I’ve given up on Digg. Now and forever more. It’s a complete waste of my time, and the World’s.

I once again went to ‘Digg’ an article (Microsoft wants Facebook) and it rejected my login twice. After finally logging in, I went through the long and horrifically unfriendly process of posting an article. It booted me from the system. I logged in again, and re-posted again. It booted me from the system again… the article was never posted. I wasted nearly 15 minutes.

This has happened to me more than one dozen times… in fact, I’ve never once – NEVER ONCE!!! – in all my attempts been able to “Digg” one damn thing! And I’ve been a member for 16 months!!!

The owners and developers of this sucky platform should be embarrassed. It looks pretty, but it’s functionally useless for far too many people like myself (and I’m not a luddite, goddam it).

Deli.co.us is far superior if far too many ways to mention. Oh sure, its not pretty like Digg, but it works!

Digg can bite me.

PS – I know there are going to be some clones that reply by saying “Oh I use Digg all the time and don’t have any problems! It must be you!”…. For those that are tempted to do so, re-read the above…. MORE THAN ONE DOZEN CONSECUTIVE TIMES this has happened, on different occasions, using different posts and links, and using different browsers. It’s not just me.

After failing in their US$47.5-billion bid for Yahoo, the giant Microsoft is looking more closely at Facebook. While the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft bankers have begun to look into a Facebook purchase, neither side has commented on the story (a sure sign that something is afoot).

Facebook in itself is a giant… one that could make Yahoo blush one day. With more than 70 million active users its value was pegged at US$15-billion last October when Microsoft bought a minority stake for a mere US$240-million.

What makes Facebook an even greater value than its investment price a mere 8 months ago is its growing popularity – and growing platform. There are only 7 websites on the planet that receive more monthly traffic than Facebook – and Facebook only opened to the public 18 months ago after starting as a college only niche. Of the sites that get more traffic ...

Microsoft’s flagship portal sits in fifth (according to the industry benchmark, Alexa.com). Its viral power is far stronger than MySpace (notwithstanding the music scene), and its growing at a faster clip. I don’t know of anyone that uses MySpace, and yet virtually everyone I know under the age of 45 has a Facebook account. According to ZincResearch.com, 90% of Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 are Facebook members (9 million).

Of perhaps greater interest is the ever-expanding “Facebook Platform” and its potential as a platform service inside the corporation (for example, intranet platform). Facebook Platform is the place where all of those creative nerds build and add those cute little applications that are optional add ons to your Facebook profile. Popular applications include “Fun Wall” (2.5 million active users), “Scrabulous” and that dam vampire biting ‘game’.

Read my complete article Microsoft wants Facebook.

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“Wikis often grow out of hand very quickly and consequently many employees simply ignore them. Enterprises also face the risk of an explosive information growth far beyond their capacity to manage that information”, said analyst and MD, Janus Boye, author of a report, Wiki in the Enterprise.

“If you don’t create guidelines and processes for managing the wiki, the gap between information and capacity is a risk to the enterprise as it translates into the right information not being found and the potential creation of redundant information.”

The Intranet wiki, WikiEnt, of Prescient Digital Media - © 2008

Most corporations do not have a wiki. And most aren’t planning to have them either (just yet). A recent Forrester study found that only 51% of Global 2000 companies plan to invest in Web 2.0 in the coming year. But only between 20% of small companies, and only about 30% of medium corporations plan on buying Web 2.0 tools (for a summary, see Intranet portal solutions die, evolve & move to Web 2.0).

But almost no one had a wiki three years ago. So in truth, wikis have exploded and are multiplying like rabbits. Boye, an independent analyst focusing on online media and an expert on enterprise portal solutions, has found that wikis are increasingly gaining foothold in the enterprise due to it promises of simplicity. Yet, wikis introduce complex challenges for organisations, on a strategic level as well as on the level of actual content creation.

At Cisco, the first wiki appeared a few years ago, when an engineer installed one on the server under his desk. “He told a PM, who then told other PMs and it spread like wildfire,” says Michael Lenz, Senior Manager, User Experience, at Cisco Corporate Communications. “Literally, day over day, the increase is amazing… any number I gave you today would be useless tomorrow or next week. There are tens-of-thousands of wikis… and the number of wikis about equals the number of employees (65,000).”

Read my complete article Enterprise intranet wikis.

Your portal solution is dying… or evolving into a Web 2.0 platform.

As I predicted at the start of the year (Enterprise intranet predictions for 2008), Oracle bought BEA, and has already moved to kill one of the BEA portal products: WebLogic Portal. Now BEA has three portal solutions, and will no doubt move to one or two….

According to research firm IDC, the Enterprise Portal Software market will expand by 50% in the next 3-4 years to a killer $1.4 billion in total sales.

"Web 2.0 collaboration features are finding a welcome home within the portal as business users want to take advantage of these new egalitarian methods that offer easy ways for end users to customize content, while IT can take comfort in the portal's ability to deliver them within a secure deployment environment," states an IDC report.

Read my complete article Intranet portal solutions die, evolve & move to Intranet 2.0.

Facebook is not an alternative to the intranet. The intranet is a business system, one to support the entire organization, not just a social networking tool.

Now Facebook is becoming more than a social networking site, and shows great potential as a platform for intranet services, but there’s much to be overcome. Facebook is being used by some businesses, including Prescient Digital Media (feel free to join us on the Intranet Global Forum), but it is not a substitute for the intranet which must feature among other things, federated search, application integration, robust security, etc.

As Phil Wainewright writes in Is Facebook a PaaS contender?, Facebook provides us food for thought, but it’s not really a legitimate intranet platform.

"After all, many individuals and some organizations do use Facebook for business purposes. Most famously, Serena Software, which last year adopted Facebook as its intranet. I was somewhat skeptical when I first heard this but the company’s SVP Rene Bonvanie assured me when we met a few weeks ago that 740 out of 820 employees are active users, which is a lot better participation than Serena’s former intranet ever managed.

 

The Facebook platform of course constrains applications into a social networking framework, but that’s no different from the functional constraints imposed by a lot of other PaaS (platform-as-a-service) application builders (the topmost of my five-layer categorization of PaaS).

 

The problem for any business considering Facebook is that it’s a determinedly consumer play, to the extent that I don’t think it can ever seriously fly in the enterprise. Facebook trades free functionality in return for attention and relationship data — and users give up a lot of their control over that data. Businesses aren’t willing to make that trade-off.

 

Bonvanie shrugged when I put this point to him, saying that very little of what Serena’s employees post to the Facebook intranet is proprietary to the company, but at the same time he admitted that Serena stores its company confidential documents elsewhere than Facebook, so its role as an intranet platform is more limited than you would typically look for in an enterprise setting."

Skepticism on Facebook’s value as a platform aside, it could still continue to evolve and become a platform-as-a-service (a hosted intranet platform for business). There is great value in implementing the social networking approach within the enterprise.

IBM understands the value of Facebook, and is testing an employee social networking tool on their intranet called Beehive.

“Beehive truly is an experiment in our own version of an internal 'Facebook.',” says Liam J. Cleaver, Program Director, IBM Jam Program Office. “The research goal of Beehive is to aid IBMers with various people-centric challenges within the workplace. We broadly categorize these challenges into "relationship building" and "people-sensemaking”.

Relationship-building challenges include, for example, new employees struggling with making connections that are important for their current project and professional growth, remote workers having difficulties with team building and staying in touch with their team members, or employees moving on to new assignments who are not easily able to stay touch with former colleges. 

People-sensemaking includes, for example, the difficulties of discovering people with the right skills and common interests, or learning more about someone personally as well as professionally to facilitate making contact, or getting to know about ongoing projects and activities beyond your immediate team.”

IBM’s Beehive will be only one of the tools examined and showcased in the next Intranet Insider World Tour webinar on June 12th at 2pmEDT, produced by Communitelligence.com. Hosted by Liam and myself, the 90 minute webinar will look at the latest and greatest from the world’s best intranet, W3, with a close look at all its Intranet 2.0 functionality which boasts 30,000 bloggers, and thousands more podcasts (audio & video) and wikis – and an “employee directory that puts Facebook to shame.”

Honestly, you are an absolute fool if you work on an intranet and don’t attend this webinar. IBM is doing some groundbreaking stuff that you simply must know.

It’s only $199 to attend this webinar, and you can register online at Communitelligence.com.

Web 2.0 and Intranet 2.0 will be the subject of several hours of instruction and discussion in my upcoming workshops Deploying First-Class Web Content Management For World-Class Websites (Ad Astra) in Hanoi, Vietnam (Interncontinental Hotel) from April 23 – 25. I’ll be repeating the workshop April 28 – 30 in Bali (Hard Rock Hotel).

These workshops will be three full-days and promise a lot of learning, examples and hands-on work. To register for either please phone (65) 6334-9828 or email sales@adastra.com.sg

If you'd like to learn more about Facebook and its potential value to the business, then please do join us on the Intranet Global Forum.

--

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Some inventive and enterprising organizations like Alaska Airlines and the U.S. Army used to maintain their intranet home page on the public Internet (though they’ve both since closed off the home pages to the public).

Others organizations, in attempt to find scales of economy, use a single web platform or tool (often a CMS or a portal solution) that serves all audiences, and serves up content based solely on the audience. So whereas there is a single home page for customers, employees, vendors, etc., content is additionally served-up based on the identity of the individual (often requiring the person to login to see that customized or ‘personalized’ view). The Internet, intranet and extranet sites are merely one-in-the-same but the content is different for each audience.

SYNNEX Canada CEO Jim Estill started his own blog on the public Internet nearly 3 years ago. Estill’s blog, CEO Blog - Time Leadership, though has a multi-audience focus. Though his blog is external, his employees are one of his primary targets, and comprise some 25% of his total readership.

Read the entire case study: Blogging case study: SYNNEX Canada

Estill presents this case study at the upcoming 2008 Social Media Summit Canada Conference in Toronto, ON from March 31 - April 2, 2008).

Do any of your executives maintain an external blog that is also aimed at employees? Do you have multi-audience web platform that serves as both intranet and Internet (and possibly extranet) sites? Drop me a line at toby at prescientdigial (dotcom) and I may feature it in an upcoming feature.

RELATED READING:

Converging the intranet, extranet and Internet

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Building a successful intranet requires an enormous amount of work, and very skilled and capable individuals. To be truly innovative, as is the case of Perkins Eastman, winner of the first Intranet Innovation Awards - Gold Award for communication & collaboration an intranet team has to truly understand the employee audience and deliver superlative content and tools that meet their expectations.

Perkins Eastman won the first Gold Award (see Intranet case study: Perkins Eastman), on the strength of creating an innovative series of online Practice Area Communities (PAC). The PACs are designed to enable knowledge sharing between individuals; across project teams, studios, offices, and practice areas; and the entire international organization.

Each PAC contains key information on a key subject such as “Senior Living” (illustrated above) and features information such as:

• Design practices
• Insights and Lessons Learned
• Project Lists
• Presentations
• Glossary
• Strategic Analysis
• Planning
• Etc.

If you have some truly innovative tools or features on your intranet then I would encourage to apply to this year’s Intranet Innovation Awards – now open for submissions, which must be received by May a6, 2008. Full details on the awards (including the entry form) are at: http://www.steptwo.com.au/iia/  

The Intranet Innovation Awards are global awards that celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the design and delivery of intranets. Created by Step Two Designs of Australia The Intranet Innovation Awards are truly global awards, supported by a network of intranet-savvy organisations from the US to the UK, Europe and beyond.

All intranet teams are encouraged to enter their innovative approaches to the design or delivery intranets. This may be may be an entirely new piece of intranet functionality, or a good idea implemented particularly well. The awards recognise individual intranet improvements, and not intranets as a whole.

Submissions are received and judged based on four categories:

• core intranet functionality
• communication and collaboration
• frontline delivery
• business solutions

Winners will be showcased in the Intranet Innovations report, as well as in articles, YouTube interviews, online presentations, international conferences and major industry journals.

See last years winners:

   http://www.steptwo.com.au/products/iia2007/index.html

Find out how to win an award presentation:

   http://www.slideshare.net/jamesr/how-to-win-an-intranet-innovation-award/

Watch video interviews with last year's winners:

   http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=JamesRobertsonAu

“When properly rolled out, social media and Enterprise 2.0 tools can help companies meet their No. 1 internal communication goal — engaging employees,” said Michael Rudnick, global intranet and portal leader at Watson Wyatt (see Social Media: The Next Frontier In Employee Communication).

“Instead of simply mass e-mailing information or posting to an intranet in hopes employees will see it, social media tools help employees actively participate in creating and sharing information. This shift to employee-generated content has resulted in employees’ becoming more engaged online.”

Michael is a pretty smart guy and he’s bang on. As he and his Watson Wyatt clients can attest employee communications (internal communications) is a synchronous or two-way street that requires active participation and dialogue between management and employees. The new Enterprise 2.0 or Intranet 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis are excellent tools for promoting this dialogue.

And yet, the adoption rate of social media tools within the enterprise continues to be startlingly low despite all the press and fanfare of the past 3 years.

Writer Nic Patton rightly asserts, in his article the article Employers must learn to love social media (Management-Issues.com), “Instead of trying to crack down on workers' use of new social media and Web 2.0 technology, employers should be embracing it as a way of creating better workplace communities, engagement and communication.”

Rudnick says these concerns are reminiscent of the productivity fears raised, and subsequently disproved, when the Internet was introduced into the workplace in the mid-1990s. The way for employers to address these concerns is to do just as they did 10 years ago — setting clear guidelines for acceptable use while adopting social media for a productive, internal purposes.

In Your employees love to surf porn, among other things I highlighted far greater concerns and risks than those posed by social media – namely surfing porn and general goofing around by employees. If staff can find ways to do this, what makes anyone think a wiki, which is self-policing by the entire employee population, is any worse?

Verizon has hundreds of discussion forums, blogs and wikis that are entirely self-policing and they’ve never had to censor or remove any content or would-be inappropriate postings (see Verizon's Digital Workplace). Why would your organization be any different?

Prescient Digital Media has just launched a new Intranet 2.0 service for those companies looking to examine, plan and rollout new Enterprise 2.0 tools. The offer includes:

• Requirements analysis
• Intranet 2.0 plan
• Blogs and wiki policies
• 1-2 trial wikis (with several options, features and content focuses)
• 1-2 trial blogs (with several options, features and content focuses)

If you’re interested in this new Intranet 2.0 service, please contact us directly (through the website) or give me a shout at 416.926.8800. 

UPCOMING WEB 2.0 & INTRANET 2.0 EVENTS:

Southeast Asia:

If you’d like to learn more about Intranet 2.0 and Web 2.0, and you’re in the Southeast Asia area (kiwis and aussies welcome too!), then you should definitely attend my half-day workshop on Web 2.0 as part of a three-day workshop in the 2008 Deploying First-Class Web Content Management For World-Class Websites (Ad Astra) in Hanoi, Vietnam from April 23 – 25.

I’ll be repeating the workshop April 28 – 30 in Jakarta. These workshops will be three full-days and promise a lot of learning, examples and hands-on work. To register for either please phone (65) 6334-9828 or email sales@adastra.com.sg

North America:

My colleague Carm Porco is chairing the 2008 Social Media Summit Canada Conference (Advanced Learning Institute) in Toronto, ON from March 31 - April 2, 2008. Three days of Web 2.0 best practices, case studies and learnings for which you can Register Online.

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An interesting post I did a couple of days ago on the free version of Windows Sharepoint Services and the surprising breadth of available features (from Setting-up a free Sharepoint intranet:

Ü      Announcements

Ü      Calendar

Ü      Contacts

Ü      Tasks

Ü      Projects

Ü      Wiki

Ü      Blog

Ü      Message Board

Ü      Image Library

Ü      Forms Library

Ü      Shared Documents

Ü      Surveys

Ü      Meeting Workspace

Read my full post Setting-up a free Sharepoint intranet at the Intranet Insider blog on Communitelligence.com.

“Collaborative tools are overloading employees and killing productivity—to the tune of $588 billion a year, according to a January study by Basex, a collaboration technologies consulting firm,” writes Brian Watson of CIO Magazine (see Web 2.0: Too Good to Be True?). “It’s the money-saving argument that’s getting pushback lately.”

Web 2.0 does not deliver the ROI, does not live up the hype, and is not even close to being a top priority for senior management (not all, but most).

A CIO Magazines study, Top Technology Priorities for 2008 finds that even techies don’t consider Web 2.0 as a priority. A survey of 250 “top IT executives” from a collection of small, medium and large organizations doesn’t even touch on the issue of Web 2.0.

Continue reading "Web 2.0 fails the grade, according to executives" on Content Matters.

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