Real Time Collaboration and the fall of email

Google Wave, Etherpad, Video, Social Media... It's time to get realistic: the days of email as king of communication and collaborative tools are gone!!!

Email loses to a new generation of tools because it is slow (by comparison), is limited in functionality, information gets lost fast as it gets jumbled in with too much written communication, and it is clunky (not to mention risky) as attachments are copied every time an email is sent. It is what its name suggests: electronic mail - just the digital equivalent of a sending a document from one person to another, with or without an attachment and the ability to carbon copy to many.

A new communication model : Why email it when you can make it social??

I lose count of the times people email me in a day with useful or interesting material, when I feel it should be recorded in your own media stream : be it blogged, microblogged (twitter.com), wiki'd, podcast, or tagged on a social bookmarking site (delicious.com). Let's be honest, it gets lost in my inbox (another 20th century analogy), but not for lack of wanting to read it. My email inbox, like most people's, is in a state of overload - I can't read everything that comes in, and so its up to me the recipient to manage the information and make sure it stays 'on top' for me to come back to - but realistically, like many of you out there, if I don't read it NOW, it's going to die in my inbox unread. As a form of communication email relies on the recipient to do the filing and make the material you send them findable again in the future: not an easy task with the amount of data filling our inboxes, and when they are expected to do that at the time you send the email, rather than on a schedule that fits their work day.

What if there were a better way? What if the sender did the filing, so readers could log into the stream of links, thoughts, useful items, and take what they want, when they want, from you the author - with the ease of RSS - and return any time knowing exactly where to find it again? Post it to the social media! I can't say it enough. By publishing items of interest to your blog, microblog or social bookmarking site of choice (in every case a free one-click process) you can let the people who are interested come to your information stream, not push it the other way around.

The real success of this is you'll not only succeed in getting more people to read and digest your information, they'll be able to find it again, repost it to their networks, the knowledge is captured online so others (who didn't make it on your email list) can read it at any time, and most importantly you'll build a social network of people with common interests potentially FAR BIGGER than your email distribution list (and you won't run the risk of being labelled a spammer by your colleagues!).

It may seem on the surface that adding another microblog or wiki for your network to follow is further complicating matters for people who are struggling to keep their heads above the chatter in this information age - but with technology like RSS it is in fact simplifying the findability and digestability of information for others, by being able to stay connected to the right sources of information.

If you're going to the trouble of posting information, take my word this is the best way to maximise your readership and give your information real value - not email.

But what about collaborating with others to co-create content? I can't blog a working document right? For collaboration, here are two other MUST-see alternatives, in my opinion.

A new collaboration model : The wave...
Enter Google Wave. As I write this GW is only available by invitation to the 'preview' version. But it is fully functional and I've had the pleasure (after a long wait for the invite!) of experimenting on it for a few days. It is closest in similarity to an email inbox - but where email clients deal in messages, GW deals in 'waves' - dynamic multimedia conversations.

Where emails have a sender and recipient, a wave has people who join and leave it - anyone is free to edit the wave. It starts from one person to another, but any other GW users can be invited in at any time. If new invitees are online as the wave is being created or edited by another person, they will see those changes happening in REAL TIME (like live chat) and can edit and add content in real time, even as others are editing. Not only that, but they can rewind and playback the wave at any point to see how it evolved. If the invitees are offline, they will see the wave in their inbox next time they check in, much like an email - again with the option of playing it back, adding to or editing the wave.

A wave can contain ANY media, dragged right off your desktop into the wave (images, video, documents) and many gadgets what are being developed rapidly as time progresses - voting widgets, weather, trip planning, video conferencing, on the fly telephony etc, that make the wave more than just a message thread, but a live conversational environment - ideal for meeting, designing, planning, or collaborating.

Most effectively: all the information in the wave is kept server side, so there is only one copy. The ability to scroll through time back to any previous state is simply a step-through in reverse of all the operations it took to create the current doc - there are no historic versions, just a history of the operations used to create it! Every viewer has access to the same wave, and hence same history, and access to the logic the creators used to put it together.

This represents a quantum leap in collaborative technology - the integration of many collaborative tools in one smooth, social environment.

Tokbox + EtherPad
This is slightly older technology, but nonetheless extremely effective and immediately available, all for free of course. Let's start with TokBox.com. TokBox is a video inbox, where you can, for free, send and receive video messages, run multiparty video conferencing (up to 20 people) bringing users together from any chat tools (e.g. your Skype contacts, Google Talk, Windows Messenger, FaceBook, etc). Even the video messenging alone adds a level of engagement that cannot be achieved in an email, but the ability to patch users in from any video chat client is brilliant.

Where it becomes more interesting is from within the conferencing environment of ToxBox, you are able to launch an EtherPad for the participants. This is an amazing collaborative tool - an etherpad being a simple web scratch pad where up to 20 people can simultaneously write a basic text document on the fly, with new users able to be invited in at any time (as per the wave methodology above). Users can write at the same time or just observe, or watch recorded playback of the process, as per wave also The etherpad can be saved and exported to MS Word, PDF, or other formats at any time.

A great tool on it's own - you can start one any time at EtherPad.com - it's perfect for building text based documents rapidly with input from many people at once, all in real time (you can watch people type or overtype their text as they write) but launched from the TokBox.com environment it begins to compete with any collaborative tools I've seen.

Try them out, and please leave a comment with your thoughts - I'd love to hear what people are using these technologies for. If you want to join me in a wave, I can be added as brucemnz@gmail.com.

social networking schizophrenia - thoughts on managing personal and work profiles

I get asked this question alot: "Should I create a separate twitter/blog/social profile for my colleagues to follow, versus for family and friends to follow?" which is a question that is really asking "How do I separate my social network from my professional network --- let my friends know what they want to hear, and my team at work what they need to know?" .. the problem being that we don't want to bore our friends with work matters nor divulge too much of our private selves to people we aren't close to in our workplace. I think the answer all depends upon the forum, the subject matter, and what generation or kind of person you are.

Keeping double accounts
Nobody wants to overload themselves with too many social profiles - it is hard enough just keeping track of your twitter, flickr and blog account (at least!!) let alone keeping TWO of each. But with some forms of communication such as email or mobile phone it is easy, and generally more practical to maintain 2 personas - one work, one home. We are used to using keeping work matters on our work email address, and home matters on another account (ISP) altogether (though of course there is some crossover from time to time), as there might be with mobile phone accounts. Information is easier to organise and find based on who has sent it to us and why.

Sometimes the forum will clearly determine whether there is a need to balance work and personal material - Facebook is a good example, as whether you are sharing photos, videos or status updates, the network will generally always be made up of friends and family (even if there is crossover, as many of our workmates are considered friends -- if even only on a Facebook level!), so you would only ever keep one account.

Twitter
Now if you have two emails, you can certainly keep two twitter feeds (as email is your unique identifier - and it has never been easier to create a new free account on gmail or yahoo) and there is no reason, if you can be bothered logging in under two separate identities, not to manage two profiles here. The thing to consider is perhaps that as twitter is in the public domain, there may be some things that, professionally, are better said in a closed forum to your network. So good alternatives exist that keep you and your team informed on a professional level - such as Yammer, solving the problem of keeping a personal twitter account for holiday snaps, and a Yammer account for updates to your colleagues on your latest projects and tasks.

Blogs
It is common to run multiple blogs for the reason that (good) blogs usually center around a particular specialised subject, and are therefore aimed at a particular network with similar interests. Your latest holiday snaps to Alice Springs might not be what you want your colleagues to see, and likewise your friends might not be interested in your account on last week's mine engineering conference. So that's where subject matter is important in the bloggin world - the topic of your blog determines the network that will follow it - and it is easy to manage many blogs under one account such as Blogger (Google).

For example the blog you are reading now is open to anybody - the information is what it is and may be interesting to you, you may be a friend or a work colleague of mine, but the real question is just whether you find the subject matter interesting and worth following and discussing. Now if I wanted to stream all my daily works tasks to keep my team informed of my progress on common projects, then I would be sensible to make it available to my team only, and maintain my thoughts on social media in a separate forum for a separate network - be it a blog, twitter, yammer or what have you.

Photo/Video/Multimedia sharing
As a graphic designer working in a corporate service, there is a frequent need to share, rate and comment on images or video collaboratively - let's say to discuss publishing to the company website. Just as frequently I need to backup and share photos of family events and holidays etc. Sharing photos and video is made easier by the fact that web2.0 utillies all offer different sharing and private/public settings on folders and photostreams, so I only ever need to maintain one account in say Picasa, or Flickr, and I can use the platform itself to share the content with the right people.

Lump it all in together

For the older fashioned, there are forums where we tend to feel more comfortable doling out personal, 'fun' information - facebook - and others where we can maintain our serious professional side - LinkedIn - but interestingly the desire to do this is a hangover of the older generations, X and up. Gen-y are a good example of where the lines between work and personal life blur; typically the desire to keep personal life hidden from workmates and vice versa ISN'T there, the social media is a free-for-all window into any and all activity. Employers use this to somewhat of an advantage to find a little more about the reality of a potential employee, which we would see as a big flaw, but to a gen-y that transparency is natural. The sharing of personal after-hours life is part and parcel with work life, and vice versa -- as fun isn't a nice-to-have at work, it is a must-have. So there is no social schizophrenia, Gen-y's (and other socialmediarati from any generation) are quite comfortable with but one social media profile. The option in that case is to consider having one account (let's say twitter) that everyone follows - your work team, and your friends.
How does that work? Let your network (it is only one!) filter it's own information: people are smart enough to ignore what doesn't interest them. Let your followers take what they need to from your thread, be it twitter, flickr, yammer, facebook, or blogger. The risk is only in making sure information doesn't offend your followers as being inappropriate or regrettable.. (as of course what happens in the social media STAYS in the social media!)

So I think in this case professional networking and social networking are very much the same thing. Who cares, if you have a question, and who it goes out to, as long as you get an answer? Those that can't answer it won't, those that can will, and it doesn't matter as long as you get the answer, and start the discussion. There is a lot of power in having one very large network that is free to discuss and share knowledge with you. For the younger generation this is networking in the workplace now, it is the free sharing of authentic information that is important, and it is irrelevant even if it comes from somebody outside the walls of the organisation; a friend, ex-colleague, alumni, team member.

Corporate Profile
Sometimes we will find ourselves wanting to publish material that represents our company or organisation's profile. In this case we are no longer talking about our personal or professional selves, no matter what the subject matter or platform. We are talking now about a single account that will often be maintained by more than one individual working at the organisation, so in this case the best option is pretty clear cut - it is sensible to create a shared company account and keep it separate from the personal and professional activity of any one person or employee.

Risks
When all's said and done it isn't the end of the world if your colleagues see your holiday snaps, or your family and friends are privy to some of your career thoughts that you want to share with team members. As I say, in the world of the Facebook status update and RSS, people are smart enough to ignore what doesn't interest them. However if it is private or sensitive information (personally or commercially) then it doesn't belong in the social media in the first place, so preventative behaviour is needed here.

Thoughts on FaceBook, LinkedIn and Social Networking

http://www.facebook.com/: The SN site that needs no introduction. In September 2009, FB topped 300 million users. Over 1 billion items are shared within its pages every DAY.

I believe the success of Facebook is in the ease of sending short spur-of-the-moment updates, rather than traditional forms of communication (email, phone, txt) which are very personal and require some effort to craft, especially after a few weeks/months/years have gone by since you might have contacted the recipient last. Facebook breaks those barriers with the brevity of the status update - friends who you haven't had time to contact formally get a regular insight into your life, without the reciprocal pressure of replying with all the details that accumulate as time goes by... So the lightweight, bitesize updates perhaps connect people more than do in-depth, meaningful messages.

Add that to the ease of viewing many updates from your entire network via the activity stream, and there is an incredibly powerful tool for keeping informed. And an amazing distribution channel. The average facebook user has 130 friends. For every snippet you share, if 10% of those people forward it to their network, there's a potential on average of ~1700 recipients. If 10% of those people forward it on.......

The applications in a business environment - if those updates were about tasks beginning or being completed, interesting articles, seminars or events, happenings around the office, project experience, new job openings - are obvious. Some enterprise platforms, such as Yammer, have been incredibly successful at bringing a distributed network of people within an organisation together in this way.

LinkedIn is the grown-up version of Facebook, where social networking is now called professional networking - but I struggle to differentiate the two concepts. It is the social connections between people that give value in the workplace. Mental note: write another post about that :)

Golder Associates has various Facebook groups, e.g.  at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2261209827, and a group on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=92131&trk=hb_side_g.

I note some marginal activity on each but the usefulness of such systems has certainly yet to take off for us. I, like many others I've spoken to, have had no value yet from the LinkedIn or FaceBook groups due to the lack of activity. I'd appreciate any comments about what the expectations are or would be in these groups.

I'd guess for starters that everyone has the same problem of being stuck in a social catch 22: why try to be active on a network where it doesn't appear that anyone is active?!

web 3.0?

Well here is something scary. We bandied the term web 3.0 jokingly around in Denver...

Turns out a company have developed what is call an 'augmented reality' application (a term used to describe applications that layer virtual information over real images or video) that uses the Flickr facial recognition technology of Polar Rose to identify a person’s face in realtime - and pull up info such as their online profile and contact details, on the fly...

Wave your 3G video phone around a room and read your colleagues latest thoughts via their twitter updates, facebook profile, video blog...

http://www.youtube.com/v/tb0pMeg1UN0&hl=en&fs=1&

...Or how about this prototype SREngine application that is capable of recognising objects and architecture around you to identify businesses, monuments, books ... anything.. and display relevant reviews, wiki information, buy prices... Or this 3G app that shows you what people are tweeting around your current geographic location -- and this iPhone app that lets London travellers find nearby tube stations without a map - or realtime augmented reality Wiki travel information!

It seems the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds are becoming increasingly thinner. I think I need to update my presentation already!

Social networking security

I was just reading about security issues with social networking, and targeting by online criminals (I don't use the word 'hackers' as hackers are traditionally productive and pioneering pro-computer superusers) and thought I should share. Anyway a few really good tips about security can be found below, in this re-post from SociableBlog.com

Tips for safer social networking

• ALWAYS have separate and secure passwords for your e-mail applications, versus your social networking sites. That means if you are using gmail, make sure your Google account uses a different password to your other social site accounts. Any access to your email means hackers can potentially reset all your other site account passwords...
• If you become aware of a Facebook security problem, post about it on your Wall so the community can take preventive action.
• Pick your friends wisely and have a security guru among your friends!

The hugely popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have become attractive targets for phishing and scamming attacks as online criminals follow the latest Internet trends that are attracting the most users.


The latest criminal action against social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter was reported by the F-Secure Response Lab on Friday. Pro-Georgia blogger Cyxymu’s accounts were targeted by a widespread DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack, causing millions of users of Facebook and Twitter to experience problems with the sites slowing down or being completely offline on Friday.

Mikko Hyppönen, Chief Research Officer at F-Secure said, “Although this attack was targeted at a specific person, it affected the whole community. We may never know who was behind the Cyxymu attack, but they had access to significant bandwidth.”

Communication through Facebook is all about personal connections and communities of friends. It involves a high level of trust. When you receive a message on your Wall from one of your Facebook friends, it’s very different than receiving an anonymous e-mail or spam message. It is precisely this trusted environment – and the 250 million users – that makes Facebook such a tempting target for criminals. Phishing and financial scams are based on creating a false sense of trust with the target of the attack, enabling the criminals to gain access to valuable information or direct financial gain.

Sean Sullivan, Security Advisor at F-Secure said, “Weak passwords provide a common way for criminals to hack into social networking sites. The aim is to harvest contact lists, phone numbers and other information which they can sell to spammers or use in targeted attacks to make money.”

The damage caused by a hacked Facebook account is all the greater if the same password is also used for the user’s e-mail account. This means the criminals can easily reset all the user’s online passwords, get information about banking details and find answers to security challenge questions. Sometimes the answers to personal security questions, for example middle names, house addresses and pets’ names, can even be found directly on Facebook.

“As the Facebook user name consists of an e-mail address, it is essential that different passwords are used for logging into personal e-mail accounts and for logging into Facebook and other social networking sites. It’s also a good idea to have different primary e-mail, business e-mail, social network e-mail accounts,” Sullivan advises.

This year there has been a series of bogus messages on Facebook from “friends” asking for financial help. Facebook users should always treat such requests with caution and make a thorough identity check before sending any money, even when the messages appear to come from a family member or other trusted person.

Video chat..

I can't recommend enough, for anyone who is part of an international or even inter-office group, the benefits of video chat. Video can transform communications for even small groups working at a distance - it is infinitely more engaging than telephone conversation (have to love one click dialling too) and is easy to integrate into a lot conferencing environments (email, many web 2.0 services, LiveMeeting, etc). Oh - and there's no cost, but I think we're getting used to that now.

Gmail offers a very stable and easy to use video chat client, from directly within gmail. Other online services such as TokBox.com can easily bring together multiple parties from various chat clients (eg conference between Skype, Gmail, MSN) with up to 20 people online, but you'll need to start with a chat client of some kind to get things started.

The ease of recording straight from webcam also makes video a great way to send messages to colleagues. More personal than an email (employee recognition? How easy is it to record a message of thanks in a few seconds, but still seem more genuine and personal than a written message!)... and much quicker to put together for the vast majority who can talk faster and more naturally than they type. Tokbox can be used to send video messages via email easily in a few clicks, with the ability to embed links and attach other media.

If you'd like to video chat me, my preferred client is gmail. If you have a google account look for me at brucemnz@gmail.com!

The Social Revolution :: Why web 2.0 and social media matters

The Social Revolution : why web 2.0 matters

View more presentations from Bruce Madden.