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{ tag Archives } web 2.0

Sticky

It is amazing how fast social networking is growing. Every time I am giving a presentation I always ask my audience how many people use one or more social networking sites like Facebook, MySPace, Hyves, LindedIn or another. Since a year this percentage is growing from 20% to more than 70% nowadays. I think especially business oriented sites like LinkedIn made social networking more "salonfähig" than before. Social networking is I think an area where the idea of "the rich get richer" is especially true. After all, once you have many customers you tend to have more people sending invitation and there is more chance that people send invitations to you. One would expect that only some big sites remain and that newcomers have a hard time growing. Therefore it is surprising that a new one, Plaxo, is really flooding my e-mail box. Many contacts have send me an invitation. After 10 invitations I decided to take a look, make an account and start using it too. I was a bit weary for this since using lot's of sites is awkward, I thought. But I must say this is a sticky one. Firstly ...
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2007 12 11 Martijn Kriens social networksTags: , , Comments (0)

Private?

I came across this article in the paper on Saturday about the fact that civil servants are adding and changing information on Wikipedia during working hours. Some time ago I blogged about the Wikiscanner and of course one can see more and more how important transparency is. There have been numerous cases where with the help of the wikiscanner people have been found out while trying to create their own truth ... However, the question is how are we going to deal with this transparency. Of course ciivil servants also use the Wikipedia during working hours and of course they sometimes also change information. Just like people in companies and people at home. Wherever we are we still remain individual human beings. One of the effects of Web 2.0 is that the different roles we have are more and more blending together. At all times of the day we are private person, employee, citizen, husband and father and can switch easily between all these roles. Somehow we have to learn how to deal with this transparency. The fact that information came from a computer within a public department ...
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2007 11 19 Martijn Kriens PoliticsTags: , , , Comments (0)

Salesforce

I read this post at salesforce: Salesforce.com is considering bringing to market a new service enabling companies to share leads, opportunities and custom objects with each other (assuming both are using salesforce.com). What would you call this service? If you have another name suggestion please post it in a comment. This seems a rather interesting application of Web 2.0 sharing of information. Companies sharing leads in a network through their CRM system. There are of course a lot of questions like how do you protect your leads against competitors, how easy it is to create rules how to share and such. But still, the idea has a huge potential I think.
2007 10 04 Martijn Kriens Social SoftwareTags: , , Comments (3)

Symbiosis

I think the most interesting new adaptations of technology are the ones that make clever combinations of the real and digital world. You might say the ones that live in symbiosis, where the digital world feeds on the physical world and vice versa. Second Life I do not like since it merely involves the digital realm. Meeting somebody from a discussion group in real life creates great physical meetings and makes the discussion later on more interesting, knowing the other person also in real life. At the moment I am talking to an organisation involved in the safety sector. Practice for them is extremely important. Problem for them is that practice in real life is difficult and expensive. Not all situations can be created in real life (too costly or physically so destructive that it can not be done). On the other hand practice in the digital world does not feel real. It is hard to substitute loud noise, a roaring fire and wind and many people putting pressure on you. In a game you also can get the adrenaline working but different ... The idea of the project is to set up an environment where digital ...
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2007 10 02 Martijn Kriens gamesTags: , , Comments (0)

Are you linkedIn?

I think we all know the sorry feeling that we lost track of people we knew and worked with in the past but lost sight of. In the past it a was always very hard to find them again. Since some time now there is a new social network called LinkedIn. The idea is that you can find people by name and that they themselves keep their profiles up date. Meaning you can find them on their current e-mail address. By using it I already found some old friends from the places I worked, colleagues, customers and partners. It even integrates into outlook and recognizes people you may know from all the old e-mails you have sent (I have an archive of all my mails from 1997 and on) This linking to each other creates an interesting web. You can normally see the acquaintances of other people and and have a look at their network. Potentially you can get an introduction for people you wish to contact. One of the other interesting features is that you can pose a question that others can try to answer. It seems to ...
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2007 09 27 Martijn Kriens social networksTags: , , , , Comments (0)

Virtual children

Children grow up sooo fast. My son said that he wanted a blog too so I made one for him. He made his first post (and he referred to his dad's blog on it, nice :-) ). Than he asked that I made a link to his blog. I said to him that he should first write some posts. His reactions than was that iCrowds deals with social networks so that linking to each other is something that should be done. Duh... 11 years .... here you can find him. Willem, now you have a moral obligation to write, often.
2007 09 06 Martijn Kriens UncategorizedTags: , , Comments (0)

Cookie jar

I remember as a small child that, when you had taken some cookies from the cookie jar you were not supposed to take, your mother somehow always knew. I suppose this must feel the same for the people that got caught by the Wikiscanner. This is an application that relates the IP adresses from the people who did edits on the Wiki pages. Surpringly (or maybe not so surprising really) a lot of edits come from organisations that are involved in the wiki-article and their intentions are not always without self interest. The page of George W. Bush was edited from the home security office (removal of the fact that he had a drinking problem) and the best of all about the edit from the queen's home address where information from her daughter-in-law Mabel was edited to make her look a little better. This all is of course not surprising. When information can be edited there is no reason to think companies and people will not do so in order to make them look better. The interesting part is that it turns out that many of the un-truthful edits had been discovered very quickly and have been repaired withing hours ...
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2007 08 29 Martijn Kriens Social Software
crowdsourcing
diversity
governanceTags: , , Comments (0)

La Dolce vita

It has been a long time since last post due to vacation and various other activities. But even in vacation time you can still enjoy the possibilities of all the new channels of communication and communities. There is a (closed) discussion group I am member of that deals with various political subjects. Many of the members are educated as philosophers and the discussions are on a very interesting level. One of the people in this group is an American living in the Bourgogne in France. During the vacation I sent him an e-mail to suggest to meet for drinks when I would be traveling through France on the way back home. He was so nice to invite us to his house and stay the night there. Imagine: in the middle of the beautiful country side in the Bourgogne in a water mill dating back to the year 1300. Great company, great place, great food, great wine (probably the best red wine I ever tasted) and great conversation. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. One of the other surprises was how my son of 11 years was able to converse in English. Due to his playing games ...
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2007 08 26 Martijn Kriens UncategorizedTags: , , Comments (0)

Ladybird

LadybirdOriginally uploaded by Vigdis T Sometimes the power of the long tail amazes me. The picture on the side is of a ladybird. It is coming from the group "Tiny animals on fingers". Oh yeah, I suppose this is not a picture of a ladybird but a picture of a ladybird on a finger. Of this group there are 448 members. Amazing.
2007 06 30 Martijn Kriens long tailTags: Comments (0)

Innovators or Free riders

This is a comment on the articles by Gorman and Shirky on the Brittanica blog and Many2Many. Major issue to me on this discussion is the consequences of the change we are making from the traditional publishing of information, including the accompanying business model, to the electronic publishing with the "free business model". In this discussion a comparison is made with the Luddites, 19th century weavers and knitters who fought against the use of textile machines because it threatened their business. ===== But isn't there a big difference with he Luddites. The Luddites complained that new technology was making them unemployed, which true but happened in a fair market. Machine fabricated and hand woven competed and the first won. I think at this moment the case is different. Look at the way everybody is quoting the Luddites. Reading the articles it is my well educated guess that most people are retrieving what they know about the Luddites from ... Wikipedia (King Ludd ..). Interesting. But where do we think that the original knowledge of Luddites is coming from. Again my educated guess would be that sometime somewhere someone copied (rephrased) an encyclopedia. The new competition for the Luddites did ...
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2007 06 21 Martijn Kriens businessmodel
researchTags: Comments (0)

Filters

The Brittanica is doing something very daring: they are starting a discussion about web 2.0 (like what is the relation between Wikipedia and the Brittanica) on a web 2.0 platform (blogs). Sun Tzu whom is no doubt also in the Brittanica, would have taught never to fight on the enemy terrain. Like I said: daring. The opening piece is from Michael Gorman where he more of less attacks the collective intelligence and defends the traditional way of finding and selecting information. The reactions by the blogging crowds are as you can expect. However, I think there is one point overlooked by the people reacting (like Clay Shirky) to what Gorman says. Of course is unlimited information flow good. People can express themselves and lots of different opinions are available. However, filtering and rating information is important, in science as well as in everyday news. We have to know how far we can trust the information and the source. In the "old days" our filter were based in the production side. Production was costly through printing and distribution. To make these decisions we employed professionals hired by firms that printed the books and magazines. We as users could ...
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2007 06 14 Martijn Kriens governance
researchTags: , , Comments (0)

Career moves

Maybe, given other choices, you could have been another Steven Spielberg. Maybe even better. Steven Spielberg became Steven Spielberg because he made the choices early on that were fitting with his talent. And since in a short tailed world success breeds success he became one of the most successful directors since producers are inclined to play it safe in the choice of directors (everybody is going to look at the latest Spielberg). But no doubt there are many more people out there that have the talent of a spielberg but made different career choices and became mediocre architects. On of the interesting aspects of the long tailed world introduced by youtube is that more people can try out their talent. With hard work, bit of luck and lots of recommendations you can get popular in the long tail and slowly but surely move up the tail to where it gets interesting for producers. A series on youtube I love is "mr. Deity". On their websitethey explicitly state they are making this series on youtube because they wish to make a series on TV. What is Mr. Deity? Mr. Deity is a semi-monthly video series (every two weeks) that looks at God and ...
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2007 05 27 Martijn Kriens long tail
social networks
workspaceTags: , Comments (0)

The future workspace of journalism

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". Many will recognize this as the opening of Dickens his book "A tale of two cities". Dickens meant the time of the french revolution with all the positive and negative turmoil. Looking how fast the landscape of work is changing I sometimes get the same idea (though luckily the "blood" is now virtual!). An interesting example of the change and turmoil is a site called AssignmentZero, a cooperation between Newassignment and Wired. The idea of AssigmentZero is an attempt to do "open source journalism". The idea is that an open community communicates about what would be interesting subjects, whom to interview, what are important questions and all other aspects relating to journalism. There is some leadership but there is also a lot of confusion, searching, irritation and of course some flames. It is intriguing to see how these people embark on a journey together to redefine how journalism works in a networked world. This is how they define their quest: The investigation takes place in the open, not behind newsroom walls. Participation is voluntary; contributors are welcome from across the Web. The people getting, telling ...
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2007 05 25 Martijn Kriens workspaceTags: , , Comments (1)

Hello World!

This is my first entry in this blog. This is my first blog. Why am I joining the countless number of people that are blogging? Do you care? Should you? For me this blog is a way of structuring my thinking about social software. I believe that social software (wiki's, blogs, decision market) is changing our society in more ways than we can imagine. And I think that this change is a positive one where people can make a difference based on what they have to offer instead of the role they occupy. A world where all the intelligence available is used and where people are motivated to make their contribution because they are awarded for it. In my work at the Telematica Instituut (a research institution between universities and business) I am involved in social software through a research project I am setting up called "The future workspace". Also I am thinking about doing my thesis around this subject. Focus here is the use of social software in business environments. How can it be used and what conditions are needed to make it successful? Are the current organisations capable of implementing these flat structures or will the hierarchies win. That is ...
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2007 05 20 Martijn Kriens Politics
Social Software
Uncategorized
workspaceTags: Comments (0)