Connection is King

By Nick Hortovanyi

You've all heard the term "Content is King". Well Mark Pesce has coined a new term "Connection is King" to describe the importance of the global connections that are forming between people.

These connections are at various levels, and are created and reinforced with social messaging services such as twitter. In his blog post here, Mark gives examples of how this can empower people in a fashion not seen previously. We are finding out about things and events before the classical media or "Command-and-Control" organizational structure has even acknowledged them.

Now I wrote some time ago, a blog entry "What is Content?". In it, I eluded to the implications of controlling content, but also after I watched Mark's presentation, on the subject, I can equally see the implications of controlling connections. The internet is allowing connections to be formed, especially in areas of similar interest, quickly.

In the late 80s, when I entered the workforce, outside of my social connections, my connections in my profession were formed first through education and then secondly through the people that I interacted with to perform my daily work. This set of connections has grown steadily as I have moved between various positions and been involved with different technologies. I've commented about the strength of these connections, when I was discussing my Spheres of Influence, previously.

What is true now is that the current set of social messaging services, is allowing me to accelerate the connections that I am making. Some are within my geographic location, and others are within Australia, and more importantly many are bridging the great divide of distance from Australia.

Every now and then, I'm reminded that I live at the edge. That is, that many people working in organizations have these social tools blocked. A couple of weeks ago, I learned one organisation had banned LinkedIn, a business connections tool, from behind their firewall. I'd found a previous work associate, and had wandered why the person had not responded to my connection request. Phoned the company, ask for the person, started talking (he was pleased to hear from me) and then found out about the LinkedIn issue. I was amazed!

Organisations perceive these social tools, as lost productivity. In essence, they are saying use classical means to maintain these connections and keep the connections related specifically for your current work. Mark, in the prementioned blog, introduced the possible repercussions to business executives, if they misbehave, through these connected communities. The more access, and the more extended the connections, the more quickly the information will be transmitted. This can have long lasting repercussion, for those business executives. Blocking access to these social tools, during the work day, does not stop the transmission it merely delays it temporarily.

Now this concept reminded me, about the change that is occurring today in content, there is the traditional media, those that control channels of content delivery, and citizen journalist, the voice of the millions on the internet. The same issues are arising with connections, except it is business who maybe are looking to control those connections, much the same way as traditional media, controls mainstream content.

I would say it is better for organisations to look to harness this capability in a way that is beneficial to them. These connections will keep forming, regardless of measures that may be implemented during the working day.

Rivers of conversations at the edge on twitter

By Nick Hortovanyi

A couple of days ago, I found an article by the Burton Group on the current excitement surrounding Microsoft Sharepoint. As I have a focus with WebSphere Portal, any article describing whats happening with Sharepoint is of interest to me. Especially, when Sharepoint appears to be being chosen because of perceived short comings with other on-premise collaborative software or as a result of pressure from Microsoft only focused consultants.

So I thought I'd tweet about it on twitter (a micro blogging tool). It was a very simple question that I posed "Why is Sharepoint doing so well?" you can see it here. Denis Howlett, of ZDNet fame, who follows me on twitter, immediately responded to me and then off started a discussion, that ended up spanning many people. Denis, summarised the discussions that followed in a blog entry (maybe read from the bottom up). 

It was a very interesting read, as I had not thought of myself as being an edgling, participating in the media fabric. We are using these tools to build relationships and communicate with people, that are not located in the same geographic region as our selves. The usage of these type of tools is second nature to us and an invaluable part of our day.

Through twitter though, I'm seeing some very interesting relationships form and watching some conversations that ordinarily I would not of had the privilege to watch or join in with. You can see what I'm saying from my twitter id hortovanyi. Its hard at times to follow from just one users perspective. So the more you follow, the more interesting the journey down the river will be. Enjoy!

Social Browsing using Flock

By Nick Hortovanyi

The other day, I decided to give Flock a go, Flock Browser - The Social Web Browser.

Its built on top of the mozilla engine and at first I questioned why it was not a plugin say for Firefox. Firing it up for the first time and after connecting to my favourite social software site I understood why its a standalone browser.

The main strengths are that it integrates your media, feeds, bookmarks and people information in a uniform interface and makes it easy to connect to the providing service. You just enter the URL and login in the browser, it does the rest of the work for you. Its secure as it is using the mozilla engine to maintain security.

Now there will be a number of people that will be alarmed that it can easily integrate through introspection of your activites. However, there are a number of people I know now that keep saying not another tool, I can't keep track of the ones I have already. Well, Flock makes this task easier. Instead of having separate applications/windows open for each application just have Flock open.

This leads me to think "What will the possibilities be like for this tool, when OpenID has been more fully accepted?" I'd like to see the ability to be asked to register at a new site, with a simple 'Yes' or 'No'. If I say 'Yes', the client would self register with all information that I have made available publicly and integrate the services into the tool. Wouldn't that be magical and it would also save me a lot of time with my friends and associates that lag behind a little .

Am keen to see Ver 2.0, which I understand will be available shortly, as this is going to integrate into google mail. But whats missing, I believe is integration into some of the on-premise type software that is used by most corporate types. In addition, not sure if its possible but I would like to see integration with LinkedIn.

So for now, I've integrated my blog roll, facebook, twitter and del.icio.us. Can't wait for email (anyone know if there are plans for local Thunderbird integration?)

BTW, I'm posting this blog entry into our blog server through flock as well. Nice! Well done to the guys at Flock, this is going to shake a few three letter corporate types up .

Blogged with Flock

The tags don't quite post properly in Apache Roller 4,soI had to cut and paste them through the editor  and I can't select the category to put it under.