All in Social Networking

Overlapping and Evolving Online Communities are becoming the Rule, Not the Exception

Overlapping and Evolving Online Communities are becoming the Rule, Not the Exception

Dennis D. McDonald
Associations, Business Models, Industry Analysis, , , Web 2.0
I received an email last night from a reader of this blog asking me to comment on cost estimates he had received for the development of a new social networking service. He wants to offer targeted services to a specific but large population segment. His thinking corresponds with a lot of interest people have these days for applying social networking techniques in a profitable or meaningful way to different population groups — young people, old people, professionals, managers, sports enthusiasts, podcasters, jobseekers, lonely hearts — you name it. If there isn’t already a MySpace/YouTube/Linkedin clone targeting any group that can write a check or reach a keyboard, there soon will be.

Professional Social Networking Is Growing!

Dennis D. McDonald
Associations, Enterprise 2.0, Linkedin,
One question I have is how long "social networking" can be a viable business given its steady march into the mainstream. As more and more of our personal and online communications become potentially definable, acquirable, and -- what's really important -- sharable in social networking terms, social-networking-enabled communications will become the norm. When that happens, social networking "features" become commodities and, following basic economics, prices are driven down.

Wuhan China Says Hello

Dennis D. McDonald
China, , Wuhan
So this morning when the Skype tone was heard I checked the caller’s Skype profile. It was Benny in China (not his real name). I admit I thought to myself, “Oh great, another crank call,” so I kept working. But I started to think about the call and thought, hey, what if it’s real? I have great memories of working in China. Why not answer the call?”

Evolving Social Bookmarking Tools for the Corporate Markets

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Bookmarks, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Expertise Management, Knowledge Management, Personal Data Management, , Tagging, Web 2.0, Web Office
Luis Suarez recently blogged and podcasted about social bookmarking services. He highly recommends BLINKLIST, a service that I have not used. I have been using RAWSUGAR, COGENZ, and CONNECTBEAM, so I also have been forming some personal opinions about social bookmarking.

Microsoft "Knowledge Network" Features Begin to Emerge

Dennis D. McDonald
Best Practices, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Expertise Management, Knowledge Management, Management Tools, Project Management, RSS,
One blog I read is the Microsoft Knowledge Network Team Blog (registration required). It describes development and features of the "Knowledge Network" product that will accompany Microsoft's upcoming Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 which is also in Beta status.
The IT Director in a Large Manufacturing Company Discusses "Baby Boomer Brain Drain"

The IT Director in a Large Manufacturing Company Discusses "Baby Boomer Brain Drain"

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Collaboration, Governance, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Transfer, Network Effects, Project Management, Retirement, , Web 2.0
Last week I interviewed “Ferris” (not his real name) about how his company is handling the pending retirement of senior IT staff. Ferris is the IT Director in a large manufacturing company. Ferris’ company doesn’t have the mix of custom legacy Cobol and Assembler based mainframe systems that Boris the Insurance Company CIO has.

An Insurance Company CIO Talks About the "Baby Boomer IT Brain Drain"

Dennis D. McDonald
Collaboration, Expertise Management, Governance, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Transfer, Retirement,
Last week I interviewed “Boris” (not his real name) about his and his company’s handling of the pending retirement of senior IT staff who are critical to the maintenance and operation of a number of his company’s business-critical mainframe legacy systems. I was initially interested in learning whether Boris thought that modern social networking and collaboration tools might be useful in documenting and transferring the specialised expertise staff needed for maintaining critical systems. Instead, the discussion took a different direction and revealed some underlying issues that go beyond technology enabled knowledge sharing.

Using Peoplicious to create an "ad hoc" expert group

Dennis D. McDonald
Expertise Management, , Web 2.0
Professor David Wolber has used a social networking tool for people-tagging called Peoplicious to create an "expert systems" group -- "those interested in tools for locating experts" -- from the links included in John Tropea's survey article called The different ways of finding experts. One of my recent blog postings is included in the Tropea article, so I'm included in Wolber's "expert systems" group.
Load More