Will Google Wave Re-Define the Blog Paradigm?

As we all know, blogs are a social networking tool to desseminate information and capture feedback. The tools currently in use almost provide the mechanism for discussion but don't quite get there. Google Wave holds promise of bringing blogs to the conversational promiseland - at least in the world of typed messages.

Currently, the process works like this: Someone writes a blog article that is typically several paragraphs long with several points linked together by logical reasoning. After visitors read the article, they input a comment at the bottom. The comments usually consist of general commentary on the article subject matter, specific commentary on one or more points within the article, or extending the article through logical relationships to subject matter not discussed in the article.

Commentary from a blogs reader ship currently consists of narrative pointers into the article, e.g. "I disagree with you when you state...". These narrative pointers become exponentially more cumbersome with high volumes of visitors and comments. Discussion is lost because it quickly becomes impossible to follow the massive array of narrative pointers contained in the set of disparate comments.

Google Wave blows up this paradigm by allowing inline commentary within the article. Comments are no longer aggregated by visitor containing multiple points at multiple locations within the article. Comments become decentralized and are input directly in the article at the location where the specific points are made. This allows follow-on visitors to add to the discussion on just those points with which they have interest and absolved of the prerequisite filtering of content and comments that currently exists. The playback feature is also a pretty cool way of being able to read the article without comments and follow visitor feedback sequentially as they occurred.

I posted much of the text from this blog to a wave that I made public. Virtually immediately after posting it, I started getting inline feedback from a Wave user. If you have a Google Wave account you can view it by searching for with:public google notarangelo. There's some interesting commentary.

If you want to contact me using this new and interesting medium - and what I think is the future of blogging - then get a Google Wave account (I have some invites available if you need one) and ping me jack.notarangelo@googlewave.com.

You can read more about Google wave at http://wave.google.com/.

Social Networking, Privacy, and Identity Verification

The value of total obscurity on the Internet is overestimated and is more destructive than constructive. Our fears about privacy infringement are largely irrational; at least in the context of social networking.

The ability to be totally obscure allows those bent on malicious intent to cloak themselves in an anonymous or fake identity – allowing them to say anything they want, about anyone they want, and without any repercussions.

It’s still rare, but sites are starting to require identity verification and that trend, in my opinion, is certain to continue. It has to. Identity verification provides for accountability and enforces a set of socially acceptable rules of etiquette just as they exist in the real world.

Most of us aren’t afraid to have our identification verified for credit cards, licenses, loans, job verifications, and many other situations. The large majority of us willingly provide our credit card information to purchase goods over the Internet.

Is caller ID a bad thing? Don’t most of us frown upon those that restrict the rest of us from seeing their identity when they call by setting their caller ID to private?

I just joined a social networking site called BestThinking.com that requires subscribers to have their identification verified. And you know what? I was not only willing but found it refreshing!

They do it in a very clever way with little personal info - nothing that you would consider a security risk to divulge – and a short multiple choice quiz of information about you to make sure you are really you. The bottom line is that social networking sites where those involved are willing to be known by their real identity adds credibility to discussions and opinions.

Remember the sense of foreboding people had when purchasing goods over the Internet was first introduced? As time went on we realized that our fears were irrational. Yes, there is identity theft and sometimes on a colossal level. That is what comes with forging a new frontier. It takes time to get it right. In spite of that, we continue to purchase goods over the Internet because we consider there to be considerably more value than risk.

We are now forging forward further into the Internet as a new frontier where a new level of identity verification will become increasingly more required and hence a more credible place to share information.

Do I think we should encourage legislation to force identity verification as a prerequisite to participating on the Internet? That would be a hearty No.

I do, however, think identity verification will become ubiquitous within this coming decade for the sheer reason that deep down we want to mold the virtual world into one that resembles, as closely as possible, the physical one in which we live.

Why?

In addition to basic familiarity and the comfort that brings, the physical world is more soundly implemented; especially with regards to established rules of engagement. The Internet adopting attributes of the physical world, which have been tested, modified, and enhanced over many millennia, will help to realize the potential of the virtual world. Identity verification brings the Internet one step closer to maturity and in this corner it’s a welcomed step.

I'm interested in your thoughts.

The Future of Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing, for those who are new to the term, is the concept of entities outsourcing problems to a large and typically unrelated group of people. For example, Netflix has an ongoing competition - open to anyone - to develop an algorithm to predict customers ratings based on their past ratings that bests Netflix's proprietary algorithm by 10%. The prize is a million dollars.

Crowdsourcing is not a new concept. The Longitude prize was an open competition established by Great Britain in the 18th century to solve the maritime problem of discerning longitude at sea. John Harrison was awarded the prize for his invention of the Chronometer. He wasn't treated well either. The dude solved the problem and was delayed the prize money for a full 30 years.

John Harrison's poor treatment by Great Britain illustrates one potential problem with crowdsourcing however there are others - little to no contracts, lack of continuity with contributors, potential lack of interest thus little to no participation, low to no wages, and risk of malicious intent.

The global recession has resulted in rapid growth of crowdsourcing due to two major factors:

1. It is often cheaper for companies to crowdsource solutions as opposed to directly hiring or contracting with professionals.
2. There are lots of people out of work so the pool of willing participants is high.

When the economy turns around will the resources currently involved in crowdsourcing dry up? Will the competition for intellectual property and time to market pressures move corporations back to more traditional methods that are more easily managed?

My answer to both questions is no.

With corporations having the ability to tap into a world population for ideas and solutions there is bound to be better results than with a small set of specialists. Crowdsourcing offers the possibility of tapping into brilliance without having to interview for that special person who will develop that next killer product.

As far as the contributor is concerned, crowdsourcing offers recognition, flexibility, collaboration, pay, and other self-satisfying attributes. The city of Los Angeles provided a survey to it's population asking questions such as "What services should be cut to balance the budget?" with a list of city services from which the constituent may choose. This type of crowdsourcing relies on non-monetary rewards but still has a high rate of participation.

One of the more interesting things to consider is how crowdsourcing will effect various occupations such as those in the creative design industries. When creativity is outsourced to the world, there is a potential for deleterious effects on wages and the number of permanent positions in those fields.

In my opinion, crowdsourcing, like social media, is in its Wild West phase. There will be significant movement and change along the way and its current incarnation will be unrecognizable 5-10 years from now.

As crowdsourcing models mature and become easier to manage the majority of us will be involved in some sort of crowdsourcing as an inherent part of our lifestyle. Just as I continue to manage my LinkedIn contacts and update my status on Facebook, I will likely also be contributing to my favorite crowdsourcing activities.

The Emergence of Enterprise Social Computing

It’s exciting to think that true social computing at the enterprise level is right around the corner. That in the near future, the pretense of living intranet sites will be replaced by open, transparent, and constantly evolving intranet sites that grow organically through the contributions of the organizations workforce.

Picture, if you will, an environment where organizational leaders blog to their workforce on a regular basis and readers comment freely. Where those same organizational leaders query their workforce and their answers shape the company’s roadmap.

Add to that the ability of each member of the workforce having the ability to customize their own corporate page; blog on their respective expertise; create communities of like-minded people with whom they work regardless of proximity; search the organization for specific skills, work product, like-projects, structured and unstructured data; where they search for people with specific past experiences related to companies, industries, and expertise. All this with the ability for spontaneous contact through IM, email, VoIP, and web conferencing.

Lastly, this environment is shaped via email postings, blog articles, project and organizational processes, discussion boards, forums, wikis, profiles, and virtually any other type of medium where information is shared.

Today I attended a seminar at Microsoft in Waltham, MA where my colleague, Mauro Cardarelli, as well as other professionals in the SharePoint world, demonstrated real-life implementations of the environment described above. It was clear evidence that this type of environment is ready for prime-time and available to any organization with the vision and discipline to implement it.

The organization that is looking for a fully quantifiable ROI will be late adopters. But I’m certain they will be adopters. There are many aspects of this that are quantifiable but there are many more benefits that are not. One has to know that a fully collaborative organization is a fundamentally more productive one.