Quiz.
- If you want to sell something online, what site do you go to?
- If you want to connect to long-lost friends online, where do you look first?
- If you want to micro-blog with potentially the world, where do you go?
- How many phone systems do you use at work?
- How many email applications do you use within your company?
- How many instant messaging apps are used where you work?
- If you want to ask a question of everyone in your company or geography or division, where do you go?
- If you need to warn your colleagues and their colleagues about a lesson learned, where do you post it?
- If you have a superiffic presentation and you want to share it with anyone who might need it, where do you upload it?
Answers:
- eBay
- One
- One. Unless you’ve recently merged with a company that uses the other one.
- One. Unless you’re company doesn’t believe in IM, and you’re all using AIM and MSN Messenger behind their backs.
- Either that wiki site, or maybe it’s the blog thingy. Oh wait, put it in that one forum. No, the other one.
- That one private teamsite. Wait. No, uh, the blog thing again. Nope, hold on. Which colleagues are you talking about again?
- Easy. The SharePoint site. But, the one that IT has given everyone access to. What the deuce? Only my division has access? Crap.
Wait.
I have more questions.
- Where do you go to look up someone’s current and past work so that you can figure out if they’re smart or a doofus? Their profile is probably sadly out of date, so I’m guessing you have to flush out their competency from who knows how many repositories. It’s like hunting pheasant. Or snipe.
- Where do you go to find best practices and lessons learned from your as-yet unknown colleagues from across the pond? Oh, you have to know them first, probably.
- Where do you go to accidentally discover that superiffic presentation just in time for your big client meeting? Not gonna happen.
Yep.
I hear you and I agree (read Lotus Connections), but Enterprise Search en Enterprise Portals are also solutions for this problem.
Hiya, Gia! Very interesting blog post with some really thought-provoking insights! I must admit that I used to be on your same track about one integrated tool that does everything, till then I move beyond the social tools focus and realised that integration is likely not going to happen any time soon. Main reason why? The people, i.e. the end-users of those tools. Why (Again)?
Well, mostly because multiple people have got multiple needs and what works for some won’t work for others. So to have a single place that puts together everything would just present plenty of noise for everyone. That’s why when people share pictures they go to Flickr, that’s why when they want to share a bookmark they go into delicious and both of those applications do a fine job at it!
Our brain works rather well with fragmentation, in fact, we can’t live without that fragmentation. That’s how we operate as social beings and why I still think that we can try to strike a chord with such integration, but I doubt it would happen, if you observe how people interact with these social tools vs. just the focus on the tools themselves. Just my two cents…
Look forward to catching up at some point F2F! It would be about time! Have a good one!
Lotus Connections is not a single destination. It’s five or more destinations (read: different URLS, different user experiences, requires training and explanation). Not the same thing here.
Also, search is for people who know what they’re looking for, and isn’t very effective unless people actually tag stuff. What about accidental discovery?
Luis, I surely wish you could use Clearspace in your everyday worklife. You’d know what I’m talking about then. The features don’t have to be “integrated” with one another, because they’re all part of the same user experience. It simply removes the need to remember yet another URL – and user experience – for photos, one for videos, one for forums, one for blogs, one for shared files, one for wikis. You get where I’m going? It can still “speak” to the fragmented way we think and work, but it’s within a single experience. Less brainwork to figure out, “now, how do I use *this* site?”
It’s usable.
The noise is managed by various factors, including: setting up your homepage to only show content from the people and places you care about; or, if you’re an inbox-only or RSS kind of person, subscribing to only the people and places you care about.
I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree here. We are both sipping strongly from our respective Kool-Aid fountains.
I’d love to hear from others who’re experiencing this kind of pain, and how well a solution to it is working…
Great follow up, Gia! To be honest, I don’t think we are drinking from the same kool-Aid fountains, since I see the same issues with Connections itself. Yes, you can have Connections’ Homepage doing exactly the same kind of filtering and integration you are mentioning for Clearspace, at least v2.5 is doing just that; however, I still see the issue of fragmentation and how we use those different tools. Like I said, if I just care about sharing photos or links, why should I be bothered with all of the rest, even if I can hide it (I still need to do it!), whereas a clean interface like Flickr just gives me that: photos! Nothing else!
Like I said, integration can be a good thing, and I hope it works in the way you are describing. However, in my experience of having been exposed to social software for perhaps far too long, one gets to learn how people care about the stuff they are passionate about, and get a bit ticked if they bump into other stuff they are not interested. Again, that pre-filtering needs to take place and it is end-user driven.
I think you, myself and a bunch of other folks are rare exceptions, because we get exposed and use all of these various different social tools, when most folks just care for a specific niche or area where they could excel and stick with that, because that’s where they themselves and their communities hang out. Learning curve, effort, energy involved, work to customise the experience? Zero
I hope I am wrong on that one, Gia, but I think as we move forward into time things are going to get more and more fragmented, methinks.
Thanks for the great conversation! Enjoying it quite a bit and making me think quite a bit as well! Oh, by the way, I have been exposed to Clearspace a few times already
heh
Gia, where have you been? My RSS reader is empty without your pithy thoughts!
Absolutely spot one — where’s the one place in the enterprise where its’ all goin’ on? Hence our approach using Clearspace.
I hope more people see the light!
– Chuck
@elsua – you know where I am with all of this stuff, and you know I’m with you on the usefulness of individual services. But where both Connections and Clearspace shine is behind the corporate firewall, with a bunch of people who would possibly never spend time on a social networking site like Flickr, Twitter, Facebook et al, but who really see the benefit in “collaborating with their colleagues and partners” at work … Gia, yourself and I are in a minority, and possibly always will be. But a “single destination” for sharing inside the corporate walls will save a few companies from disaster.
Gia, you sure know how to flip-flop. I suppose you will say whatever is in your best interest at the time. Do you remember saying this?
“Gia Lyons says (Aug 14, 2007):
Not quite sure how Lotus Connections could be considered “stitched together” when the entire suite was developed at the same time. The components were based on separate IBM Research projects, true, but the code we ship on June 29, 2007 is a cohesive solution, built one of the leading J2EE servers in the marketplace. So, it is “built from the ground up as a single product on one architecture.” The nice thing is that it has been deployed inside IBM for a couple of years now, and has been proven as a valuable (and scalable) collaboration accelerator…Another difference is that Connections offers the ability to implement however many components you want – none of them rely on the other…”
If you don’t remember, let me remind you: http://www.jivesoftware.com/jivespace/blogs/jivetalks/2007/01/24/another-clearspace-competitor-lotus-connections
WOW! Great development of the conversation, for sure! Thanks everyone for adding further up! I think I am just going to answer Ric’s comments with Suzanne’s input on how Connections came about! Flashback to 2001, Fringe was born; 2003 Blogs came on board; 2005 Dogear (I believe came about) shortly afterwards followed by Activities & Communities. 2007, they all made it into a single offering: Connections.
Yes, I realise I may have the dates wrong, but very minimal, I am sure. Yet, here is the proof of what I am saying. All of Connections’ components came about separately and they were all very successful on their own. Still are. Inside IBM they are still separate, although you could combine them with Connections’ Homepage. But you could also use them one by one. People who blog don’t necessarily enjoy sharing bookmarks or being part of a community or working with Activities. Yet, they *do* have the choice of integration … or not! And it pretty much works that way.
I am 100% sure that if Connections would have been born as a single offering a couple of years back, it would not have been as successful as whatever it may well be today. For the same reasons above. How many times have been seeing from customers how they would love to go for Connections, but just because of Dogear or Blogs, or, mainly, Profiles? Plenty of them!
I bet same similar experience is happening with Clearspace or about to come through in the near term.
I can see your point, Ric, about making things easier for business to put together single integrated approach a la portal, but then again, people have got different interests / needs and that fragmentation is what still rules not just the corporate world, but Web 2.0 in general. And that’s a good thing, methinks, … why? Because it gives me a choice to decide how and when I can engage and with what. That’s how my brain operates and can’t ignore that. It is getting far too much benefit from the whole thing so far. Yes, we are in a minority, perhaps, but I don’t see other folks changing their behaviours any time soon from that fragmentation. Do you?
I used to sort of agree with this way of thinking. Then something happened. I just stopped using it and wondered why. Here’s what I came up with. Perhaps I could be persuaded to look at it differently, but right now I am pretty convinced any enterprise Facebook-ish product is doomed to failure.
It seems lie there are some very strong opinions here, expressing different approaches to exposing multiple collaboration services. One extreme says they should be integrated into a single interface, while the other thinks that dedicated UIs are better.
My $0.02 is that both are correct, but not in the same organization. There is no single approach that is right. Instead, each company deploying collaboration technologies must understand its user preferences and requirements, existing infrastructure and applications, and linkages between IT strategy and business strategy. Only then can an organization determine how to best expose collaboration services to its constituents (employees, partners, customers.)
Wooohooo! And Larry just closed off the conversation with a gem (As usual!): “There is no single approach that is right”. Indeed, context is key, what may work for one business may not work for the other. And vice versa. Great point, Larry! Thanks for reminding us about it!
Suzanne, that was before I used Jive and saw the light, as Chuck at EMC states.
And agreed – no one approach fits every culture. And really, this post is addressing what MOST of my customers have done, which was to begin with free and low-cost point solutions that have grown into a disjointed mess. They really want to address the mess.
This is a great conversation because it not only calls out differences in user interface “preference”, organizations “culture”, our “evolution” in multitasking, but it also leads to questions about learning and ability to consume. There is also a question to your “persona”. You may not want to invite your boss to “facebook”, but would to your “twitter”. There are still so many questions about integration and independance that still need to be answered. I believe that is why the tools need to be flexible enough to integrate into one interface, maintain singularity and still be so robust it can integrate openly with other tools.
I think it’s not up to the business to decide.. let the end user decide WHAT, HOW, WHEN, and WHERE to use the tools…. The business MUST provide an adaptable platform where it lets users decide what’s valuable to them… After all, it’s social software, right? It’s all about the people…
Also, I don’t understand the whole thing about different URLs… Facebook users different URLs for everything:
facebook.com/photos
facebook.com/profiles
facebook.com/friends
facebook.com/groups
Most Lotus Connections customers implement it the same way:
connections.demoibm.com/profiles
connections.demoibm.com/communities
connections.demoibm.com/blogs
etc…
Wow Gia, I never thought you would get such traction with this blog when you were talking to me about it
What I have come to learn with talking with most organizations these days is that they have utterly failed in their quest to actually bring together their people or become MORE productive. Now granted, sometimes we vendors cannot call out their failures explicitly for fear of damaging some egos and previous decisions, but by providing the one place where people become CONFIDENT that it delivers exactly what it promised is the single most powerful thing you can do in your organization.
I think the issue here comes from broken promises from vendors and their applications over the years that promised so much but failed so miserably. The difference now is that something like Clearspace delivers on those promises. It’s just not marketing crap being spewed from our mouths. It’s actually HAPPENING, and it’s starting to happen everywhere. It’s the number one reason people pick Jive because they see NOT a mangled assortment of features, but that flow they have so desired and needed in their everyday work life.
Luis, my sense is that if something was developed that actually married those disparate systems in a way that fit LUIS, then you could express yourself even more (if that’s possible
.
Damn you broken promises and crappy half-assed apps. Do you know how many hearts you broke?
RE: “Damn you broken promises and crappy half-assed apps. Do you know how many hearts you broke?” < Amen to that, Derek! And since I am not sure whether you were referring to my twin brother or myself, thought I would chime in on your previous paragraph mentioning “Luis” hehe
Surely you could express yourself more, but in a world where we are starting to suffer from social fatigue it is stating to become increasingly more difficult to eventually pull out folks into other social networking tools, if they don’t provide some really compelling reasons; in most cases it is no longer the content, nor the features of the tools, but the network itself…
Anyone remember why the community of Twitter stuck around when Twitter was more down than up? Yup, it was not the tools, it was the network of folks using it. That flexibility is what most vendors should take into account. Not just the tools themselves. People won’t buy anymore “Build it and they will come”. Only if their network is moving with them
heh
“Yup, it was not the tools, it was the network of folks using it.” That’s my point. “Everyone” is there, so I’m there. It’s the one place everyone is. Granted, Twitter is scoped to a very narrow interaction model, and I hear you on the whole mashed-together features-don’t-wrk thing, but most of my customers will beg to differ, only because the usability – oh that nebulous thing – enables that natural flow Derek mentions.
Ok. Sometimes I am like an island when it comes to the “Culture” vs. “Technology” thing. Obviously it’s both, but take the twitter example. The only reason that network developed in the first place was because of the simplicity of the technology and it’s usability. Such a low barrier to participate and work with how people want to communicate is key. I honestly believe that people on the fringe can be “turned” if the technology proves to be so juicy and sweet that it become irresistible. I don’t go toBrewspace (our Jive internal deployment) just to get work done, I go to Brewspace because it’s where my friends are, it’s where I can get a good laugh from something our PS or UI guys talk about, or I can learn to like people that ride bikes and apparently enjoy it (They even join Bike Clubs, I shit you not). Oh, and of course, it has everything I need to help my customers. I get excited to login in the morning from a work perspective just as much as I get excited to checkFacebook to see if my buddy Matt completed the Three Beer Challenge.
I know Gia talks about the “accidental discovery” thing, and she couldn’t be more right. I learned so much about Usability, about our PS processes, and why product management makes certain decisions, not because I went looking for it, but because it came to me in the process of me enjoying the experience.
Nothing is better than going into a customer and them saying “Oh my god. We love you guys.” because we just made their work life worth actually living for again. I never the drink the Kool-Aid from any company, but I do get inspired by our customers.
Good post Gia. You just described Socialtext. http://www.socialtext.com/
I’m surprised Gia that you think systems like Jive bring things together. With the groups, discussions, documents, projects, tasks, all being separate buckets of information, it seems to me that this approach creates more silos than it centralizes. Integrated solutions that are architected from the ground up on a common/centralized data architype reduce silos, increase leveragability, and more.
Alan & Kris,
I don’t work for Jive and I’m not a client. With that being said – Alan – your comment is just a cheap piggyback advertising ploy. Kris – you might want to go look at social text website – you’ll find plenty of silos both product and pricing right there.
Seems you guys need to get back to work instead of posting these types of comments.
Peter, of course my post was a advertising plug. Since you looked at our web site, apparently it worked. Gia and I have known each other for a decade, and if you knew either of us, you’d know my post was just fine.
Alan,
I actually looked at the site a long time ago. As for it working well if you just want eyeballs then sure. But if you want me to buy your product it didn’t and won’t work.
Please don’t take it personal. I just called it for what it was – cheap piggyback advertising.
I wish you good luck in ur endeavors.
Thanks Peter, and to you as well. BTW, since you mention “a long time ago”, I’d be negligent in not pointing out that the Socialtext web site has been completely re-designed, so you may want to give it another look. But now we’ve completely gotten away from Gia’s good post. I return you now to your regularly schedule reading.
Alan, yer killin’ me.
LOL! I’m just glad I get to use Clearspace as my only tool for everything. Nanner nanner.