The Business Web 2.0

My forecast for the year ahead. And I continue to stick my neck out on one specific prediction...

Happy New Year ZDNet readers! With a plummeting end to a roller coaster 2008 (and I don't enjoy the plummets) it was nice to get away on holiday for three weeks. Which gave me some time to reflect on the year past and make some predictions for the year ahead. Here are my Top 3 -- let me know whether you agree or disagree:

1. Twitter goes mainstream
OK, so the column inch thief of the past month didn't end the year on a great note -- I returned to the UK to read numerous news stories on 30-odd celebrity Twitter accounts being hacked in a very obvious way. And 2008 also saw its fair share of downtime for the service. But in spite of that the Twitter user community grew substantially (at a guess from 3 million to 6 million plus); its biggest fans got hooked; and it has spawned a healthy developer community. Even though no one is yet making any money from it.

But that might not matter. My position on Twitter altered significantly over 2008 (look back through my posts to see me commenting on its possible demise earlier in the year!) and I now wonder if it needs to make money at all. Maybe Twitter is, in fact, a possible new Open Source "transport" upon which vendors could build applications to enable it to be used for specific aims, such as marketing communications, customer support or even, God forbid, mass mailing? Could Twitter be E-mail Lite?

Either way, more and more people are "getting" Twitter and it's a fairly safe bet that those and more will be adding Twitter to their Facebook accounts and blogs to enable quick and easy commenting, as well as other utilisations akin to how we use SMS on mobile phones and used to use IM instead of send e-mails. I also guess that it will continue to reign over any possible competitor -- I just don't see anything challenging its position for a while.

All in all, a good year ahead for Biz Stone and his colleagues!

2. Web 2.0 meets CRM for the perfect business application
I've written on this before so I am not going to regurgitate what you can read in my other posts. Suffice to say that adding "social" elements to Customer Relationship Management makes, in my opinion, the perfect business application.

I am not alone in thinking this, with Salesforce.com now touting a Facebook Connect option for their Force.com platform and SAP, either behind or ahead of SFDC depending on your point of view, investing in LinkedIn.

Visit any website focused towards customer management and CRM and it will be full of talk of CRM 2.0 -- but is anything actually happening? Well, when it comes to practical demonstrations of CRM 2.0 in action, Salesforce.com predictably led the way at their November Dreamforce conference with a presentation showing user forms in Facebook where the data found its way into their CRM system. But it was pretty lame. It can't be hard to mine user data automatically if that user is a "friend" (or has otherwise given permission through membership of a group of fan page)? And what about some practical B2B use, like collecting user comments from Twitter or mining LinkedIn data?

I have little doubt it will come this year and there will be massive kudos to the CRM vendor that lights the path, having mastered the data privacy concerns along the way (and convinced Facebook to share "social graph" data). I am not going to make any guesses as to who will pick up the baton and run with it fastest, other than it won't be Microsoft and Dynamics CRM...

3. The age of the niche Social Network
If 2008 was all about everyones' parents joining Facebook and the word "Twitter" entering everyday language, 2009 will be about the growth of niche Social Networks appealing to specific needs or interests.

Now I have been crowing about niche SocNets for nearly a year and as yet they haven't really taken off. Ask most people if they want to join a network specifically for geneologists, financial advisers, public speakers or sales leads and they'll tell you that they are already on Facebook or LinkedIn and don't need to join any others (in spite of them potentially better serving the needs which saw them networking in the first place). But the interest they have in the specific use of Social Networks that led to them adding applications or joining groups last year will drive growth in stand-alone niche networks focused towards those interests in 2009.

Why the different approach this year? Well we can thank Facebook Connect largely. The main objection to joining networks outside of the mainstream networks to which most people are already members is that it takes time, means yet another password to remember and involves the cumbersome task of building a contact/friend list from scratch. Facebook Connect smashes all of these objections in one go with its ability for one click registration on new sites, using your existing Facebook credentials; plus an ability to bring over your existing contacts to the new network. It even posts back news feed items to Facebook that relate to your activity on the remote networks, so it helps you keep on top of what is happening on each of them in one place.

When the roll out of Facebook Connect starts in earnest, expect niche Social Networks to be perceived as extensions to Facebook, rather than yet another site you need to sign up for.

I'd love you read your thoughts on whether you agree.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

It's too easy to send unsolicited messages using Google Friend Connect without knowing it.

We added a test page to our website this week so I could try out Google Friend Connect, as I wanted to see for myself what the implications were for webmasters and users as the GFC "gadgets" gradually rolling out across the web. If you aren't aware of GFC, it is Google's attempt to "socialise" the web by enabling social networking type features to be easily added to existing websites, whether they have existing communities or not.

If you want to take a look at our test page you can find it at http://www.wecando.biz/googlefc.php.

Here's what it enables you to do:

- "log in" to our website so that your identify can be seen to all others using GFC to log in; and you can see the identities of all those who have also logged in using the method

- "friend" other GFC users on our website, which will add them as friends on other websites supporting GFC

- engage in using other "gadgets" (what everyone else calls widgets) which currently allow Facebook-like "wall" comments, ratings and basic games (we have only the ratings one active)

- associate identities you have on other OpenID sites with your GFC account (which is, in fact, based on your membership of Google for Mail, Analytics, or whatever; or your Orkut or OpenID memberships)

- invite your other contacts in other GFC associated networks (e.g. Plaxo) to come and connect with you on that site

- post details of that site to a contact or e-mail list or back to MySpace, Facebook and a few other social networks

All fairly useful. But the thing that concerns me is that when you send invitations or links to websites back to the connections you have on Plaxo, for example, rather than them getting a message in Plaxo they receive an e-mail; and the e-mail doesn't make the source apparent, so it can't be seen why or how they've been selected to get your e-mail. It looks just like a random e-mail inviting them to a website.

I have used this feature of Google Friend Conenct only once to let my Plaxo connections know they can take a look at our GFC implementation. Many are interested in social media so I thought they'd like a peep. But I had no idea they'd get a random e-mail from me, without it apparent I was using GFC to send it, or that I had selected them from a Plaxo connections list.

What difference does this make? Well, I have some connections on Plaxo that are a little tenuous and to those guys this looked like spam. In fact, one of those contacts reacted badly because it looked to them just like I had dug out their e-mail address and sent an entirely random e-mail to look at my website, the "context" in which I had sent it not being apparent.

And to be fair to myself, I wasn't aware they'd be getting an e-mail with no reference points in it when I sent it.

I hate unsolicited mail messages as much as the next man, but GFC makes it easy to send messages and links to website with just a few clicks, without the implications of what you are doing being very apparent.

Of course, I get invitations to try this and that all the time on facebook and it that community it doesn't bother me as much as e-mails doing the same thing. But without a central network to post messages back to, as facebook has for Facebook Connect, Google is (I am assuming) unwittingly helping to contribute to a surge in in spam e-mails out without the sender really being aware of the implications of their simple actions.

If this can happen to me, I am sure it can easily happen to others. Expect other people playing with or finding their feet in Google Friend Connect to start generating a level of unsolicited e-mails that they have no idea about; and for it to get worse as more and more websites add and support GFC.

This is something for users, webmasters and IT departments to watch out for!

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

It was May when Facebook Connect was first announced with the aim of "socialising" any website. With launch only a few weeks away, does it create more risks than benefits for social media users?

I've written about Facebook Connect and Google's rival Friend Connect before, shortly after they were announced and then by mention a few months ago at how little progress either had made. Well now it seems the first of these is almost ready to roll. And it seems the time spent has ensured it will do a little more than first anticipated.

Facebook Connect will now enable Facebook users to log in to remote participating sites using a Facebook ID, connect with friends on that site and share updates of activity back on their Facebook updates. Third party sites already signed up include Twitter and Plaxo (Plaxo also supports OpenID by the way), but all stand to gain from easy access to the 120 million Facebook users; who, in turn, stand to gain from easy access through their Facebook IDs to a whole array of interesting third party sites without needing to registera new identity and build a friends list from scratch.

Of course, the proprietary nature of Facebook's technology for doing this has sentt various observers into a whirl, all of whom are voicing concerns about the "walled garden" approach; users and website owners being locked in; that anyone is not using open standards in 2008; and just how trustworthy Facebook will prove to be with the new information on web usage it will be collecting.

But here's the thing: there is no real rival to the initiative even though everyone is crying out for one. In spite of the Data Portability crowd advocating OpenID, OpenAuth and OpenSocial, it has hardly moved at all in the last year and what implementations there are suffer from clunkiness that puts it beyond the use of the average man in the street, who just wants to be able to log into a website easily.

There are a few sites I use that utilise OpenID, but in spite of having spent 5 years heading information security companies specialising in web Single Sign On (PKI based since you ask...), my heart sinks when I can see I have to use one of my OpenID identities. It is all just too clumsy. Give me something easier.

Like Facebook Connect for example. OK, you can never delete a Facebook profile; and there are frequent concerns voiced about whether they are on top of security as people's pictures get leaked. And it is, of course, all proprietary technology rather than Open Source. But with 120 million people using Facebook without too many of these concerns at the front of their mind, who cares?

Speaking as both a user and the owner of a website that I'd love to see made easier for new visitors to register and use fully, the Facebook option excites me more. Or at least it will until the Data Portability supporters of OpenSocial and OpenID stop building it for techies and arguing about branding and start getting serious.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

The usual "focusing on new challenges" line punted out as former eBay Germany head fills his shoes at business focused social network.

Thanks to Mike Butcher (http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/11/24/xing-ceo-quits-replaced-by-former-ebay-drone/trackback/) some interesting news from XING this morning.

Co-founder and CEO Lars Hinrichs is set to quit to make way for Dr Stefan Gross-Selbeck, the former head of eBay Germany, who will take up the role in January. Hinrichs will stay involved in the businesses, sitting on the supervisory board to enable him to continue his 5 years of service.

Given consistently great results from XING -- although it never seems enough for the German company to ever get mentioned alongside LinkedIn in the many more column inches its American rival manages -- it's odd that he has chosen to move aside at this time. The almost mandatory "pursuing other interests" excuse featured in Hinrich's blog today (http://blog.xing.com/2008/11/a-new-chapter-in-the-company-history/), although I would suggest he is leaving before he's finished the job: XING holds a strong position in Germany, Spain and Turkey (the second two thanks to acquisitions) but XING is yet to fully establish itself in other parts of Europe, Asia or the US to offer some much needed competition to LinkedIn.

I'll watch with interest any attempts to address these issues from the incoming CEO early next year.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http;//www.wecando.biz

It's a year since some of the biggest names in social networking joined to collaborate on interoperability. What have they achieved in that time?

I'll admit I was sceptical from the start. My first read of the press release announcing OpenSocial had me seeing sheep throwing applications, popular on Facebook at the time, proliferating around other places on the web were I conducted more serious business. Well, Facebook was a notable absentee from the OpenSocial iniative actually, but I feared that the mold for "social applications" had been set.

One year later I can see I needn't have been so concerned. The OpenSocial Foundation, the group formed to help manage the development community around its open API (Application Programming Interface) standards says that millions of web users are already getting real benefit, with many more OpenSocial apps planned -- the next batch of which will hit LinkedIn users within a month.

But who knows about the apps that exist? And who can see the benefits they are getting?

An early OpenSocial manifestation was Google Friend Connect, a rival to Facebook Connect which planned to enable website owners to embed the social graph elements from existing socnets into their own sites. It would allow MySpace users to collect on your site and share details of things they liked about it with their MySpace friends. The appeal of 100 million MySpace members being able to better use your own website was clear to many website owners, all of whom rubbed their hands with glee waiting for the code to arrive. Amid much fanfare and the inevitable "who will win? Google or Facebook?" questions, nothing came of it: I am not aware of one GFC implementation (incidentally, it never took off for Facebook Connect either, with no more than a handful of live implementations thus far). The promise remains unfulfilled. And that was one of the first and better sounding OpenSocial applications.

LinkedIn has recently launched some application to its business-focused social network, but beyond some file sharing and collaborative stuff limited in scale, no one would know that OpenSocial underpins them. In fact, it's not very apparent why OpenSocial would need to underpin them, as they are sitting on a social network where the sharing capabilities with other members of your social graph already exist.

One year on, and in a world where many social networks have grown by 50% during that year, the impact of a very well-supported (AOL, Bebo, hi5, Google, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Yahoo!...), formal interopability group to get them all talking has been, unfortunately, negligable.

My view is that the group seems to be shying away from the biggest challenges, but the ones that REALLY bring benefits to users of its members' sites. In spite of supporting OpenID and developing OpenAuth, nearly all of the sites above still require you to set up and administeran individual account, have a unique login and build your networks of friends from scratch each time. This is WAY more a chore to users than the miniscule benefits most of the developed apps bring. And yet we feel no closer now to seeing portable identities and social graphs than we did when all the mission statement and vision slides were first put up 12 months ago.

To my mind, this is THE single biggest inhibitor to the uptake and effectiveness of Web 2.0. That each site needs to take you through a broadly similar registration process only to start you off from Social Square One again is what is stopping people signing up for interesting new niche social networks and from getting full use of those they are already on. Cracking this challenge would have been a great first birthday present to OpenSocial from its founder members.

So in spite of having the tools to do it, why is the OpenSocial Foundation and its members content to put their focus into apps which show you what books your business contacts are reading (LinkedIn app, November 2008)? Maybe because some of the big names behind the initiative "own" all the users and actually DON'T wish to make the Web 2.0 open enough for people to be able to choose which sites they visit without some barriers in the way...?

I'd be interested in your take.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz