Facebook Questions to impact R&D? On Crowdsourcing.

December 4, 2010 Leave a comment

Facebook Questions will be available to everyone in the US within the next few weeks. Shall this impact the way enterprises handle R&D? Will this mean a boost for crowdsourcing? Can Facebook Questions and Facebook Groups improve business operations? Shall knowledge-workers deploy it to collaborate in an enterprise 2.0-style?

Facebook Questions' impact on R&D: crowdsourcing over Facebook?

Facebook Questions' impact on R&D: crowdsourcing over Facebook?

Global resources – crowdsourcing on Facebook

Corporations can rely upon the knowledge available through every Facebook user. And that’s a lot: more than 500 million active users. Without a doubt, one can find creative solutions for any challenge by addressing this “melting pot of knowledge” named Facebook Questions.

Benefits for corporations

Enterprises can drastically cut their R&D expenses by using the “free knowledge base”. But what’s more, by developing products in co-operation with the external world, the success rate of bringing it to the market increases. The logic: co-creation results in a solution that better matches the problems.

Consequences for individuals

The consequences for individuals are both negative and positive. Individuals have the opportunity to present themselves to tackle global challenges. On the other hand, competition among individuals gets tougher because of the global scale of the resources. In the end this results in better products. After all, the fiercer competition the better the result.

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Innovate your twitter reading experience: paper.li

December 2, 2010 Leave a comment

We stumbled upon a lovely and promising web app called “paper.li”. The app organizes twitter feeds into a newspaper-format. Shall publishers and marketing departments soon embrace this innovative technology? Or does the technology need to support multiple output formats before they do?

paper-li - create a newspaper of linked articles on Twitter feed

paper-li - create a newspaper of linked articles on Twitter feed

Your Twitter Feed as a Newspaper

The functionality and benefits of this web technology could not have been summarized better than by the organization that developed the tools. Here it is:

“paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag. A great way to stay on top of all that is shared by the people you follow – even if you are not connected 24/7!” – source: paper.li

The Whispering_Web Daily

Of course we’ve been playing around with it and truly love it: great product.
Have a look at the Whispering Web Daily!

Output for other media?

How will the publishing industry and brands embrace this? Will it be a necessity for paper.li to generate an iPad compatible “website”? Will those groups ask for a different experience, such as presenting the stream in the format of a “leaf-through digital document”? Will traditional publishers feel the need to organize the stream in a printable document? Stated differently: is a truly personalized newspaper to become reality in this manner?

Just one more thing: developer of the app embraces Social CRM

As we are publishing this article, the application is being updated. We wonder what the new features will be. Looking forward to it.

But what’s at least equally important: SmallRivers – the app developer – not only builds innovative solutions. It also innovates its operations. In this respect, one could state that they strive to practice concepts as “Social CRM”, “BMI” and “enterprise 2.0”.

The update made clear that SmallRivers’ Customer Service deploys social media to inform their customers. In practice: twitter is used to inform them about the ongoing update. Just great!

Social CRM, one aspect for BMI and enterprise 2.0 (e2.0)?

Social CRM, one aspect for BMI and enterprise 2.0 (e2.0)?

Social CRM via Twitter - Enterprise 2.0

Social CRM via Twitter - Enterprise 2.0

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Facebook's history of innovations. What's next?

November 17, 2010 Leave a comment

Facebook - online social network

Facebook - online social network

Facebook is pushing its latest product innovations hard these days. Only within the last three months we have seen the launch of Facebook places, Facebook Groups and Facebook Messaging.

The history of the enterprise seems a history of innovations. What is the next innovation and where will this end?

Facebook: a history of innovations

  • Facebook as a platform is innovative by nature: it redefined our social experiences. Hence, this technology had a tremendous impact on how people construct their identity. From time to time we tend to note a “I publish, so I am-trend”, meaning that if it didn’t happen on Facebook (or there are no traces on Facebook) it didn’t happen.
  • Secondly, with their “connect to facebook” technology, the social sharing experience was opened up to third-party apps.
  • The third innovation that we wish to bring forward is the implementation of the like button across the web. This might seem an easy trick but has loads of consequences. And it’s extremely nice for a savvy marketer! Why? Guess this is food for another blog post…
  • Finally, the innovative new messaging system which is rumored for bringing together text messaging, instant messaging and e-mail messaging. It seems as the Facebook Messaging Innovation took a classic “melt-to-innovate” approach.

Will the next innovation be mobile?

The question for us is: what will be next? What could be Facebook’s next big innovation? Let’s have some ideas flow on that …

Facebook Places @ Olympia London

Facebook Places @ Olympia London

  • Would a photo book app on top of Facebook be innovative? And what if you could collaborate with your friends on the creation of that photo book?
  • Would an e-newspaper based on posted articles by friends be innovative? In this manner you can leaf through a digital newspaper that contains all news shared by your network.
  • What are the chances they further develop an “office suite” on top of it? Would that be innovative? Would that impact the way employees work? Would it mean the definitive break-through of enterprise 2.0? After all Facebook obtained Docs from Fuse Labs that will allow to co-create and share text documents, spreadsheets and PDF directly within Facebook with all friends, family and (especially) colleagues.
  • Is the next big thing in the mobile sphere with Facebook Places? Shall we get suggestions to drink a beer with a friend in the bar behind the corner? Will it embrace AR technology?
  • Or will Facebook evolve into the basis for artificial intelligence, as one of the main (Russian) investors believes?

Framing innovation

Innovation is about adaptation! We don’t want to bother you with theoretical facts about the adaption of technological innovations, but please realize that in the end, it are always the people who decide whether an innovation becomes a mainstream success or not. For those interested in the theory on innovation & adaptation: it follows the statistical distribution known as Gauss.

Gauss graph - diffusion of innovation

Gauss graph - diffusion of innovation

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