Welcome IBM to the corporate world of social networking
Thank goodness. Now that IBM has validated the usage of social networking in business, I can finally sell my company and move to Italy. I feel proud to be in the same camp and competing with IBM for the corporate white label social networking and blogging platform market.
We call it ‘MySpace in a Box’.
WAIT! First we gotta show how it works.
I love the notion of “unlocking the latent expertise in an organization“. What a sublime pitch! Who would say no to their IBM salesguy if they pitched them that line?
But it is appropriate that IBM would make this product a Lotus product and launch it at a Lotus developer’s conference. These are EXACTLY the folks who’ll implement this code. They go right back to their corporate accounts and say “we got MySpace in a Box” - for you.
The clients will eat it up. RIGHT ON IBM! You’re doing exactly the thing we need to see happen. Educating enterprise has always been the great wall that stands in the way of progress for any new technology or trend. Once the corporate walls come crumbling down, like they did for PCs, CD ROMs or the Web - the last barrier of entry is breached and the masses come stampeding in.
Yah gotta also love this line:
I swear to you - I did not pay that woman to say that.
Using the tool in-house was also a genius move by IBM and it sounds like they have a robust architecture, with constructs like activities, communities (groups), a bookmarking system (hopefully tag based) and blogging all mapped into personal pages (profiles.) I assume Higgins ties into this system already and hopefully they’ll be supporting OpenID.
What’s most encouraging is that they’ve turned on the giant corporate PR machine and the story is #2 in techmeme - as we speak.
So now that we’ve got their attention - here we go.
Let’s imagine what corporate social networking will look like?
- Corporate bloggers could form Communities (otherwise known as Groups) and organize themselves for X-Mas parties and company outtings. These communities will all be tagged, so they can be easily discovered by anyone in the system.
- HR departments could sponsor contests and promotions and get corporate sponsors to pay for SWAG and bonus plans. They can share the wealth with their employees, while increasing employee’s exposure time to each other - both in meatspace and cyberspace.
- Roadshows can be sent around the world, and tied into the network - so that real world people can meet folks who they’ve been corresponding with - on-line. Imagine the NY team going to Seoul and meeting their fellow teammates. They document their ‘connections’ and experiences, put up the videos and audio and continue their conversations on-line. Teammates now have connections across time zones and geography.
- A company’s marketing plan, product catalog or history could be uploaded into media galleries, shared between a controlled set of people and even subscribed to. God forbid if someone in corpcomm decided to keep a blog and explain the company’s services or brag about their incredible team.
- In fact all sorts of collaboration can happen behind a corporate Firewall - where trust, security and talking behind someone’s back - are all assured.
- Then there’s the idea of private Groups and Networks. Imagine inter-linked private networks connecting to other private networks - of course 
Private profile data should be under as much strict control as corporate data. A well designed social network - can and should - put all the access control and policies into the hands of the appropriate people.
- Now imagine a people’s marketplace - made up of JUST the people you want there. You’ve got suppliers, you’ve got vendors of services and you got buyers. And you’re in charge of who’s there and when.
- RSS, Message boards, blogs, wikis, mail lists - they all fit into this environment. And IMAP, Corba, Java and Eclipse - too.
- Its all good - its all about people.
Synchronizing corporate and business data between networks can take on a whole new level of possibilities once IBM gets the corporate world to bite off on this.
I can’t wait to see what the initial implementations of IBM’s Lotus Connections brings. This is the best news Broadband Mechanics has ever had!
‘Cause they’re doing my advertising for me.
Welcome IBM to the world of white labeling social media. Add in widgets or a mobile gateway, mix in some product databases and static propoganda - and you might even have stumbled upon “digital lifestyle aggregation”.
We’ve been betting that this day would come. That corporate social networking (which included blogging) would make it to the big time. Now I get to compete with IBM on price, service, features and brand.
Let’s rock.
UPDATE: Thanks for the mentions from Steve Borsch , Richard MacManus and Steve O’Hear and to nay-sayer Larry Dignan - you’re right the Lotus folks are exactly the types who won’t use MySpace - but they’ll use their approved, relevant, help me with my career social network their job provides.
MICROSOFT UPDATE: Turns out Redmond is trying to get Lotus Notes users to use Sharepoint. Gotta love it. Now maybe they’ll also tie Sharepoint into Amar Gandhi’s Users & Groups in Vista.
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:41 pm
[...] Posted in Scripting News at 8:32 am by Dave Winer Marc Canter: “IBM has validated the usage of social networking in business.” [...]
January 22nd, 2007 at 8:49 pm
[...] « Welcome IBM to the corporate world of social networking [...]
January 22nd, 2007 at 8:54 pm
[...] Mark’s Voice Welcome IBM to the corporate world of social networking […] [...]
January 22nd, 2007 at 11:47 pm
I just love how Microsoft used such an un personal (press release like) way to tell how easy they’re going to make a people tool work.
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:02 am
[...] Further readings: International Herald Tribune, Business Week, Connecting the Dots, Marc’s Voice, Kevin Maney, SeekingAlpha Software Stocks, Bloggers Blog, Ed Brill, Trends in the Living Networks, WSJ and New York Times [...]
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:07 am
[...] It’s also incredibly good news for Marc Canter. The burden of education and market preparation has been lifted from his shoulders. Here’s his take on it. Posted in blogging, web 2.0, Business, Social media, Enterprise 2.0, Marc Canter, PeopleAggregator. [...]
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:21 am
Mark,
First we need to get to $100M in sales and than we can sell and move to Italy my friend. The thing is that IBM will want $5m + per company and their $450 an hour to make it work. That is after Q2 2007 when the software is available. I want to see what is required to get this baby to run out of the box too (DB2, WebSphere..). This has a better chance at least that SuiteTwo
Cheers,
Vassil
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:49 am
Marc Windows Vista has a shared workspace in it and BT has just launched their SMB workspace product.
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:15 am
BT’s quiet entry into the market should not be under estimated. It may not be all singing and dancing Web 2.0 but it is good enough (just ) for the crowd that wouldn’t know RSS from the ir ass and would probably punch you out for asking if they could go on your blogroll. In other words the 95% of businesses who couldn’t give a crap about the internet but as interested in finding new ways to make money and do see that collaboration pays. Excellent for the Global Microbrand followers.
It’s not all plain sailing and some of it is ugly indeed. But it is good stuff. And very well priced as a secure service alternative.
BTW - thanks to Sam for putting my into this story. Up to now, it’s been pretty much ignored by the blgoerati.
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
[...] And IBM isn’t just talking about it, they’re taking nice long drinks of their Big Blue Kool-Aid. They’ve got their own employees already writing their own blogs… they even have a podcast about it. Marc Canter has a nice write-up talking about how he imagines companies using social networking. [...]
January 24th, 2007 at 5:30 am
[...] Marc Canter says that IBM’s validation of social networking with the release of Lotus Connections is BIG news. Perhaps even more noteworthy is the fact that the announcement was made in Second Life: New to Lotusphere this year is the introduction of a Lotusphere Complex in Second Life, marking the first time IBM has run a customer conference simultaneously in both the real and virtual worlds. By visiting the Lotusphere Complex in Second Life (http://slurl.com/secondlife/ibm 9/34/58/23/) — which IBM will launch on Tuesday, January 23 — avatars can interact with Lotus experts, learn about software solutions, and experience Lotusphere from wherever they are. [...]
January 25th, 2007 at 5:19 am
Got started in blogging recently and set up my blog. Just learning as much as I can… could do with some useful links.
Jay
January 26th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Marc,
Is social networking in the enterprise really new? Enterprise have been grappling with Distributed Collaborative Applications (DCA) [1] for years (BTW - Lotus Notes is a first Generation DCA).
The RDF Data Model (the Directed Graph as opposed to RDF/XML serialization) is the model that facilitates all of this. For instance, it is actually possible today for Weblogs, Wikis, Shared Bookmarks, Discussions etc.. to exist on an Intranet with all the data accessible via RDF aware technologies (e.g. SPARQL compliant tools).
OpenLink Data Spaces [2][3] has solved this problem for a very long time on both fronts: Intranet and Internet (e.g Blogosphere). It can take anything in Web 2.0 and project as RDF Instance Data which is accessible via SPARQL Clients (note the SPARQL protocol is REST and SOAP based).
Lotus are simply evolving (as they should) toward the obvious (Semantic Web technology exploitation within the Enterprise).
It is all about the Graph, but Social Networks (which are Graphs when all is said an done) somehow appear to be pitched as being incongruent with the essence of the Semantic Web vision (which is now veering away from an over emphasis on AI and RDF/XML towards Data Integration and Data Generation).
Again, anything that is available in RSS, Atom, OPML, XBEL etc.. can be projected as RDF instance data using the right tools.
BTW - Wordpress also emits RDF Instance Data via SIOC Exporters
Links:
1. http://www.cs.duke.edu/ari/cisi/relay/html/paper/node3.html - Distributed Collaborative Applications (circa. 1997 which is still later than Notes 1.0
)
2. http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/alon/files/dataspacesDec05.pdf - From Databases to Dataspaces
3. http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/wiki/main/Main/OdsIndex - OpenLink Data Spaces (exposed Web 2.0 data as RDF Instance without any coding or fuss, subscribe and publish and that’s it)
4. http://sioc-project.org/ - SIOC (one of many Ontologies for modelling online communities which integrates with FOAF nicely)
January 28th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
[...] Intelligent comment from Kingsley Idehen on IBM and corporate social networking. Kingsley’s right - Enterprise have been grappling with Distributed Collaborative Applications (DCA) for years. But its more than the graph dude - its about communicating and profile pages. After many many years in the making, and just in time for the next election - CivcSpace has finally shipped. Congrats dudes! I love the term “Constituent Relationship Management Database” [...]
January 29th, 2007 at 4:53 am
I agree with you, anyway I like this blog too, beautifull blog…………
Regards,
Barbara - http://beautifull.to.md
January 29th, 2007 at 11:39 am
Marc,
I don’t see how my comments are incongruent with your view about profiles. For instance, you should see my question and answers series on LinkedIn re. the need for FOAF renditions of their public profiles. I have blogged extensively about People & Data Networks (which by definition includes communications).
See: http://www.openlinksw.com/weblog/public/search.vspx?blogid=127&q=people%20data%20networks&type=text&output=html
Kingsley
January 29th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I do agree with your opinion….
Anyway I like your blog it’s sio nice,….
Cheers
February 6th, 2007 at 1:18 am
[...] Om also didn’t mention IBM, Five Across, KickApps or CrowdFactory. There’s lots of us out here - selling pre-built [...]