Less Networks. More Meaning. — from Logic+Emotion by David Armano
Here’s what I observed this past week after scanning the reactions of people in my own networks in relation to Google Buzz. People in my own ecosystem seem utterly exhausted by the plethora of networks they manage and the number of people within those networks. E-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Yammer, Instant Messenger… just how many platforms can we participate in?
Google’s strategy is likely meant to solve this problem. To become the one “ecosystem” to rule them all. But the Web doesn’t work this way. It’s unlikely that people will abandon existing platforms or networks unless they become so polluted that we have no choice. Sure we may have wandered away from e-mail, but how many of us have actually abandoned it? Very few I suspect. E-mail like Twitter or Facebook will remain relevant as long as our friends and co-workers keep using it. When they stop, it might go away—but how likely is it that scenario?
In my trends for 2010 article at Harvard Business, I wrote the following…
From DSC:
David brings up a great point and a serious problem…at least for me. How many networks and services can I belong to and effectively filter through? As the Net continues to splinter, where do I invest my time? That’s why I don’t use Twitter…as I know myself, and I’d be on Twitter all day long. I just can’t afford to do that; and I’m not sure how others are manuevering throughout this splintering space.
As a consultant supporting SME’s in collaboration & learning choices, I have to admit choice is becoming a big problem and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Every week another host of exciting new products arrive on the market with everyone wanting a share of the pie. They may be LMS or conferencing or micro media or blog platforms or screen sharing or document sharing or social networks, the list goes on, as does the category choices, but one thing is clear they all want to play and capture audience. Creating an eco-system that is suitable for one client may often not be suitable for another client. One of the first questions is often based around security. Do we use cloud services or host internally? Deciding on the specific objectives helps narrow the choice. The base platform is very important. Currently the two big choices are Google or Microsoft. Once this choice has been taken you can begin to build other tools to support functions lacking in either platform. I think at the end of the day it has to be a mash-up of services that can tested and tried to see if they fit the organisations culture.
Paul:
“Creating an eco-system that is suitable for one client may often not be suitable for another client. One of the first questions is often based around security. Do we use cloud services or host internally? Deciding on the specific objectives helps narrow the choice. The base platform is very important. Currently the two big choices are Google or Microsoft. Once this choice has been taken you can begin to build other tools to support functions lacking in either platform. I think at the end of the day it has to be a mash-up of services that can tested and tried to see if they fit the organisations culture.”
Daniel:
Thanks Paul for the sound feedback/advice/recommendations here. I think you’re right in that the ecosystems people build will depend on their needs, goals, objectives. There may be a slew of ecosystems out there. Being in higher ed myself, I’m hoping that one of the key values that we could bring to the table for our students would be to help them know how to build the most effective mash-ups of services that work for them on a smaller/more personal scale — and then how to evaluate the effectiveness of that ecosystem from time to time, in order to make tweaks to it.
Thanks Paul,
Daniel