I know it’s hard to believe but people are doing some really cool stuff for SAP. A bunch of geographically distributed people from various stakeholders (industry observers, Siemens, Adobe, SAP insiders and consultants etc). Details of who was involved can be seen here.
It’s a mock up tool that will provide rapid collaboration and network effects behind the firewall. Interesting to see that ZDNet blogger and social network naysayer Denis Howlett is one of the people behind this - Dennis has in the past been dubious about social networking offers that provide no real utility (and utility means benefit that business can use to their own benefit).
The offering is called ESME, short for Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment It has been built with an Adobe Air interface.
In this swirling world of the digerati, we tend to encourage others to “drink of the kool aid” in the way that we are. What I mean is that we push our more mainstream brethren to partake in all the things we are - twitter, plurk, identi.ca, blogging, social media etc etc.
I’ve often felt this is a dangerous thing to push people into - us bleeding-edgers can cope with a service going down, or even entering the deadpool, oh we’ll moan about it ad nauseum, but deep down it’s kind of what we expect with a lot of these things. In the same way that its a pretty cool thing for VCs to be able to say they were in at the ground floor on the next Google, it’s pretty cool for the digerati to say they were one of the first to use the 2.0 offering du jour once it achieves critical mass.
One of the most even-keeled posts I’ve read lately about uptake for later adopters is from Steve Borsch. Steve gives sage advice when he says, in relation to one of his corporate clients question about whether Twitter should be one of their marketing platforms, that;
[you should] begin to participate, watch it (especially for brand mentions), but make it very peripheral to the rest of [your] strategies since the service simply isn’t reliable
I agree wholeheartedly with Steve but would extend his comments beyond merely reliability - to include viability, business-sustainability and the other due-diligence measures that somehow seem to have been forgotten in this mad dash to the kool aid fountain
I saw over on Brenda’s blog a post about a new phone book site set up specifically for women titled, not surprisingly, womensphonebook. Now I’m not really overly qualified to comment, lacking somewhat in the Womanly department.
It does seem strange that the site creators deemed it worthwhile to set up a directory specifically for Women. Bizarre for a couple of reasons;
Who are they to decide exactly what products and services women need or use?
So they’re deciding that the only valid granular split in society is a gender one?
Brenda said it well when she said;
cos, you know, women can’t use a regular phonebook, they need a special pink one.
Tried search for my favourite things: computer games, linux, bluetooth, lasers, hackin, opensource, gpl - no results
search for “beer” found me a homestay in “Beerescourt” Hamilton. 1 result for Whisky
alas no results for “hired killers”, though there is an advert for “timesavers for new mums”
The site has a stirring explanation for its existence saying;
Women’s Phone Book is a free to use, specially developed directory offering an efficient and credible way to source a wide range of products and services. Used as a daily resource it displays ratings and feedback on many different products and services used by women, helping make smarter decisions about where to spend their time and money.
Which is pretty much what every other directory does - sans the “specifically for women” part. But once again I ask what service that I use as a man would not but applicable to a woman somewhere (OK there’s the odd one but few and far between)
It also assists business suppliers ensuring that their standards of service are in line with buyer expectations and offers them the opportunity to review direct customer feedback about their products and services (most customers won’t give you direct negative feedback - they’ll just tell lots of people and won’t come back!).
So that part is OK - Whereas most other directory services are about quantity, women’s phone book had a qualitative differential angle - makes sense. But why just limit it to women - why not call it quality phone book or something and open it for all comers?
Women’s Phone Book also provides unique networking opportunities amongst women and is designed to help improve the quality of their lives by sharing valuable learning’s and experiences.
Which makes me want to vomit - a phone book improving the quality of its users lives? Please! Actually I retract that, I use a bunch of old phone books to hike my monitor up to a better height, saves my neck getting sore and really improves the quality of my life….
Simon G pointed out a presentation on slideshare titled “What the F**K is Social Media”.
It’s a fantastic show and should be compulsory viewing for anyone at a management level within a corporate (and that includes the board - communication starts with them). To be honest it should be compulsory reading for anyone who interacts with a customer - be it internal or external, virtual or physical.
More than a treatise on social media, it is a commentary on how digital citizens are rapidly moving away from media that talks at them and moving to brands that give them an opportunity to feel a sense of ownership.
It’s about liberating ownership and leveraging openness
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