The Business Web 2.0
As CEO of business-based social networking site WeCanDo.BIZ, read my take on the role Web 2.0 technologies can play helping businesses to grow.
Wednesday 3 September 2008, 3:34 PM
Google Chrome browser market share after Day 1 = 2.77%
Google's Chrome browser is now running on 2.77% of devices accessing the website, according to web stats company Clicky.
My thanks to SEO expert Nikki Pilkington for sharing with me (over Twitter, look her up) some stats Clicky has released of web traffic over the 45,00 unique websites it tracks since Google Chrome was released in beta at 7:00pm BST last night.
You can view the stats here: http://getclicky.com/chrome
They update every 15 mins, so you may see Chrome's marketshare climbing higher still.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
Wednesday 3 September 2008, 2:15 PM
Tweeting for business - can it work?
Twitter can be used for business, claims many an author and SEO expert. But can it really?
I must admit up front that I remained a Twitter sceptic for a long time. To me, "tweeting" seemed little more than a pointless instant message sent out to the ether, with no knowledge of who was reading it so little ability to make it relevant. Bored rigid of reading people's banal status messages on Facebook (and this was from friends!), I was keen to sign up to something that gave me every piece of detail of a stranger's day.
I am on Twitter now and I can't say I am a full convert, but I have picked up some useful business tips using it. And my use involves a panel in my iGoogle dashboard which tells me what everyone I follow is up to; Twitterrific on my iPhone which gives me all updates when I am mobile; Ping.fm which syncs my tweets up with most of the other social media I am on which allows statuses (Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendfeed included); a link between the Biz Needs RSS feed on my website that broadcasts our members most urgent business needs; and now Twitterise for scheduling marketing tweets at regular intervals to all followers (which Ping.fm then takes out to everywhere else). You could say I am using it!
And all of these things are great. Almost anyone who comes into touch with my via the internet can now find out what I am up to, what news we have to share at WeCanDo.BIZ, plus the needs of our members (which become leads for everyone else). I can watch our Clicky webstats page and see the users coming in, all direct from enticing tweets we sent out to them. It is producing clicks.
But whereas clicks from Google will have some level of qualification to them, that is, someone has searched on something we have on our site, how qualified is the audience I am broadcasting to using the above tools? My tweets extend beyond my 30-odd Twitter followers, most of whom I have picked up word of mouth (or whatever you'd call copying someone you follow by following who they follow) to 100 Facebook friends, 330 LinkedIn contacts, 50 people at Plaxo, the community at Mashable and more. But I have little control over who could be in that community; and am I abusing my personal connections by so obviously marketing to them? What do I even know about their buying habits? How targeted are they are a market?
OK, tweeting costs no money, but issuing updates throughout the day takes time. And how do I know that is time well spent?
I have a feeling many people are clicking through because of curiosity rather than any commercially measurable interest. Does anyone think any different? I'd love to read your thoughts...
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
Wednesday 20 August 2008, 9:38 AM
Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!
Cloud computing is big news -- for all the right and all the wrong reasons. But is a bad definition taking the blame away from the organisations responsible when things don't work?
As someone keenly involved in the delivery of software over the internet, I have kept a keen eye on what was called Application Service Provision (ASP) 10 years ago. Passing through a transition to Software as a Service, the web based software offerings from Citrix, Google and Salesforce.com now often get referred to as "cloud computing". But I don't agree that such a thing really exists.
Mark Hopkins at Mashable opened up the debate this week (see http://mashable.com/2008/08/19/cloud-computing-defined), requesting a better definition of cloud computing. My contribution to his aticle was that, for those of us who have been involved in computing since way before the web had a version number, the cloud already has a definition.
The "cloud" was something I drew a lot when I used to be involved in implementing X.25 networks with Torus in the early nineties. A cloud was used to illustrate how corporate LANs were connected to each other, way before we could tap into the internet to get them talking. Our diagrams showed enterprise resources, perhaps user LANs on either side of the cloud, or 5250 terminals one one side and a Token Ring network of AS/400s on the other. The cloud was the transport to connect them all when the wires left the bulding. It was X.25 back then, but it would be the internet today.
But the cloud was a means to an end, not the end itself. Today, if applies to SaaS or Web 2.0, the thing at the other side of the cloud would be a datacentre: Google's datacentre, Amazon's datacentre, Salesforce.com's datacentre, Citrix's datacentre. These things aren't in the cloud. Unless, of course, the cloud has been highjacked for another purpose, like suggesting the datacentres should be shown in a cloud so they can be excused Service Level Agreements...
It annoys me that recent stories of outages at Amazon, Google and with Citrix's GoToMeeting were lumped together as being some sort of Web 2.0 malady, as in my mind it was just old fashioned poor service from the individual companies above whose software wasn't available. You can't blame the cloud OR Web 2.0, unless you believe that service levels don't matter in the Web 2.0 world.
This brings me onto something else that grates: beta programmes. Why is it Web 2.0 companies think that a beta release is a product launch and good enough to put live to all users? Latest perpetrator is Talkbiznow which, with much fanfare and coverage in The Times, The Telegraph and Guardian, "launched" their business focused social network on Monday. I was amongst the first there and found the launch was of a site clearly marked beta, although also referred to as "v1.0". Amongst all the talk of 3 million users in 6 months there is no mention of when the site will come out of test and when users can expect full service delivery without the errors (of which I have had two already).
I am not sure that terms like cloud and beta are being hijacked. Perhaps it is just that the people bolting these things together seem not to be looking to the best practices of the past, when the terms were first coined and where software was required to work with no excuses.
Ian Hendry
WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
Friday 8 August 2008, 10:01 PM
Where the iPhone doesn't work
As a very proud iPhone owner, I have been ridiculously enthusiastic after just a week of ownership. But I now realise why not everyone is bouncing off the ceiling about Apple's latest mobile wonder.
I put it down to being spoilt by living in the Thames Valley. I am only a few miles from the headquarters of O2 and 3; and Vodafone is only a 30 minute drive up the road. The area is awash with technology companies and I have never been short of a mobile phone signal or gadget fiends to show off the latest innovations to.
Now I realise how pampered I have been by taking access to 3G and wi-fi for granted, as I have just spent my second week of iPhone custodianship in Yorkshire and the Lake District. And guess what? All the fantastic things I have amazed people with over the past week no longer work.
I was genuine curious as to how a trip round the UK, turning up in remote towns with a tent, could be improved by such a slick device with a suite of neat geo-location based applications. Before I started my trip I spoke with Matthew Brazil of Socially Minded and suggested a good blog post would be how much a road trip like this could be improved with apps that tell me where I am, where the nearest restaurants are, what there is to see locally and who else is social networking nearby with their iPhone. But the reality is, all those great things need a fat data connection to provide the data that supports your GPS-defined location. Without an ability to download Google Maps over the internet, you can't see where you are on a map like you can in Maidenhead (where you arguably o not nee that information quite as much); you can't find who else is on Whoshere because you can't get the net to identify people like you can in Reading. Even the Yahoo! fed weather applicattion is useless if you are stuck on a campsite next to Coniston Water, dying to know when the rain will stop but prevented from doing so by the mountains around you. GPRS is SO slow as to make internet use on a mobile phone completely unworkable.
I was hoping my trip would be revolutionised, enabling me to have access to a wealth of information that would really enhance my trip. Instead I am reminded how lucky those of us who live in highly connected areas are; and how the fantastic range of applications on the iPhone are fundamentally underpinned by the quality of the internet connection behind them. Take that away -- and many in the UK never had them in the first place -- and the apps, and iPhone, become useless.
Ian Hendry
WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
Thursday 31 July 2008, 4:34 PM
Social media's double edged sword
Professional network Ecademy felt the full bite of social media today after banning a member for disagreeing with some sentiments posted by founder Penny Power in her blog.
George Wiley, as the member of some 4 years identifies himself, posted a long tirade on his blog (at http://www.whoisgeorgewiley.com/) after being barred from the networking site within minutes of posting a comment on Penny's blog calling her "smug" (amongst other things -- read his blog for details).
George's blog is not widely read but one such reader was other Ecademy founder Thomas Power (Penny's husband), who then started a forum topic back on Ecademy discussing George's negative view of Ecademy. Within minutes Twitter was alight with tweeps reporting the opposing sides and the hilarious mud-slinging between fans of each (the Ecademy hosted side of the discussion can be found at http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=club&t=867090).
This is how social media can bite you. Although both sides have their platform for airing their views and are using them, as a consequence George's article "Leaving the circus" is now the TOP talked about item relating to Ecademy over the past 30 days, according to Matthew Brazil of social media monitoring experts 6Consulting (http://www.6consulting.co.uk/). Most of the comments have been through Twitter, with numbers 2 and 3 Thomas's and George's blog posts. This is just 24 hours after George's initial rant.
Many companies pay marketing departments and external PR agents big sums of money to ensure they are portrayed positively to customers. But how many are effectively managing and monitoring what is said about them through social media, where the public write the copy rather than a small band of journalists.
"Communication of thoughts, ideas, likes and dislikes are happening all over the globe in real time. That information is accessible by anyone, it is the very essence of social media," says Matthew Brazil on his website. "Networking used to happen at pre-arranged networking breakfasts, with people wandering around with a label on their jacket. Nowadays it is conducted online. It can be deliberate networking or unintentional. If I have a bad experience with my bank, broadband supplier or supermarket, chances are I will comment about it for others to see. Social media therefore has major plus points and some huge negatives. Negative sentiment can spread far quicker than before and conversely so can the positive."
I don't see many companies attempting to manage this though. Certainly, you would expect Ecademy, veterans of the Web 2.0 world, to be on top of it.
I wonder how many organisations actually are?
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
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