Opening The Social Web For Business

Wrapping My Head Around Microsoft Live Mesh

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:48:00 +0000

In late April, I started seeing interesting articles regarding Microsoft's Live Mesh that were stating that Microsoft "is bringing its developers onto the Internet in an interesting new way" with Live Mesh. My gut was telling me that this was important stuff, but I did not have the time to dig in.

In May, my gut started rumbling again after Matt Asay (whom I'm a big fan of) posted "Where did Microsoft's ambition go?". The key parts of his post that stuck with me were:
"Microsoft does need ambition on the web....makes me think the company has too much cash to be able to see a future where it's largely irrelevant, awash in tablets but a nonentity on the web that stitches them together."

No offense Matt, but based on my experience over the past two decades, one should never, ever count Microsoft out. Ever. Remember OS/2, remember Netware, remember Netscape?

Since I've been spending the better part of this year focused on the Social Web, I left myself a todo to spend some time figuring out Live Mesh, especially after reading the "Full text of Ray Ozzie Mesh Memo". The quote that stuck with me was:
"Community on the web once meant “group communications”, largely through rudimentary tools such as email, IM and IRC, message boards and newsgroups. Today, the action has shifted toward using composite communications tools and platforms that mash together content, applications and commerce, all within the context of group interaction. These social platforms are altering the way we connect and coordinate, establish identity and affinities, and build reputation."

That quote showed me that Microsoft (or at least Ray Ozzie) gets it! So, if Microsoft is able to execute on this vision, they will resurrect themselves once again.

Anyhow, over the weekend I finally spent time on my todo. I came across a very informative video by Ori Amiga from Microsoft that really helped me understand Microsoft's Live Mesh strategy and MOE (the Mesh Operating Environment). In the hour-long "Programming the Mesh" video, Ori shows a number of demos covering the native Mesh feeds, applications using Mesh, a Silverlight client that supports working on and offline, a custom Facebook application that syncs Facebook photos with Live Mesh, a Mac client that sends photos to Live Mesh, and LINQ queries over Mesh objects.

Pretty...cool...stuff.

I also read an article by Steve Gillmor on TechCrunchIT , where he stated that Microsoft Live Mesh is "essentially a rewrite of Notes replication over open protocols with FeedSync combined with an atomization of social media primitives into a new platform on which to build applications that are identity rather than hardware or native OS-centric. Today, we see Live Mesh as about virtualizing files from the containing device over a Web hub, but at a deeper level, the Mesh is as much an information router as a bit traffic cop. How to act on the data becomes more strategic than the underlying job of moving things around to follow the user."

It is great to see that Microsoft realizes the importance of weaving basic social primitives into the experience of the users of their platforms. You can be sure that I will be following the progress of Live Mesh as it continues its rollout over the coming quarters.

Bottom-line: I just knew when I joined Ringside Networks that we were at the center of something pretty big. Folks like Google and Facebook get it...and what I've seen of Live Mesh, I believe Microsoft gets it as well.

Product Managers: Chief Assholes or Value Creators?

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:44:00 +0000

I was interviewed recently regarding the similarities and differences of the role of Product Management within proprietary software, commercial open source software, and community open source software settings. We actually used the Pragmatic Marketing Framework - which I know and love - to guide the discussion.

While there are indeed some differences between proprietary and open source models (which I'll cover in a future post), the Product Management fundamentals are pretty much the same. Moreover, the main point that I made was:

For both proprietary and commercial open source software, the Product Manager needs to focus on creating a product that people will actually buy! Plain and simple.

I actually have a quote I use as an internal mantra that helps ensure I stay focused on creating valuable products that solve real customer problems:

"Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one..."

My point here is that a Product Manager needs to check their OPINIONS at the door. Any Product Manager that starts off a feature discussion with "in my humble opinion" runs the risk of being...you guessed it...the Chief Asshole.

While some may strive [and deserve] that lofty title, I'd rather be known as a Value Creator who focuses on solving problems and driving real value for my customers, partners, community, company, coworkers, and investors.

Moreover, since the Product Manager communicates with a wide range of people - both internally and externally - it is important his/her decisions are based on well founded information.
Above is an ugly diagram that I've used over the past decade to illustrate the various conversations a Product Manager has to handle over the course of a product's lifecycle. So, the Product Manager has the opportunity to make a BIG [positive or negative] impact on the success of a company.

Another one of my favorite internal dialog quotes comes from Jerry Seinfeld:

"Who are these people??!!"

For any new product offering, one of the first places I focus is on understanding and documenting the Buyer Personas. After all, how the heck are you going to create real value for customers if you don't know who's buying? User personas, while not the same, are also useful to understand. UPDATED: Here's a good article covering the difference between the two: "Buyer Personas And User Personas"

Understanding who these people are provides a solid foundation for the Product Manager to more effectively gain insight into market and customer needs so s/he can integrate, translate, and communicate this information - in a variety of different forms - to the various stakeholders involved in the product lifecycle.

While Product Managers must maintain positive working relationships with all stakeholders, I feel the relationship between the Development Manager and the Product Manager is most important since this is where the critical translation of the "what and why" into the "how and when" occurs.

While a bit scary, the closer a Product Manager and Development Manager can come to a Vulcan Mind Meld, the better.

So in closing, don't be a Chief Asshole. Be a Value Creator instead. Why? Because it's much more fun when you actually create products that 1) solve real problems, and 2) people are willing to pay for!

Want to learn more about the role of Product Management?
I suggest you read the following FREE e-book from Pragmatic Marketing:
The Strategic Role of Product Management: How a market-driven focus leads companies to build products people want to buy.

Consumerization of Software: Social Web Maturing Before Our Very Eyes

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:29:00 +0000

Fueled by our use of Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, iTunes, Twitter, YouTube, etc., the consumerization of software has been a growing movement over the past few years. The benefit of this wave is software that is more engaging and intuitive. No expensive training required.

Most of these next-generation websites and applications sit at the heart of the Social Web, and whether corporate IT likes it or not, many employees are using these consumer technologies during work hours.

Having spent many years in the enterprise software space, I realize that corporate IT prefers MATURE technologies. So, let's take a look at two examples (Twitter and Facebook) of how things are maturing within the Social Web Landscape.

Twitter
Just scour through Twitter to see how people/workers have been using it to communicate their whereabouts, thoughts, opinions, among other things. You also don't have to look very hard to read about Twitter's repeated issues with scalability and downtime. The issues have happened often enough that some have moved away from Twitter to Friendfeed; choice is good.

Believe it or not, I am happy to see the issues with Twitter's scalability and the resulting uproar from the consumers. Why? Because it is useful for people to be reminded that anything on the web that becomes popular so fast has to deal with scaling issues that can derail it. So plan for it and be ready to deal with it.

Moreover, I believe the public airing of the dirty laundry helps drive things more quickly towards improvement; which in turn helps the overall market mature more quickly. Finally, Twitter's move to acquire Summize is just another proof point of how quickly this market is maturing.

Facebook
Another potential saga worth watching is Facebook's rollout of its latest round of [pretty extensive] changes to the Facebook Platform. Let me draw your eye to an interesting thread on the Facebook Platform Developer Forum.

The Facebook Platform team posted "We're Launching the New Profile Design to Users Very Soon":
"This is a quick heads up that we're going to start opening the new profile design to selected users. We're finalizing all the code, and the profile will be available to users you can see as soon as 24 hours from now, though it might take a few days before you see any of your users on the new site as they decide to opt in. So get your applications ready!"

Just look at some of the responses:

"We would appreciate it if you are able to make the new profile design at http://www.new.facebook.com/ fully functional and let us test our apps for a few days before opening it up to users. You and all of us risk alienating users if you open up the current new design to users already, and they start seeing broken features, both from you and from our apps, right?"
"Facebook should consider itself as an operating system. We are the app designers. Right now, the operating system designers are doing a poor and unprofessional job at releasing new functionality. In the end, it is the users who will be hurt....Are you listening, Facebook?"
"I don't think Facebook could have handled this transition any worse. Every time I have looked into doing some work to move our apps to new API, I have run into issues/bugs and have just given up. Facebook needs to: 1. Get their stuff together and working. 2. Once they have the functionality working and more importantly documented properly, so all the Facebook API libraries can be upgraded (not just PHP), then they need to give the developers 1 month to upgrade and test their apps. The 1 month time should only start after they have a good beta in working condition.... 3. And only then they should start opening up the new system to the users, and that too in phases. Hopefully someone in Facebook is going to wakeup and realize this is a major mess as of now."

I point out the above not to hang Facebook out to dry, but to state the fact that I am happy to see this type of open dialog on such an important topic. It shows me that while Facebook can be handling its new rollout better, some of the developers targeting the Facebook Platform 1) care about their users, and 2) understand what is required from a mature platform.

Conclusion
While I've focused on examples of consumerized software within a less-than-mature light, Corporate IT skeptics also need to understand and appreciate the sheer number of members being served every minute of every day on platforms like Facebook. Frankly it is mind-numbingly impressive. Furthermore, I'd argue that Facebook is a great example of Web 2.0 and SOA in action; this is not tinker-toy software. But that's a blog for another day.

Bottom-line: The consumerization of software is well underway, and it is fascinating to watch as the Social Web matures before our very eyes.

OFF TOPIC: Roller Coasters and Billy Joel with Liza

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:34:00 +0000

My daughter Liza turned 17 this week and she got her driver's license on her birthday. I'm both very excited and a little freaked out. She can't be 17 already, can she?

In order to properly celebrate the momentous occasion, I flipped her the car keys yesterday morning and we headed out for a father/daughter day.

The weather was a perfect 85 and Sunny as Liza drove us to Hershey PA for a day of roller coasters at HersheyPark and a night of Billy Joel at HersheyPark Stadium. This marks my fourth Billy Joel concert over the years...but was Liza's first chance to see him in action.

After arriving at HersheyPark, we quickly headed over to check out the brand new roller coaster: Fahrenheit. While Fahrenheit is a good new coaster, our favorite of the day was easily Storm Runner which launches you from 0 to 72 mph in 2 seconds....what a rush!

We rode all the major rides during the day and grabbed a bite to eat...and some yummy funnel cake...before walking over to HersheyPark Stadium for the concert. We couldn't wait for the show to start...especially after hearing him warm up earlier in the afternoon.

I have to admit, it is pretty cool (and a little strange) having a daughter who likes Billy Joel as much as I do. I mean, the dude is 59 years old and hasn't made a new album in over 15 years. BUT his songs are CLASSICS, so that helps explain how he is able to bridge the generation gap.

Before the concert started, we debated what song he would open up with. I figured it had to be an upbeat song...so maybe "We Didn't Start The Fire" or "Only The Good Die Young". Liza thought he'd start with "Miami 2017" (aka "Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway"), which is one of my favorites...but a bit obscure for the average fan...so maybe not.

Anyhow, Liza was dead on; Billy Joel kicked off the concert with Miami 2017, followed quickly by the amazing "Angry Young Man"...how do his fingers move so fast on the piano???

Liza almost passed out when Billy Joel started playing her favorite: "Don't Ask Me Why"

Ever the performer, Billy Joel rattled off a range of hits as well as a few of his obscure classics (for the true fans in the audience). His encore ended, as expected, with the classic "Piano Man". There is simply NOTHING like listening to a stadium full of people singing this song...it just leaves you with goose bumps. Very cool!

Alas, all great days must come to an end. So at 11:30pm, we headed out on our 2 hour drive home. We reminisced about the great thrill rides we enjoyed during the day....but mostly we just turned up the volume on the car stereo and listened to more Billy Joel songs the whole way home.

Randy Pausch: Find and Follow Your Passion

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:37:00 +0000

I read a book entitled "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. Randy is a Professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction and Design at Carnegie Mellon University. And he is also battling pancreatic cancer; last August 2007 he was diagnosed with 3 - 6 months to live.

Randy covers a range of different accomplishments in his book, but he has found a way to "pay it forward" on a grand scale by pioneering the Alice project, which is free educational software that teaches students computer programming in a 3D environment. Alice looks really cool and reminds me of my "The Future of Open Source" post, where I described how Roblox (a 3D world not dissimilar to Alice) is grooming our next generation of developers.

Anyhow, this book struck a chord with me on a variety of fronts. Since my father-in-law died of pancreatic cancer and my own father died from brain cancer, I can relate to what Randy's family is going through.

Randy is only a few years older than me, so I just chuckle at how some of his childhood dreams and travels feel so familiar to me. For example, Randy's sport was football, mine was baseball. While neither of us made it to the big leagues, we both had coaches who taught us the importance of learning the fundamentals; a lesson that can be applied to almost every aspect of life.

The following "Last Lecture" presentation was given at Carnegie Mellon on September 18, 2007. The Last Lecture series asks professors to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. Ironic given the fact that Randy is actually facing his own demise. Anyhow, this inspirational presentation by Randy Pausch offers a nice summary of what's covered in his book:

As if the above presentation was not enough, this past May 2008 (9 months after his diagnosis) Randy gave a 6 minute commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon that is absolutely worth watching. His key point of inspiration to the audience:

Find and Follow Your Passion

Passion does not come from things or money. It comes from things that fuel you from the inside. Passion is grounded in people and what they think of you. Achieving your goals is not easy, so use your passion and the help of people who respect you to break through the "brick walls" that you encounter along the way.

For your convenience, below are a series of links to Randy Pausch videos starting with his Last Lecture in September, his interview with Diane Sawyer in April, and his Carnegie Mellon commencement speech in May.

Randy Pausch - The Last Lecture Presentation on September 18, 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Randy Pausch - Part 1 of April 2008 Interview with Diane Sawyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZbOQqtDAW0

Randy Pausch - Part 2 of April 2008 Interview with Diane Sawyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDIf4D4SQFo

Randy Pausch - Part 3 of April 2008 Interview with Diane Sawyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O8FvH_k2k4

Randy Pausch - Part 4 of April 2008 Interview with Diane Sawyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2HWTrDTsv0

Randy Pausch - Part 5 of April 2008 Interview with Diane Sawyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSx-AB4JhvQ

Randy Pausch - CMU Commencement Speech on May 18,2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcYv5x6gZTA

Social Web Market: The Long Tail, Skinny Head, and Beefy Middle

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:00:00 +0000

I read an interesting article by Chris Anderson entitled "Debating the Long Tail". In it he responds to an article by Anita Elberse, a Harvard Business School associate professor, who challenges his long tail theory's predictions.

The difference of opinions arises from the fact that they have different perspectives on where the head ends and the tail begins...which actually dovetails nicely with how I've been explaining to people where Ringside Networks fits within the Social Web Market Landscape.

I start off by drawing the standard long tail diagram. In my diagram, I refer to the Skinny Head which is where the "blockbusters" reside that Anita Elberse writes about. We also, of course, have the Long Tail which is where the large volume of niche offerings exist. I add a section, however, between the two that I refer to as the Beefy Middle.

The Beefy Middle changes some of the debate of where the head ends and the tail begins since it provides an area between the two. Let's look at a diagram of the Social Web Market Landscape to get a better feel for what the Beefy Middle entails. The # of Sites is on the X-Axis and the # of Profiles (i.e. registered users) is on the Y-Axis:

The Social Web's Skinny Head is the domain of the large social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Orkut, and LinkedIn. It also houses the most popular social applications such as YouTube, Flickr, Delicious, and Digg. These represent the major hubs of the social web.

The Social Web's Long Tail is the domain of personal blogs, websites, and simple social web widgets and gadgets. Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect define the far left of the Long Tail since they are designed to bring social capabilities to the long tail of simple websites.

This leaves the Social Web's Beefy Middle. This area is where most corporate websites reside. This is the market area that Ringside Networks is focused on as well as solutions from companies such as Acquia (i.e. Drupal), Jive, and Lithium.

The websites that reside in the Beefy Middle already have their own database of registered users (thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands) along with some semblance of profile data (i.e. credit card info, newsletter registration, etc.). It is usually NOT desirable for these websites to create a social network that is separate from and does not reside on their existing web property. These companies want/need to integrate their existing users within a larger social context.

Moreover, these companies have their own systems that manage their own content and data which is further reason for using a social web solution that integrates well with their existing systems.

Finally, these sites typically have web applications (or are planning web applications) that they would like to enhance to have a social context that enables the applications to connect to and run on multiple sites including the major social networks like Facebook.

The market requirements of the Beefy Middle are challenging since it is almost a given that the existing registered users are already socially represented on two or three of the Skinny Head sites as well as countless sites across the Beefy Middle and Long Tail.

This means that these companies need to define a social web strategy that enables their website to operate as a spoke that can easily plug into the major social web hubs. They also need to give their registered users the ability to map their social identities to the social hub(s) of their choice. This minimizes duplication of profile data and maximizes the ability of users to quickly and easily engage their broad network(s) of friends.

So there you have it; the Long Tail, Skinny Head...and Beefy Middle. My guess is the term "Beefy Middle" won't be as widely used as "Long Tail", but hopefully it helps illustrate the portion of the market that Ringside Networks is focused on serving.

If you'd like to learn more about how Ringside Networks addresses the needs of companies in the Beefy Middle, please check out the Social Business section of the Ringside Networks website for a range of examples and articles related to the rapidly moving business of the Social Web.

Social Window Shopping

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:39:00 +0000

Back in the stone ages (i.e. before the Internet), people would get together with their friends for a day of window shopping.

Going from store to store, comparing and contrasting the alternatives, placing items of interest on layaway, and ultimately making a purchase based on the input of friends.

The web, of course, has changed this dynamic by making it very easy to shop online. Sites like Amazon.com have User Ratings and Reviews applications that allow any member to post their thoughts on a particular item. They also have Wishlist applications that enable people to set aside items that they are considering for purchase.

While these applications provide a great source of information to the shopper, they are still missing the crux of what made window shopping so powerful; namely the input and social camaraderie of friends.

Why is this important? Well, if you look at the chart below from Forrester's "Data Chart of the Week: Who Do People Trust?", you will see that the opinions of friends or acquaintances who have used the product or service is what people value and trust the most.

With the advent of the Social Web, we are at a point where e-commerce websites can start to bring the power of social interactions back to the shopping process.

Social Window Shopping Example
Let's look at an example where you are shopping for running shoes on Sneaks4Geeks.com. You've narrowed your search down to your top three choices by reading all of the anonymous reviews and ratings. It's time to kick it up a notch and get your friends involved!

While you already have some friends on Sneaks4Geeks, you also want to get the opinions of your running friends on Facebook and the Nike+ community.

Sneaks4Geeks uses this really cool Social Window Shopping application that enables people to interact with and get shopping advice from their friends on a range of social sites. The Window Shopping application developers had the mentality of "write once, social everywhere" when they created the application, so they chose Ringside Networks to help them achieve this goal.

So on Sneaks4Geeks you add your top three running shoe choices into the Window Shopping application and reach out to your running friends on Sneaks4Geeks, Facebook, and Nike+. You include the note: "Help me choose! I'm considering the following running shoes for the Broad Street Run in May. What's your favorite?".

Since the Window Shopping application is also integrated into Facebook and Nike+, my friends across all of these sites can respond to my request from within the Window Shopping application available on their particular site. They place their vote for one of the running shoes and provide an insightful comment back.

After a little while, you tally the votes, read the comments, and make your purchase based on the input of your network of friends. For those friends who responded with an opinion, the Window Shopping application automatically thanks them and shares the results of your purchase.

You happily trot off with a new pair of running shoes, and your shopping experience reminds two of your friends that their running shoes are getting pretty worn out...maybe it's time for them to get some new running shoes from Sneaks4Geeks!

Conclusion
For any Social Web initiative to succeed, it is important to find the area of passion that will truly drive social engagement. In the example above, enabling people to shop and interact with friends for their thoughts and opinions touches on a critical area of passion for many people.

Please visit the Social Business section of the Ringside Networks website for more articles on the Social Web and to learn more about how Ringside Networks helps facilitate scenarios such as the Social Window Shopping example covered above.

Social Web Tip: Start With Passion

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:41:00 +0000

In my past two posts, I wrote about two very successful social web communities, the Jeep Community and the Nike+ Community.

What do these communities have in common besides well known and established brands?
PASSION

Just look through all of the pictures and videos posted by the Jeep community to get an idea of how ravenously passionate they are about their Jeeps. Similarly, the Nike+ running community just loves getting together for running events, talking about the latest running gear, etc.

Jeep and Nike are big companies with established brands and healthy, growing communities.

How about we look at an example where the seeds of passion are just being planted?

I recently caught up with a friend of mine who has launched a new site called Greenthumbr:

Bob McWhirter loves gardening and while he has only just started building the Greenthumbr community, the world is definitely full of people who love everything green too. So he has fertile ground upon which to grow a thriving membership.

Passion comes in big and small packages. Moreover, passion can start relatively small, but with the help of the social web, BIG things can happen!

Look at Barack Obama's rise to prominence as a perfect example of how the social web can amplify passion. While some people knew about Barack Obama 18 months ago, his MyBarackObama.com website as well as his Barack Obama Facebook page have attracted and energized millions of active and passionate followers.

So, my social web tip for you is to find the PASSION in your community and feed it, nurture it, encourage it, revel in it, wallow in it. And before long, you just might see the strong roots of a thriving social web community take hold.

Social Web Example: The Nike Plus Community

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:00:00 +0000

In a prior post, I provided a definition of social web. Some may read that post and ask the question: "But are real companies actually embracing the social web?"

The answer is an unequivocal: Absolutely!

I have already illustrated how the Jeep Community is an extension of Jeep.com that engages its passionate community directly as well as promotes the large number of Jeep communities that exist on social web sites like Facebook, Yahoo, etc.

The Nike+ Community is similar in that it engages its passionate member community directly from its own website. It is different in that it does not overtly interlink with other Nike communities that exist on other social web sites. At least not nearly as much as the Jeep Community site does.

The picture below shows the entry point for runners to track their mileage. A cool feature is the Community mileage counter that is constantly counting up the collective mileage posted by the Nike+ community. Kind of reminiscent of the McDonald's "100 Million Served" counter. Neat touch.

The next picture shows the entry point for finding and sharing events that the Nike community would be interested in. Nike clearly wants to encourage their community to run together and interact.

Nike also provides an information-rich blog entitled "Inside Nike Running". They have experts writing on a range of topics. So for the community members who primarily like to read and listen, they have a great resource. Nike also provides a Forum for members who are more vocal and want to share their own thoughts.

While the site is a little over-polished for my tastes, it absolutely provides a branded way for Nike to engage its community around an area of PASSION.

I searched on Facebook to get a feel for how Nike is expanding its Nike+ community by engaging with Facebook members directly. While there are a variety of Nike+ groups created on Facebook (ex. the "Nike+ Challenges" group), none of them appear to have a lot of momentum which may be due to the fact that the Nike+ website already has a lot of engaging content.

I really like the "Nike+ Running Monitor" Facebook application and how it connects Facebook and Nike+ website members.
"The Nike+ Running Monitor is connected to the Nike+ website, giving you the ability to share your running information with the Facebook Network.You have the ability to add your profile summary, runs, goals, challenges and much more so you can show off how well you are doing and to keep you inspired!"

Nike clearly has a great strategy for engaging its passionate community with useful information and tools that enable them to feel part of the larger community. If you look at each of the screenshots above, you will also see how Nike makes it easy for community members to find their running products and learn more about them. It's a great noninvasive way to market/advertise to people who actually care about the products.

What's the bottom-line benefit to Nike? Customer loyalty, word of mouth referrals, increased brand equity, and increased sales. They also likely have a much higher ROI on their product-related advertising since they are engaging well qualified customers directly.

Further Reading:
Why Build Social Applications into a Website?
Why Develop a Facebook Application?
Social Media: Rent or Own?
Search Advertising vs. Social Applications

You can find even more recommended reading in the Social Business section of the Ringside Networks website.

Social Web Example: The Jeep Community

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:28:00 +0000

In a prior post, I provided a definition of social web. Some may read that post and ask the question: "But are real companies actually embracing the social web?"

The answer is an unequivocal: Absolutely!

Let's take a look at the Jeep Community for example. Jeep has devoted a section of their Jeep.com website to engaging their passionate member community via the social web and doing so in a wide variety of ways.

Scrolling down the page reveals much more:

In the above pictures you can see that Jeep enables their community to interact with a wide range of social applications: picture sharing, video sharing, games, special offers on merchandise, Jeep event calendar including marketing events such as “Jeep King of the Mountains”, and a ton of links to Jeep groups on Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo, Flickr, YouTube, etc.

Jeep is clearly a posterchild for how to effectively engage a community via the social web. Their Jeep Community site is effective since it enables their community to rally around their PASSION. And Jeep has done this in a way that increases the value of their own web property (Jeep.com) as well as taps into the power of the large social networks such as Facebook.

What's the bottom-line benefit to Jeep? Customer loyalty, word of mouth referrals, and increased brand equity.

Further Reading:
Why Build Social Applications into a Website?
Why Develop a Facebook Application?
Social Media: Rent or Own?
Search Advertising vs. Social Applications

You can find even more recommended reading in the Social Business section of the Ringside Networks website.

Social Web Defined

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:29:00 +0000

There's lots of talk about social networks like Facebook, social applications like FriendFeed, social computing and the socialization of the Internet.

All of these exist within the world of the "social web".

As I see it, the social web is all about sprinkling "social" magic pixie dust onto every website, yielding something like this:

...where the orange elements in the "Your Website" item represent social applications (ex. a ratings/comments application) that people and their friends interact with. These social applications can/should also be accessible via the big social networks such as Facebook, but that's a topic for a future post, so let's get to a definition.

While the term "social web" is being used more and more, there's not yet a good definition out there. Wikipedia's definition of social web was pretty anemic, so I updated it with the results of the following as well as my thoughts on the 7 Key Attributes of Social Web Applications.

For lack of a good definition, I went through the thought process below to see what I could come up with:

So, my proposal is:
"Social Web is defined as people interlinked and interacting with engaging content in a conversational and participatory manner via the Internet."

These may or not be the right words, but I wanted to start somewhere in order to get the conversation started. My goal is to make it both descriptive and simple. Too many definitions get too deep into the underlying technology or provide comparisons to the semantic web...which is still a fairly esoteric concept for the average person. It should be interesting to see how the definition on Wikipedia evolves over time.

So what do you think? Is the above definition too confusing? Can you come up with something simpler?

Facebook Counters Google's OpenSocial With fbOpen

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:32:00 +0000

A week ago the rumors heated up that Facebook would open source its platform.

And today Facebook made good on the rumor by launching the Facebook Open Platform (fbOpen). On the Facebook Open Source Projects, they list fbOpen and the other open source projects (Thrift, MemcacheD, ...) they are involved in.

What is fbOpen? According to the website it is:
"a snapshot of the infrastructure that runs Facebook Platform. It includes the API infrastructure, the FBML parser, the FQL parser, and FBJS, as well as implementations of many common methods and tags."

Or put more simply:
fbOpen is an open source reference implementation of the Facebook platform.

This is a similar statement to:
Apache Shindig is an open source reference implementation of the OpenSocial specification.

In my "Social Networking Big Dog: Facebook or Google?" post, I draw a comparison of Google and its OpenSocial Foundation to Sun and its Java Community Process.

I'll extend that comparison further by equating fbOpen and Apache Shindig to be logical equivalents to the J2EE Reference Implementation. The primary difference between these two efforts, of course, is that OpenSocial provides a specification for the Apache Shindig reference implementation, while fbOpen is simply a snapshot of code from the already implemented, deployed, robust, and successful Facebook Platform.

So this news begs a couple of questions:

Does it matter that fbOpen is not based on a specification but is simply "a snapshot of infrastructure"?
Does it matter that implementations like Apache Shindig have a common specification (OpenSocial) to base their efforts on?

Before answering the questions, you should consider the success of open source projects like Hibernate and the Spring Framework, both of which did NOT implement the predefined J2EE specifications. Instead, they both defined new and better ways of doing things. Good technology trumped agreed-upon specification.

One final note. I expect that all or parts of these reference implementations will be leveraged by a wide range of people and companies interested in extending them to suit their specific market/product needs. Similar to how companies like BEA, IBM, Sun, Oracle, and JBoss all created their own J2EE application servers that implemented the specs as well as included piece parts of the reference implementation.

This matches what Ringside Networks has been doing by integrating and extending Shindig in order to provide a production-ready implementation of OpenSocial. Moreover, since our open source social application server already provides extensive Facebook platform compatibility, we'll look at fbOpen to see how we can leverage it so we can spend less time implementing Facebook compatibility and more time on our unique value add.

I'll elaborate much more on the Ringside Networks product strategy in upcoming posts.

Bottom-line:

Only time will tell if Facebook launched fbOpen in time to slow or stall the momentum of Google's OpenSocial Foundation.
Open code is better than closed code; but open does not necessarily translate into vibrant community.
Only time will tell if Facebook's community will be open and vibrant enough to generate significant momentum (and code) of its own.

Social Networking Big Dog: Facebook or Google?

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:47:00 +0000

I just finished Day 1 at Google I/O, and the experience compelled me to write a sequel to my previous "Open Source Big Dog: Red Hat or Sun?" post.

So my second "Big Dog" question is simple:

Who is the social networking big dog?

The answer really boils down to Facebook vs. Google.

I know, I know...I can hear the screams of what about My5, what about HiSpace, what about....just stop...please stop!

Recent events CLEARLY point to the fact that the fight is between the two masters of social kung fu: Facebook and Google.

OK, enough kung foolery...let me get serious and start my explanation.

I was very impressed by the turnout at Google I/O (Google's 2 day developer conference). If anyone doubted Google's commitment to developers, then Google I/O should firmly prove that they understand the value of developers.

Being an old time Java guy who worked at Bluestone Software and JBoss, I couldn't help but feel that Google's conference had the same type of energy and raw excitement that the original JavaOne conferences had back in the early days. The sessions had a decent amount of ad-hoc demos and unscripted moments; they were clearly not pre-approved, hermetically sealed or highly polished...which is a good thing!

The comparison with JavaOne gets even more interesting if you consider how Google and its OpenSocial compatriots (Bebo, Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, mixi, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING) are ganging up on Facebook.

This soooooo feels like Sun and its Java Community Process members ganging up on Microsoft in the late 1990's.

Why is Google rallying the troops against Facebook? Well, if we look at the latest growth stats for the top 10 social networking sites in the US, Facebook continues to put up HUGE numbers with 98% growth from March 2007 to March 2008. They clearly have strong momentum. And my guess is that even Steve Ballmer would be impressed with the number of developers that Mark Zuckerberg and team have been able to attract to the Facebook platform.

Since Google really really needs an open (and crawlable and indexable and searchable and monetizable) Internet, it is not surprising that they have taken a page from Sun's playbook. Google, with its OpenSocial foundation, is preaching the values of openness and "write once run anywhere". And since Facebook is not part of OpenSocial and is not open source, Google is calling out the walled-garden Facebook platform as closed and therefore not as good...much like Microsoft was and continues to be painted by Sun and others as closed (i.e. not part of the Java Community Process...and not relevant in open source).

Unlike Microsoft, however, Facebook appears to be taking bold steps towards shedding its "closed" image: Facebook To Open Source Facebook Platform

If Facebook does indeed open source its platform, it will be sending a strong message to the market that it does not plan on relinquishing its leadership and momentum to Google or anybody else.

And as Bob Bickel wrote in his latest blog post: "For the true power of the Social Web to be delivered, there will need to be more steps toward openness."

Why? Because openness helps accelerate the market and gets vendors focused on delivering value to customers rather than duplicating efforts on base infrastructure. It will also help the smaller Facebook continue to compete against the much bigger Google and friends.

So, who is the social networking big dog?
At this point in time, the power of the superpoke goes to:
Facebook

They've got the lead and they have strong momentum.
BUT...don't count Google out! After all, the game is really just starting.

And for those interested in who I'd like to see win the battle between these big dogs? Neither. I want them both to continue to compete and succeed, which will further accelerate the market for everyone involved. Moreover, at Ringside Networks, our Social Application Server provides compatibility for both Facebook and OpenSocial, so I see Facebook and Google as important partners in this fascinating and fun corner of the software market.

7 Key Attributes of Social Web Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Sat, 24 May 2008 13:33:00 +0000

The Social Web enables website visitors to come together around shared interests and become active contributors rather than just content browsers. By making the connections between people much more visible, social websites are able to enact a network effect of participation and engaging interactions that result in vibrant communities and compelling user generated content.

This all sounds good, but...

what exactly makes an application social?

what are the key attributes of a social web application?

Since social web applications are built to encourage communication between people, they typically emphasize some combination of the following social attributes:

Identity: who are you?

Reputation: what do people think you stand for?

Presence: where are you?

Relationships: who are you connected with? who do you trust?

Groups: how do you organize your connections?

Conversations: what do you discuss with others?

Sharing: what content do you make available for others to interact with?

Social web applications need not exhibit all of these features, but the more attribute areas they cover, the more engaging they are likely to be.

Examples of social web applications include:

General: Blogs, Walls/Forums, Picture/Video Sharing and tagging, Favorites/Social Bookmarks, Feeds, Events, Email/Messaging, Notification, Invitation, etc.

Commerce-Oriented: User rating and reviews, Referral programs, Wish List, Wedding/Baby Registries, Gift List, etc.

Brand Enhancement/Awareness-Oriented: Forums/Walls, Games/Contests, Polls, Goal Tracking/Rewards Programs, Advertising Engine, etc.

So, to better answer the question of "what exactly makes an application social?", I encourage you to ask yourself which attributes are exhibited by each of the examples listed above. And if a particular social web application doesn't cover a particular attribute, how might it be enhanced to do so?

Getting Back In The Ring

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Mon, 19 May 2008 00:13:00 +0000

Well, it's been three months since I left Red Hat to take a little time off before finding my next challenge. It hasn't really been "time off" per se, since I've been real busy hosting an exchange student from Switzerland, visiting nine colleges with my 16 year old daughter Liza, enjoying time with my wife Irene and 13 year old son Billy, completely redoing the landscaping around my house, reestablishing old friendships, working out regularly (down 15 pounds), and working with a few open source companies in an advisory capacity on the side.

But, as I stated in my "Purposeful Risk-Taking" post, I wasn't planning on taking too much time off since I wanted to reinvest my experience in another open source endeavor.

So Monday May 19th will mark my first official day at Ringside Networks where I'll be handling Product Management and Marketing; operating at the intersection of our technology, the market, and our customers.

As I've said many times in the past, I look for jobs that enable me to love what I do and who I do it with.

As far as loving what I do, Ringside Networks is focused on the business of the social web and bringing the power of social applications directly to corporate websites and business applications. This is a fast-moving market area and an exciting opportunity. My "Focus on Meaningful Website Traffic" post is just the first of many blogs to come about this emerging market. So, I've clearly got "love what I do" covered.

How about "who I do it with"? Well, I feel privileged to be joining a team of folks that I've worked with in the past at Bluestone/HP and JBoss/Red Hat. While each of us will have our own areas of responsibility, we know what it takes to work as a team and move forward together as a company. We all firmly believe that teamwork, execution, and respect for employees, customers, partners, and community is the way to win in the market.

So, I'm getting back in the ring with Ringside Networks!

If you'd like to have a Ringside seat, I suggest you become a Friend of Ringside and sign up for the Ringside Networks newsletter so we can keep you abreast of all the action as this really cool market area heats up.

XAware Gets Your Data Working Harder Than You

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:32:00 +0000

I had the opportunity to meet with the folks from XAware a while ago and came away very intrigued by their technology, value proposition, and momentum.

For those not familiar with XAware, they are an open source company focused on simplifying the complexities of data integration. According to their website, “XAware’s mission is to be the world’s most popular way of integrating data and applications.”

Basically, XAware provides technology that executes distributed queries across multiple datasources so the integrated views, formatted as XML, can be more easily consumed and manipulated by Web 2.0 dashboards. applications, other integration infrastructure components such as ESBs, or XML query and reporting tools.

What I like about the technology is that it leaves the application data in place, in contrast to tools for extraction, transformation and loading, which perform "data movement" to create a new copy of data. People don't need more copies of data, they need to access their existing data more easily...and that is XAware's focus.

How many of you have heard something like the following request? We need a new Web 2.0 dashboard component that "just" grabs our existing call center data and displays it by region.

For developers, the word "just" can be a four letter word...especially if the data for the above request is spread out across multiple databases, systems, applications, etc. XAware does a great job simplifying the problem and enabling developers to focus on creating applications rather than dealing with data access and integration complexities.

So, the technology and value proposition sound good...but how are they doing from an awareness/momentum standpoint? Well Bill Miller, XAware Executive Chairman and CTO, had an interesting blog a few weeks ago: ">1,000 XAware Downloads per Day"

So, let's add a little more context to this impressive statistic. XAware announced last November that they would flip their technology from closed source to open source, and they announced the general availability of XAware 5 on March 11, 2008. Below is a chart of their monthly download pace over that timeperiod:

So, they have averaged over 15,000 downloads per month since their GA release, and at 13 days into May they are already over 10,000 downloads. Putting this into perspective, successful open source middleware projects like Spring Framework and Hibernate had paces of 10 - 15,000 downloads per month in their earlier years, so XAware's pace is impressive and worth keeping an eye on.

Bottom-line: The technology, value proposition, and momentum all look positive, so stop working so hard for your data and give XAware a try!

OFF TOPIC: Taking the Wayback Machine to 1978

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Sat, 03 May 2008 19:10:00 +0000

Well, the day finally arrived for the reunion I mentioned in my "30 Years Later" blog posting in February. While I've not attended my high school or college reunions, this reunion was cool since I've actually managed to stay in touch with a good many of my grade school friends.

I kicked off reunion day with a round of afternoon golf at Rancocas Golf Club with my long-time good buddy Jim McKee (3rd row, 4th from left in photo below). It was a sunny day, 70 degrees....we both hit some good shots...and the bad shots...well...who really cares when it's 70 degrees and sunny?!!

After a quick cleanup, Jim and I hopped into our wayback machine, set the dial for 1978, and prepared ourselves to mingle with the 8th-grade graduating class of St. Peter Celestine School:

Here's my attempt to name all of the people in the above picture:

Top Row: Pete Oswald, Bill Nicoletti, Neil Webber, Greg Saldutti, Bart Heenan, Eric Basting, Tony Maladra
2nd Row from Top: Pappy Strasser, Sandra Davi, Joan Walsh, Teresa Patterson, Peggy Wysocki, Melissa Shannon, Faith Long, Sandy Rodio, Brian Ehrman
Middle Row: Billy Cark, Srikanth Rajan, Bruce Wnek, Jim McKee, Shaun Connolly, Mike Camardo, Mark Marrazzo, Joe Messina, Jeff Wahl, Steve DeLuca, Charlie Spencer, Anthony Spica
2nd Row from Bottom: Lisa Staas, Patty McGrogan, Mary Beth Cunney, Maureen Haney, Amanda Gamel, Carol Durso, Karen Graham, Teresa Driscoll, Irene McClure, Teresa Ianuzzi
Bottom Row: Amy O'Brien, Jackie Verme, Mary Micale, Sister Nancy (Principal), Monseigneur Sharkey, Sister Wanda (Teacher), Ms. Flynn (Teacher), Nora Burdenski, Eileen Moriarty, Mary Jean Bellino

About 25 of the 40 or so kids in the picture attended the reunion along with a handful of others who attended but moved on prior to our graduating year. I was able to recognize almost all of my ex-classmates. Apologies go to Tim, Melissa, and Maureen for my awkward struggle to remember your names. What can I say? I'm sure this won't be the last of such senior moments for me. :-)

It was great catching up on what everyone has been up to over the past few....decades. Ouch, that hurts.

Among the attendees, we had nurses, engineers, teachers, one retired teacher launching her own boutique store in Princeton, IT consultants, a handful of small business owners, homemakers, a CIO, a forensic accountant, an anesthesiologist, etc., etc.

Many had children under the age of 10. My 8th grade best buddy Bill Nicoletti (top row, 2nd from left) has 3 kids (a 3 year old and 1 year old twins) with a 4th child on the way. Yikers! I felt like the old guy in the crowd with my 16 year old daughter and 13 year old son.

Even our physical education teacher, Mrs. Andress, showed up...which was really cool. We reminisced with her about how she used to march us through our warmups, rotating our heads to her commands of "left, center, right, center, left, center...". Many of us also fondly remembered our winter weekend retreat to Andress Farm out near Hazleton, PA. It was wickedly cold with a fresh foot of snow. The giant hill across the street from the farmhouse kept us busy sledding all day long!

Lots of classic photos were shared. We had some fashion plates in our class back then...as well as folks like me who were ideal candidates for the TLC show What Not To Wear. Gotta burn those old photos before they fall into the wrong hands! ;-)

The time flew by and a great time was had by all!

UPDATE ON MAY 13:
Click here to view the online photo gallery of the St. Peter Celestine 1978 Class Reunion.

A WORD OF THANKS
While I am sure many folks had a hand in making this reunion happen, I'd like to personally thank Patty McGrogan-Fost, Kevin Brake, and Irene McClure for taking the lead on hunting everyone down, arranging the venue, sending out all of the invites, etc.

Well done and thank you!

Open Source Big Dog: Red Hat or Sun?

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:48:00 +0000

So my question is simple: Who is the open source big dog?

The answer to the question as stated is likely IBM.
You're welcome Savio. :-) IBM, of course, benefits nicely from its investments in Apache and Eclipse and has done a lot to make Linux what it is today. But IBM is not betting the farm on open source, so let me tweak my question to be:

Who is the open source [as a business] big dog?

The answer really boils down to Red Hat vs. Sun.

Red Hat is the incumbent big dog, of course. They have a nice portfolio of Linux and JBoss Middleware offerings. And Red Hat's financial performance last fiscal year was quite impressive.

Red Hat however continues to suffer from [re]breathing its own air. "Red Hat Announces Improvements in Organizational Alignment to Focus on Top Priorities" just underscores Red Hat's "business as usual" approach.

The above "news" simply talks about how folks like Cormier and Pinchev (long-time executive team members) will "Assume Responsibilities to Enable and Accelerate Growth". Snore. I'd like to think that that's been their focus for the past few years.

They've clearly done a great job convincing Jim Whitehurst (new CEO last January) that there's no need to add fresh talent to the team. Hey Jim, you already have the A-Team, so there's no reason to change things. Just look at last year's financial performance after all.

Call me naive, but while Red Hat's financial performance has been quite good, the measure of "big dog" status needs to go beyond that. Red Hat can continue to grow nicely off of its Linux and JBoss Middleware businesses, but "big dogs" need to aggressively lead the charge into new areas. Which requires fresh blood with fresh ideas, in my opinion. Asking people who are good at executing on "business as usual" to aggressively expand into new areas does not work.

Meanwhile....Sun is busy marking its own territory in its quest to be the big dog.

Jonathan Schwartz's recent statements make Sun's strategy pretty clear:
"Everything Sun delivers will be freely available, via a free and open license (either GPL, LGPL or Mozilla/CDDL), to the community. Everything. No exception."

Sun sponsors a portfolio of open source technologies arguably wider than Red Hat's portfolio...from OpenOffice to Java to NetBeans to Glassfish to OpenSolaris to...

The acquisition of MySQL.

Sun not only added a database to their footprint, they added a great team (Marten Mickos, Zack Urlocker, etc.) with a strong open source pedigree. If Jonathan Schwartz manages the acquisition and integration properly, he will listen to and value the input from the MySQL team. MySQL's success and market momentum has been impressive and Sun finally seems to have a better appreciation of the importance of momentum and what it means to lead the market.

Matt Asay's article entitled "Ubuntu + Sun = Very good idea" expands further:
"But Sun does recognize the importance of momentum for it right now, and it wants the favor of open-source developers pulling its way. With MySQL and Ubuntu in its court, it's hard to see how it could possibly be less sexy in the market."

While Sun is making great strides, I need to see more from them before I entirely buy into their ability to execute. Sun's open source portfolio doesn't have enough #1's in it to overtake the current top dog. Moreover, Sun has historically stumbled and fumbled in executing on its software strategy. The transition from McNealy to Schwartz, who has been leading Sun into new areas, came just in time. But I still need to see more. While Sun gets "community"...they don't have a strong history of success in the software business. And their commitment to open source almost came too late.

So for now, my answer to the question "Who is the open source [as a business] big dog?" is:

Red Hat

But Red Hat needs to realize that past success does not guarantee future dominance. Red Hat needs to improve its ability to grow into new areas. It needs to make its ability to expand its footprint a strategic weapon.

Focusing purely on business as usual may yield some solid results over the coming year, but will ultimately result in decreased momentum...

...and the crowning of a new open source big dog.

UPDATE ON MAY 1:
I got some private emails about this post. I believe Matt Asay hit the nail on the head in his "Former JBoss executive to Red Hat: Don't rest on your laurels".

This post is purely based on my desire to see Red Hat step up and lead. And I mean lead beyond Linux. To Matt's point...a response of "we already are" just proves they are missing the point entirely.

Frankly, IBM, HP, Oracle and others set the table for the Linux market (years ago, they all poured a ton of marketing $$'s and other resources into putting the "Enterprise" in Linux). Yes, Red Hat did a lot too, but they benefited greatly from the sugar daddy investments in the Linux market.

Red Hat's move into middleware (i.e. beyond Linux) illustrates the fact that those same sugar daddies are likely NOT interested in helping Red Hat market themselves beyond Linux. It is up to Red Hat to prove it can do that themselves. And they need to prove that they can do it beyond middleware as well.

So, yes, execution is very important, but maintaining and increasing momentum is critical! Otherwise your competitor with the mojo will be more than happy to be the big dog. In this industry, it’s not an either or. If you want to stay on top, you need momentum and you need to execute.

And as Matt stated: "this isn't intended to be a rant against Red Hat." As the big dog, I simply expect a great deal from them....as should others.

Focus on Meaningful Website Traffic

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:53:00 +0000

I'm a regular reader of Seth Godin's blog and his "Silly Traffic" posting struck a chord with me.

Rather than get excited at and obsessed by silly website traffic numbers, Seth thinks "it’s more productive to worry about two other things instead.

Engage your existing users far more deeply. Increase their participation, their devotion, their interconnection and their value.
Turn those existing users into ambassadors, charged with the idea of bring you traffic that is focused, traffic with intent."

One way to engage users more deeply and groom ambassadors is to integrate social applications and social networking into your existing website.

My friends over at Ringside Networks recently launched an offering designed to "Bring the Power of Social Networking to Every Website".

What does this mean exactly? Well, let's look at Ringside's latest customer news:

Haddonfield Running Company enhances brand and builds customer ties online with Ringside Social Application Platform. They do not sell products on the web, they simply want to build and improve their brand. They are leveraging Voomaxer, a Facebook social application for runners, and providing application users the ability to interact via Facebook, Runningco.com, or both.
Fulcrum Gallery unites art lovers across Facebook and their own e-commerce website using Ringside Social Application Platform. In order to open up new revenue streams, they have created a custom social application called “What Is Art?”. This application highlights a selected piece of abstract art and allows users in both Facebook and the Fulcrum Gallery websites to comment. These comments are posted on users’ feeds to friends, inviting them to add comments and rate comments. Fulcrum Gallery is offering weekly incentives for the most popular comments.

Both are great examples of opening up new and compelling ways to interact with prospective customers and giving them a reason to increase their participation, devotion, interconnection and value.

So are you focusing on driving meaningful interactions with your website visitors?

Or are you just being silly?

Who Invented Open Source?

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:33:00 +0000

I stumbled across this Federal Computer Week article - "Sun founder extols open source for government" - and wondered if it was an April Fools joke. The quote that caught my eye was: "We invented open source," McNealy declared in a tone that dared anyone to challenge the claim, and he listed its advantages."

Wow...McNealy invented open source...that was news to me. I thought folks like Stallman, Perens, Raymond, and Augustin played an important part in the early "open source" days...but McNealy? Hmmm....let's see if Wikipedia's definition of Open Source can clarify.

Just as I thought...no McNealy mentioned there. As a matter of fact, I always thought McNealy struggled with understanding the benefits of open source. For example, let's look at "Sun’s McNealy: Java won’t be open source", Government Computer News, March 24, 2004. McNealy stated that “We’re trying to understand what problem does it solve that is not already solved”. I must say that a lot has changed since McNealy's departure from Sun.

Anyhow, enough about McNealy...when we all know that the real story is How Microsoft invented open source. Back in November 2001, Bill Gates was quoted as saying: "The reason that you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines, and the BIOS of that should be open to everybody to use, and all the extensibility should be there."

This article explains a lot actually, and I'd argue that the core of Bill Gates quote still sums up Microsoft's open source strategy: Microsoft feels their pervasive platform enabled the rise and success of open source. Moreover, Matt Asay recently wrote a good article summarizing Microsoft's continued dilemma with open source.

So, in closing, I think it's safe to say that neither McNealy nor Gates invented open source...because it was actually....me....yeah...it was me! I invented open source....way back when I was married to.....uhhh....Morgan Fairchild....yeah....that's the ticket!

Business of Open Source

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:47:00 +0000

I read Cal Evans' blog entitled "Thoughts on Open Source, Running a Company, and OSBC"; in it he chronicles his thoughts from OSBC last week. Since I'm a JBoss guy, what initially caught my eye was the fact that he mentioned JBoss, and ex-JBossians, a couple of times in his rant.

I want to state first that I agree with MANY of the points Cal makes; I'll get to those after I touch on the points I had issues with.

I'll start off with his biggest rant that businesses were bastardizing (my word, not his) the intent of "open source" by trying to monetize the projects. My initial reaction is "what do you expect to hear at the Open Source BUSINESS Conference".
:-)

Also, he seemed to imply that ex-JBossians have sold out: "Developers seem to be willing to sell out for bucks these days." To quote Marc Fleury...great code just doesn't fall from the sky. Nobody should have to apologize for paying great developers to do what they love to do full time.

I'm not sure which ex-JBossians Cal was referring to, but I know, for example, that the Ringside Networks guys created and launched a new project and company at OSBC. All of the code is out in the open and that team is actively recruiting folks to participate in their project. I actually think it's healthy for people from JBoss, Red Hat, and other open source companies to branch out and start new projects/companies. It helps ensure that open source continues to expand its reach and useful footprint.

The business of open source can be done the right way...and it can be done the wrong way...which leads to some of Cal's other points:

"Free Download!=Open Source": I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree. 'nuf said.
"Business people who work with open source consider it a business model": Open source is not a business model...it IMPACTS the business model. With easy and free access to the source code and binary distributions, open source takes an adoption-led approach to the market. It enables users to decide if the technology is worth using and if the project is worth interacting with. This results in a different approach to sales and marketing. Some things need to be done differently...otherwise you risk disaster for the business AND project. Do NOT confuse having a business associated with an open source project as selling out, being less transparent, etc. At JBoss, we worked hard at making sure we kept a balance between JBoss the company and JBoss the projects.
"Hire from your community": Relates to the business point above. Business and community CAN coexist. Professional Open Source leverages the $$'s generated by the business to further grow the community of interest, ensure future vibrancy of the projects, add new projects/technologies, etc.
"Transparency is the new black": Agree. This is actually what makes open source powerful! You can't afford to be half-pregnant here.
"Outsource everything that is not a core competency": Don't get me started on this topic! :-) I agree with your point 1000%; this is the basic core vs. context argument. If you try to outsource what makes you different...then what do you really have.
"If you take yourself too seriously, no one else will take you seriously at all": I also have issues with people who take themselves too seriously. Anybody worth their salt wants to be the best at what they do, so drive and passion do not necessarily equal "too serious". I find the most down to earth people are those that love what they do and who they do it with.

Good thoughts Cal...thanks for sharing.

Next-Gen Project Management?

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:10:00 +0000

After my last blog on Projity's OpenProj and Project-ON-Demand, I surfed around for recent articles covering the latest in Project Management software.

There was eWeek's "Next-Gen Project Management" which covered offerings from LiquidPlanner and Lunarr. I read this article a couple of times in order to figure out what exactly makes these two particular offerings "Next-Gen". To be honest, I was completely underwhelmed.

Project Management software has been around for a while...so when I see an article touting "Next-Gen", I want to see something that offers more than subsets of the standard "table stakes". I want to see something designed to change the game!

This is why I wrote about Projity. They appear to have all of the important "table stakes" project management features, and they have mixed in both open source and SaaS as game changers. This is a great start, but in an industry that has arguably rehashed a lot of the same-old, same-old stuff for the past 20 years....I'd like to see Projity kick it up a notch further.

What do I consider "Next-Gen" project management? An open source offering, available in standalone or SaaS models, that kicks it up a notch with social features that really add value and help projects come in on time, under budget, and with the minimal resources required.

So, that means, I'd like to see Projity leverage its strong open source and SaaS foundation and mix in social networking features that enable people to capture their thoughts, comments, ratings, pictures, videos, whatever for a given task (or set of tasks)...and gain leverage from the power of social interactions and socially-generated information.

Providing an easy way for people involved in the project to discuss and annotate the tasks with timely, context-appropriate information (text, audio/visual, etc.) that can help the collective group make better decisions...well that's valuable....and that would truly start moving the project management market to the "Next-Gen".

Projity: Open Source Project Management that is SaaS-y!

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:13:00 +0000

I spent 12 years (1988 - 2000) creating Project Management software at Primavera Systems , and since I'm an open source guy, I always figured it was a matter of time before an open source alternative emerged that was good enough to disrupt Microsoft Project.

Well, that time has come. I recently downloaded Projity's OpenProj, and for those who still think that "open source" means less feature/function....well think again.

OpenProj offers all of the typical project management bells and whistles found in products like Microsoft Project...only in a more approachable, open source offering. After installing OpenProj, I started off by opening some of my old Microsoft project files and poof...they opened up right away and looked great.

I still need to play with it more deeply, but the product feels nicely polished. This, of course, made me curious as to who is behind the company. A look at the management team yields expertise from Scitor (which always boasted nice graphics) and WebProject (one of the early hosted, web-based solutions).

I have not yet tried out Projity's Project-ON-Demand, which is their hosted SaaS (software-as-a-service) offering, but at first blush, it appears to offer much of the feature richness of OpenProj directly in the browser.

So for those who don't want to install software, you can use Project-ON-Demand. For those who prefer a desktop app, OpenProj is a great choice.

IBM's Interest in EnterpriseDB

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:30:00 +0000

Like a few others, I found IBM's choice to make an investment in EnterpriseDB kinda interesting. Matthew Aslett (the 451 group) got the following quote from IBM in explanation:
"IBM has become a minority shareholder of EnterpriseDB. This affords us an opportunity to continue to participate in, and gain further insight into, the open source community. This complements other experiences such as with the Linux, Apache and Eclipse communities and previous investments we’ve made in Red Hat and Novell. IBM has been a long-time supporter of Open Source communities, and we continue to see interest among our clients for Linux and other Open Sources solutions. This investment supports our overall strategy to support Open Source solutions in the marketplace to further enable our customers to implement business-critical solutions"

If I'm in EnterpriseDB's shoes, I'm digging this quote since being thought of in the same breath as Linux, Apache, and Eclipse sounds like strategic company to me. After all, in my opinion, a large part of Red Hat's success can be attributed to the early investments and marketing done by IBM (as well as HP, Oracle,and others) on its behalf.

The quote above also tries to minimize the importance, of course, but why would IBM invest if it just wanted an arm's length relationship?

To me, this move is a typical IBM long-term strategy play. They are always looking 5-10 years down the road (which equates to 1-2 Big Blue Dog Years). And while EnterpriseDB is not going to immediately displace Oracle for the high-end database needs, they still have an interesting market opportunity.

Savio Rodrigues (IBM WebSphere dude) posted on this topic and asked the question:
"What do you think, does EnterpriseDB have a brighter future by targeting Oracle users that want "Oracle like features for MySQL prices" or by targeting MySQL users who have "hit the wall"?"

Since EnterpriseDB is built on Postgres (which has been around a long time and is quite stable) and since they provide an Oracle compatibility layer, my answer would be "Yes" and "Yes". I think they compete for general database business with both Oracle and MySQL.

Bottom-line: This investment by IBM gives them a potential future play that neither their DB2 nor their Cloudscape/Apache Derby investments address directly. Now we just need to wait 1-2 Big Blue Dog Years to see how it all plays out.

UPDATED: The EnterpriseDB One-Two Punch
Savio replied to my blog with "I agree in principal that EnterpriseDB will continue to go after Oracle & MySQL. But in practice, they need to pick one segment to be their primary focus, or else they risk less than optimal results in both."

While I agree with Savio that focus is usually a good thing, my experience at JBoss, for example, also taught me that sometimes you've gotta lead with a one-two punch. At JBoss, we had momentum from new application development projects AND momentum from BEA migrations. Both were valid and lucrative focus areas. We actually had solid WebSphere migration business too, but we treated those more opportunistically than strategically since battling IBM is always more complex.

Anyhow...my point is that if EnterpriseDB's Oracle compatibility is any good, then over the longer-term, they can drive solid business. Ex. think through the Oracle upgrade cycle (when faced with moving from an older version to a newer version....should I consider EnterpriseDB??). The combat with MySQL clearly will heat up over time...but I still think they need to milk the Oracle opportunity.

I'm just a Philly guy who loves a nice one-two punch. :-)

OFF TOPIC: McCain Just Lost My Vote?

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun Connolly) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:29:00 +0000

This post is a bit of an inside joke for my fellow Bluestone crew.

I stumbled across the following article: McCain Embraces Tech Executives For White House Push - TechCrunch Interviews Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina was HP's CEO when HP acquired Bluestone in 2001. Bluestone pretty much got lost in the shuffle after HP acquired Compaq...or as I like to describe it...when the giant anaconda swallowed the wildebeest. Yes folks...it was physically possible for HP to swallow Compaq...but it looked ugly going down.

Anyhow, I always got the impression Carly was positioning herself for politics, so the above news is not a shocker. It's just that my Carly-nerve...twitch twitch...is still sensitive after all these years.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer my CEOs to have a vision and drive a company to success. Looking at the performance of HP CEOs over the past decade...I must say that I'm impressed with Mark Hurd's performance.

My momma taught me that if you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all.
:-)