Probably one of the most insightful people I follow these days is the Forrester social media superstar analyst Jeremiah Owyang, who posted this slideshow that I've embedded here. It's an awfully simple set of analogies, and an alarm bell for those that don't already see this pattern emerging in some form, or see their market niche as immune to the ramifications.
Social Media
My Toolbox
I use a lot of stuff in my daily life, both at work and play, that allow me to do otherwise impossible things. If you've heard of them all, pardon the intrusion - you may go back to pondering the cover of The New Yorker or whatever it is you do with your extra time. I could do without some of them, sure... But I'm pretty sure it would suck. Stuff I Use...
Yammer
We've all heard the buzz these days about Twitter apps, social media buzz about "connecting with customers", and even seen analysts from Forester, RedMonk, etc using tweets to get & share information. There's one thing, though - what if you want a *closed* system for just your employees? What if you have a ton of telecommuters and need some infrastructure to share snippets of information as they develop? The "What are you doing..." of Twitter would need to become, "What are you working on right now..."
Enter Yammer. Outside in, it looks awesome - your own closed-ended Twitter clone open only to people within your email domain. Archives, searching, it all looks great. A closer look made me nervous, though - all VC-funded with the word "free" all over it. Maybe that shouldn't make me nervous, but I have this suspicion that its free because of the potential for (a) future ad monetization which makes it feel & behave less like a commercial app and (b) security: if you really are sharing your best tips and IP over this little closed network, what measures are in place to protect those assets? Can you host it yourself?
I am truly excited about the potential of tools like this, but the warm fuzzy only goes so far. I'm allergic to a lot of warm & fuzzy things, you know...
We ain't got no RSpec
I don't subscribe to many podcasts, but definitely give RailsEnvy a listen when I find the synopsis to be of interest. They recently did something quite interesting and set up a voicemail box to get feedback. Another of their listeners, frustrated that he only uses console to build applications (as I do), left a voicemail that the RailsEnvy people have aptly labeled, "We ain't got no RSpec - Best Voicemail Ever". Check it out - and definitely listen to the original voicemail before consuming the "remix". It is a testament to their creativity as product evangelists and marketers.
Project SocialSite by example
This is really quite cool: Embed, for example, OpenSocial containers within something like MediaWiki. All part of the kooky fun (still) going on at Sun's Project SocialSite!
