Remember how cool Digg was back in the day? We believed it would shepherd the cream of journalism to the top and marginalize the extreme voices. Sadly, between every game-changing idea, there are countless business decisions – from UX to leadership – that can stifle innovation. Today’s Roundup highlights the key lessons from Digg, and the issues impacting today’s plugged-in social enterprise.
“Digg’s Demise: A Lesson in How Not To Run a Social News Site” (eWeek)
“In its best days, Digg ranked with Slashdot as two of the most popular places to go to engage in social news judgment on the Web, especially among the IT community. But Digg’s influence slipped markedly with the emergence of newer, broader-based social news/networking sites, such as Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and scores of others. It also didn’t change enough — and in the right ways — in the face of new competition.”
“Microsoft, Feeling Google’s Heat, Launches Office 15″ (WSJ)
“Microsoft is using Office to propel new technology into the market. Its acquisition of Yammer will push social media deeper into the enterprise as a tool for collaboration, communication and data analytics. Its purchase of Perceptive Pixel–a pioneer of large multi-touch screens–can help bring the functionality of smartphones and tablets into desktop computing and beyond. And the launch of Windows 8, expected this fall, will provide a foundation for all those new services.”
“Enterprise Social Media: Separating the Good from the Average” (CIO Insight)
“The innovators in enterprise social networking–Salesforce Chatter, Yammer and Jive, for instance–have created social intelligence algorithms, she said, similar to Facebook’s, that are based on how people use the platform and will pick up on the kinds of information that they share with others on the platform, what kind of groups they interact with and who they’re connected to. The result is the delivery of more relevant information. Furness wrote a blog post chronicling demonstrable results from use of enterprise social by various clients, including a 30 percent reduction in email volume, a 27 percent reduction in the amount of time spent in meetings and a 34 percent reduction in the time it takes to find an expert who can solve a problem.”
“One study says employer worries aren’t simple paranoia. A 2011 poll commissioned by Symantec of more than 1,200 companies found that the typical firm had had an average of nine ‘social media incidents’ in the past year, with 94 percent of those firms suffering negative consequences such as a drop in stock price, litigation expenses and a ‘damaged brand reputation.’”
Knowing this might be a stress overload on a Monday morning, we thought we’d lighten the mood with this piece about leaving it all quasi-behind:
“IT Admin’s ‘Summer Suitcase’: 11 Helpful Tech Tools for Vacation” (eWeek)
“Also making the list is iPass, which unifies the management of remote and mobile devices and connectivity. iPass provides Internet services to business users working remotely—away from their home office, region or country—by integrating Internet connectivity with management of VPN and other third-party security applications.”
What social media pitfalls keep you awake? Leave a comment here or @howardsystems
