Daily Bits

Social Networks

Social Technology and the Enterprise

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When it comes to the Web, technology transformations have followed a general trend of moving from the research space to the consumer space and then to the enterprise space. While presence and popularity in the consumer space is considered to provide hype-value, its the adoption by businesses and utility in enterprises that adds true credence and commercial value to technologies. Case in point being the adoption of e-mail as the communication vehicle of choice for business.

Social networking is in, what can be called, the transition phase from being just a popular trend to true enterprise utility. While the Web 2.0 buzz ( the buzz has lasted rather long ) has set enterprises abuzz, the exact value from the implementation of Web 2.0 in the enterprise is yet to be quantified.

The article at TechNewsWorld mulls on the prospects of Web 2.0 in the enterprise and brings the relevant doubts concerning Web 2.0’s ROI into focus. While enterprises are wont to not being left behind on being at the fore front of implementing technological innovations, the fact remains that there are no concrete proofs on the ROI that enterprises stand to gain from Web 2.0.

While a number of issues plague the precise implementation (if one exists) of Web 2.0 over processes in encompassing an enterprise, the fact that has to be taken into consideration is that perhaps the investments will bear fruits only when the Generation Y enters the workforce. For a generation accustomed to FaceBook and MySpace for managing all communication and information, the enterprise Web 2.0 dashboard may be the perfect switch in a workplace.

In fact, I see more potential for social networking in the professional space than in any other. The reason being that in the professional space, users have a definite reason to maintain a profile with information that needs to be shared, connected and is most importantly credible. Several features developed on top of LinkedIN’s platform also bring into light the different ways in which professional contacts can be highlighted and made usable.

And while we discuss the topic of social networking in the enterprise space, much attention has to be given to the field of social graph. Visualization of an individuals social connection data can provide invaluable insights into several parameters that affect the health of an organization. It is one direct metric on the density and breadth of relationships within an organization. IBM’s research in this area and the tool called Atlas that helps provide visualization of social data are only a beginning to the type of innovation that will aid in measuring the health of an organization like never before.

For 2008 there have been several predictions with reference to the waning of Social Networking fever. Perhaps this may happen. But my view is that this year enterprises will really awake to the immense possibilities of the connectivity that social networking will bring to large organizations. Social networking in the enterprise will perhaps be the panacea for growth pangs, making large organizations more closely knit, manageable and well, organized.

Come 2008, Watch Out When Socializing Online

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An article at BBC World brings to focus one critical point regarding security online – more personal content online means more attention from malware authors.

Social engineering is one of the well crafted techniques used to forage data on users to be used to crack their accounts and sensitive data repositories. It refers to techniques that are performed offline (a phone call perhaps) to elicit data on individuals that may be used later.

With the rise of social networking and millions signing up on to these new hives of activity, it is the identity of individuals that is making an digital shift. At the same time, for the determined cracker, social sites represent the single vital repository to harness information on individuals. Information that makes for targeted and effective spamming.

Though we are all well aware of the tenets of using random alphanumeric passwords, how many of us actually implement that in true spirit? It is a fact that data such as date of birth, pet’s name or graduation day are different nuggets of data that make for memorable passwords and are also up for grab on social sites.

Already there were several attacks targeted at users spreading via messaging systems in social sites or malicious links spreading via contact lists. Considering the fact that Web development is more focussed on getting in newer features than fixing all the bugs in the existing features, its better to be circumspect when it comes to putting data online.

2007: The Year of Social Networking

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An article at PC World does a great job of summarizing the major developments in social networking space in 2007 and ponders over the prospects and uncertainties for 2008.

One insightful point mentioned in the article is how innovation at start-ups startles tech giants. Google, the great Web firm that one-upped Yahoo in claiming the search crown and hailed as the poster child of innovation was beaten at the social networking front. All the major internet firms such as Yahoo, Google and MS were done in by FaceBook which sort of perfected the concept of applications around social networks.

Social Networking is moving from the domain of an ‘nice add-on’ feature to a must-have even at the enterprise level. Various organizations are now waking up to the possibility that to attract the next generation of talent, it is essential to incorporate the flavor of social networking and connectivity within the enterprise.

While there were major salvos fired at FaceBook’s walled garden approach to social networking apps (which it did counter by licensing the F8 platform), it will be LinkedIn’s progress in the API space that will be really interesting. Being a site for business networking, it is one network that will really see a boost with professional networking going beyond just the website to the Web as such.

But another shift that can also be expected is the increased availability of affordable feature-rich mobile phones and compelling mobile applications. Apart from the enterprise user, the benefits of mobile applications have not really trickled down to the casual user. 2008 will hopefully be the year when mobile applications especially for social networking will really take off. Since Google has made several bold moves in the mobile space, expect a lot of innovation in this front.

Overall, its been a great year for Social Networking and for 2008 there’s a lot to anticipate.

New Features Anticipated at Digg

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I came across this article at Read Write Web on the new features that are anticipated to hit the major social bookmarking site – Digg.

Here’s a summary of the features :

  • Groups : Feature to create and joins groups around topics.
  • Customized alerts : Rejig of the system to receive e-mail alerts with lot more options.
  • New achievements feature to showcase and reward top diggers
  • A NSFW (Not Safe For Work) Filter on the content.
  • Recommendation Engine : A killer feature that discovers content for users based on their digg behavior.
  • Customization of Digg to receive and view user selected content
  • Remote Digg: Ability to bring the Digg systems to entities beyond the web such as hotels, restaurants etc.

These new features indicates the kind of transformation taking place in the online social bookmarking space. The model of search engine related data retrieval is slowly but steadily turning out to be a platform for research and extended information. A social bookmarking platform fills in several niches that a search engine cannot. It gets users data that he may be interested in. It can fetch user data that has been found to be more relevant in the field that the user is interested in.

Social bookmarking is bringing to fruition the kind of goals that engines like Mahalo and Cha-cha have set out to achieve. While these engines are human powered, they are essentially based on the crawl-the-web-rank-the-pages paradigm. Social bookmarking seems to fit the relevancy requirement a lot more better. Let the users get the data that they feel is important and then apply algorithms on this refined set of data to achieve more personalization and relevance.