Enterprise Architecture, IHS
9. Selection of Technology
The technology aspect of a social-computing implementation compliments the social/cultural aspect and is also critical for a successful adoption.
There are three principles that define a good implementation:
- Beneficial actions
- Responsiveness
- Simplicity
Tagging is a great example to explain these three principles. Using AJAX, the process of content tagging becomes extremely simple and light-weight. A sound user experience design complemented by the responsiveness and the ease of interaction encourage further engagement from end-users. As more content is tagged, all users benefit from this action as it makes content discoverable, organized, and helps identifying interests, credibility, and expertise. [4]
10. Available Solutions
10.1 External
The following solutions are the most common platforms of external social networks:
- Jive Software
- Blogtronix
- KickApps
- SocialText
- Telligent
10.2 Internal: NewsGator
Newsgator is at the forefront of social computing and the most elaborate solution with respect to integration with MOSS.
The proposition of Newsgator’s Social Sites 2.5 is to introduce a Facebook-like social community for the enterprise to allow bottom-up innovation and increased productivity by driving “knowledge-sharing”, an evolution from collaboration and organization by “project-teams” or geography to communities based on areas of interest or focus. [7]
One of high-profile adopters is McCann, a global media company that helps companies like J&J, Coca Cola, and MasterCard in their digital strategy, consumer insight, and media planning (about $13 billion in annual billings with 90 offices in 66 countries, all using MOSS and Newsgator). [6]
It’s important to mention that McCann has taken this solution to the next level by allowing customers to access to these communities and contribute, hence providing a different perceptive. [9]
10.2.1 Summary of Features
5)
10. Samples Online Communities
10.1 By Topic - Thomson-Reuters
The Thomson-Reuters online communities are one of the most successful implementations of “business-oriented” social networks the author has come across. These communities offer the following features: [11]
1) A Community is centered on one topic of interest, such as Carbon Market.
2) It highlights announcements, events, sponsorship advertisements, jobs postings, top stories. It also promotes editors picks and most discussed postings or news.
3) E-mail newsletters include snippets of content to drive traffic to the community. It’s apparent that navigation paths and click streams are recorded (how links with e-mail messages are crafted).
4) The top section is reserved for promotion of premium content (shop). It also allows users to navigate to other communities.
5) A survey section to elicit feedback and ideas.
6) A user profile displays connections, education, and work history. It shows other members or colleagues with similar profiles and interests and offers the ability to send and receive messages.
7) A user can invite others, create posts, subscribe to alerts, participate in surveys, ask questions, vote on or rate content.
8) Each member can have a blog. Thomson-Reuters postings are promoted and can be easily identified. Any content can be voted and commented on and members can contact the author of a post.
9) Cross-promotion is prevalent: “content you might like”.
10) Featured contributors.
11) Mash-up of related news from the Web or Reuters.
Note: built on Blogtronix.
10.2 By Product - ATG
The ATG community is a good example of a community that’s centered on a product. Some of the features it offers are: [12]
1) Discussion forums around technology, business, or for feedback
2) Ability to share documents, create a post, create or join a group
3) Highlight of top participants, popular discussions, popular tags
4) Track of things users read for easier access later on
Note: built on Jive Software
11. Future Trends
11.1 Fremium: The New Business Model
Despite the fact that most of the social computing offerings are available free of charge, businesses have managed to create tremendous business value and generated new and sustainable revenue streams. Welcome to “Fremium.” [1]
Fremium is a business model that consists of “free” and “premium” offering. Another name that has been used to signify the importance of Web 2.0 and how business models are adapting to it is “Business 2.0” (there is a magazine with this name now). [1]
The way these models work is by providing a free service for the community at large while generating revenue from “value-add” services from a number of streams. These streams cover the costs of the free service offering.
11.2 Semantics Web: Web 3.0
The following excerpt is taking from: Social Semantic Web: Where Web 2.0 Meets Web 3.0 [14]
Emerging Web 3.0 applications, driven by semantic web technologies such as RDF, OWL and SPARQL, offer powerful data organization, combination, and query capabilities.
The social web and the semantic web complement each other in the way they approach content generation and organization. Social web applications are fairly unsophisticated at preserving the semantics in user-submitted content, typically limiting themselves user tagging and basic metadata. Because of this, they have only limited ways for consumers to find, customize, filter and reuse data. Semantic web applications, on the other hand, feature sophisticated logic-backed data handling technologies, but lack the kind of scalable authoring and incentive systems found in successful social web applications. As a result, semantic web applications are typically of limited scope and impact. We envision a new generation of applications that combine the strengths of these two approaches: the data flexibility and portability of that is characteristic of the semantic web, and the scalability and authorship advantages of the social web.
The following excerpt is taken from: Wikipedia 3.0, the end of Google [15]
The Semantic Web requires the use of a declarative ontological language like OWL to produce domain-specific ontologies that machines can use to reason about information and make new conclusions, not simply match keywords. However, the Semantic Web, which is still in a development phase where researchers are trying to define the best and most usable design models, would require the participation of thousands of knowledgeable people over time to produce those domain-specific ontologies necessary for its functioning.
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