapers: focused on building trust with their audience. This deep trust helps search engines build their audience, and increases the value of their text ads. But the comparison between the newspapers and search industries goes beyond building trust. Both industries […]

I’ve been attending (and speaking) at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston since before it was called that (years ago, it used to be called the Collaborative Technologies Conference.)  It remains the only must-attend event in the enterprise social software space for a number of reasons.  It’s not that there aren’t plenty of good Enterprise 2.0 conferences

Below is an new core visual — which is itself a work-in-progress — for thinking about social business models.  It’s part an ongoing strategic line of thinking that I’ve been developing lately to do some direction finding on strategic uses of social computing.  It’s also part of a new book contribution that I completed today

Recently for some work that I’m doing I had to revisit the techniques for creating successful online social environments.  This is a surprisingly deep and nuanced topic that we as Web application architects or enterprise social computing practitioners are just now fully beginning to grasp.  The subject matter itself runs the gamut from key conceptual

The inimitable Fred Wilson concluded yesterday in “Why Social Beats Search“, that “[m]achines can help us find what is good. But with the help of machines, our friends and trusted sources can and will do that even better.”  This statement capped off a fresh debate over the weekend about automated, keyword-driven “McContent” creation that started

The signs are pointing to next year being a banner one when it comes to mainstream adoption of the latest digital business models.  With half a decade under the belt of the Web 2.0 phenomenon and almost as long for Enterprise 2.0, we’re just now seeing the ideas spread to more traditional corners of large

Those who follow my work know that I’ve been attempting to identifying the success factors for enterprise social computing as well as trying to clearly understand the potential issues.  What we’ve learned as a whole over the last year is that social computing, whether that is blogs, wikis, social networks, end-user mashups, social messaging, crowdsourcing, etc, is still

I spent the early part of this week in Oslo, Norway, a guest of Bouvet and the Norwegian Computer Society, there to help them drive forward some discussions on next-generation subjects in IT and business.  Specifically I was asked to present our latest findings on social collaboration and enterprise architecture, two of my favorite topics as many of you know. 

The announcement this afternoon that URL shortener tr.im would stop service immediately and eventually get rid of all its data sparked widespread discussion in the blogosphere today, as evidenced by all the stories about it clustered on Techmeme.  URL shorteners provide a surprising amount of convenience to the average Internet user including links that don’t break in e-mails, are friendly

It’s been five years now that we’ve begun to understand what Web 2.0 is, starting way back in 2003.  It’s been a fairly impressive if winding road as a new online generation was born.  But far from getting long in the tooth, along the way Web 2.0 became vitally important — even central in some cases