Redefining Productivity
Meanderings about "where we are" and "where we're headed" - with a focus on technology and the state of the economy.
Facebook announced yesterday the release of their Titan project - a re-definition of email in the context of a Facebook-centered world. I can fully understand why they would want this. But what does it say about us, and what behavioral shifts might it reinforce?
The Social Network gives us an intriguing look into the creation of Facebook -- a tool perhaps best described as "permission-based stalking". And while the film has elements of jealousy, loyalty, friendship, power, money, envy, social status, recrimination and lost innocence, it skips lightly over the immense amount of coding, arguing and just plain "testing" and "fixing" that are required to keep up with an ever-expanding user base and the inherent feature wars that helped it grow.
For those who think social media is a fad, a fast-forward overview of thirty years of social media history should provide some perspective. The article takes us through the ever-shifting ways we have used social media tools to connect with each other through several decades. I think it provides ample evidence that we are evolving ever newer ways of connecting and communicating.
As Clay Shirky pointed out in the book Here Comes Everybody,
"Every webpage is a latent community. Each page collects the attention of people interested in its contents, and those people might well be interested in conversing with one another too. In almost all cases the community will remain latent, either because the potential ties are too weak, or because the people looking at the page are separated by too wide a gulf of time, and so on."
In several ways I think that Google's Sidewiki is a step toward recognizing the potential of "community" in every web page.
As Shirky indicated, we are continuing to experiment with various ways to use these new communication tools. And they will continue to evolve. The article from Cameron Chapman at WebDesignerDepot is a real help in providing perspective.
Jeremiah's blog post about Google Sidewiki points out one more reason that brands need to be monitoring constantly -- Sidewiki is letting them comment right next to your web page!
Best take a proactive stance and welcome visitors to your site via that sidewiki space. And then monitor that space regularly for comments.