Jonathan Mulholland

This time it’s Twitter that gets the simplifying treatment. I’d really like to see them do one on 37 Signals Basecamp; it would be a fantastic training video.

Common Craft Show’s YouTube channel and blog have plenty more common sense explanations - Zombies in Plain English is a particular highlight!

I don’t intend on this being a link blog, but these two presentations by Enterprise 2.0 Bloggers Scott Gavin and Daniel Siddle are just brilliant. My Dad pointed these out to me over the Christmas break, I’ve been meaning to share, and shout about them ever since.

‘Meet Charlie’ is a walk through of the web based knowledge and communication tools used by an internet savvy Project Manager.  All the key tools are in here; RSS, Blogs, Basecamp, Wikis, del.icio.us, Social Networks etc.  Particularly poignant are the two slides contrasting the tools ‘Charlie’ used 18 months ago and now.  Hands up anyone else who’s made a similar journey!

Daniel Siddle has written ‘Meet Charlotte’ as a response. If ‘Charlie’ is where early adopters are trying to lead Enterprise IT, then ‘Charlotte’ is a brilliant contrast as to where we are now. A great indication of just why the ’shadow IT’ phenomenon is on the increase.  Many of the ‘@work’ slides in the deck made me hmmm in agreement at the Enterprise 1.0 activities and issues they cause.

Both presentations are excellent pieces of work, that can be used to explain the relevance of Web 2.0 tools for Enterprise to almost any audience.  I’ve already shared them with a number of friends and colleagues, with high impact each time.

Needless to say I’ve tagged both of these as ’simple/brilliant’ in my del.icio.us bookmarks.

I’d be interested to hear of any similar presentation materials that can be used to introduce shadow IT and Enterprise 2.0 concepts.  If there are any you think I should be reading please drop me an email or leave a note in the comments below.

Twitter may be the current leading micro blogging service, but an obvious move by Google can turn that around overnight…

What Jaiku’s fans lack in numbers to Twitter, they certainly make up for in passion. A post by Jaiku co-founder Jyri Engeström apologising for the apparent lack of activity since the Google purchase, and follow up criticism from Ars Technica and ReadWriteWeb have sparked a micro debate!

A lot of these concerns are being driven by what happened to Dodgeball following their purchase by Google in May 2005. For those unfamiliar, Dodgeball was a promising early mobile based social network that alerted groups of friends to each others locations via SMS notifications. The service showed promise but Google never found a clear direction for developing it, and the founders famously quit Google last year.

ReadWriteWeb report this week that Jaiku is loosing the user numbers game to Twitter. Jaiku traffic fell by 30% last month, widening the gap between the two services:

These figures don’t look good, but this is a long game, and a clever move by Google could allow Jaiku to catchup to Twitter almost overnight.

What if Google where to build Jaiku into Android as the standard phone Address Book?  As soon as Android devices started to ship, Jaiku (whatever form it takes in the future) would gain hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of users rapidly.  This isn’t as crazy an idea as it sounds. As I’ve posted before, Jaiku was originally conceived as a location and status aware address book; many Nokia users who have the Jaiku S60 client application installed already use the service in this way.

A Jaiku Android address book would be a real game changer in micro blogging, and best of all it would almost seamlessly integrate into daily life. I realise this would not be without difficulties. The service would need to scaled to support a rapid uptake of users, and Google would no doubt have to be very careful in building in privacy safeguards and assurances. But the opportunity is there - Jaiku could easily catch up to Twitter this way, in fact the two services would then not necessarily have to compete. If Jaiku were so heavily integrated into my mobile it would become my micro blogging service of choice by default. I could then see myself, and other heavy Twitter users, reverse posting Jaiku updates to Twitter to share with others.

It’s great to see such passion and sense of ownership from Jaiku early adopters driving this debate. Also good to see that Jyri and the others are clearly listening to the ideas their users are having. Take a look through the articles Jyri has tagged on del.icio.us recently and you can see he’s personally watching the debate and the ideas Jaiku fans are discussing. As I’ve said before I firmly believe that Jaiku will play a big part in Google’s next phase - as part of this it can still catch Twitter.

Google’s acquisition of Jaiku back in October seems a long time ago now - such is the pace of the technology industry I guess. Subsequent OpenSocial and Android announcements have stolen much of the limelight since, but I keep coming back to the Jaiku purchase. I have a feeling that Jaiku is a bigger piece of Google’s new jigsaw than we’ve so far realised.

If Google simply needed a micro-blogging capability, why go for Jaiku and not Twitter? Twitter after all is the market leader in this growing sector, with an established and enthusiastic user base. Jaiku is certainly popular (especially in Europe) - but not close to Twitter when it comes down to size, popularity and ‘zeitgeist’.

There have been quite a few comments to the effect that Jaiku provided Google with a cheaper alternative to Twitter. Whilst what Google paid for Jaiku is certainly less than they would have paid for Twitter, I’m not convinced this is the reason.

We know Google have money to spend. If the purchase of a pure micro-blogging service was strategically important to Google then I’m pretty sure they would have found the money needed to buy the current leading service. Anyway it probably would have been cheaper still for Google to engineer some kind of status messaging feature directly into Google Talk and/or Gmail if that’s all they were after.

Why Jaiku then? I think the answer lies in mobility, specifically location and mobile integration.

Let’s look at location first. Jaiku is I think unique in combining micro-blogging AND user location awareness. For the uninitiated, when posting status updates Jaiku has the ability to capture and share the location information (neighbourhood, city, country) of the poster in real time. So in addition to a message post Jaiku can provide real time location awareness of users. Hmmm that’s interesting…

And how does Jaiku do this? An integral part of the service is a client application for Symbian S60 platform mobile phones. The client uses location APIs within S60 devices to triangulate the handset (and the users) location based on nearby cellular network towers. The Jaiku client was in fact originally conceived as a ’status aware address book’, and as such integrates into compatible S60 phones to the extent that it also shares the phones (and again the users) status availability ( - General, In Meeting, Outdoor etc).

So in addition to a message post AND location awareness you also have deep mobile integration sufficient to identify the status of a user as well. That makes things really interesting, and its this combination that I think is the clever part. Consider this thought:

Post + Location + Status = Value

If you’re a user of Jaiku, or Twitter for that matter, look back through some of your posts and you’ll see that you’ve built an outline profile of your life. Reading through my Twitter and Jaiku pages it’s reasonable easy to deduce that I’m a Mac geek, a fan of American TV dramas, enjoy listening to Radiohead, suffer from occasional migraines, like Indian food etc etc. Now consider what value is added by a service that knows where you are and also whether it’s appropriate to contact you (through your mobile phone) as you post updates.

Jaiku potentially gives Google the Holy Grail - time relevant, location based targeting of information, personalised to a very high degree. Google + Jaiku is not a million miles away from being able to push appropriate advertising to individuals based on their profile, their location and their availability. Imagine walking down the high street and having your mobile phone pop up with a Google notification telling you that Heroes DVD box sets were 20% off at HMV today, or that a new Indian restaurant had just opened in that part of town. Some may find that scary, and reminiscent of scenes from the film Minority Report, obviously as a technology ‘enthusiast’ I’m thrilled at the possibilities it opens up.

It seems obvious that Jaiku is destined to become an integral part of the the Android platform over the next year. No doubt Google will want the Jaiku engineering teams expertise in building the features outlined above into the Android offering. This is why I think Google went for Jaiku, and this is why I think Jaiku has a big role to play in the next phase of Google’s advertising platform.

If this isn’t what Google has planned for Jaiku, they should certainly think about it.

The internet is predictably buzzing tonight with news of Google’s Android mobile phone platform.Loads of good commentary about, most of it already shared via Robert Scoble in his infamous link blog. I particularly liked Michael Gartenburg’s take on the announcement (’this will prove to be far more disruptive to the mobile industry than if Google had simply announced a handset’). 

I think I agree, although the really smart part is that the Android strategy strategy capitalises on where the mobile phone industry is heading anyway.  In doing so, Google kind of repeat Microsoft’s move back when the Personal Computer market was about to explode all those years ago.

Sure the mobile phone market is already huge, and in some mature markets handset sales growth has slowed recently.  But something interesting is happening at the moment.  The distinction between non-smart and smart phones is disappearing rapidly.  A second phase in the market is emerging as the ubiquitous ‘dumb phone’ takes on smart phone features and evolves.  The mobile phone is becoming the new personal computing platform - the GPS, HSDPA, Email, High Res camera functionality of today’s Nokia N95 and other high end phones will be commonplace in a year’s time.  As these feature sets evolve typical usage of devices is gradually ‘deepening’.  Two years ago mobile internet was for geeks only, now it is reaching the tipping point into mass adoption.

The mobile phone will more and more be the device we use to store our data and interact with pretty much everything we value.  Google has realised this, and is therefore rightly not looking to just capture the geek and enthusiast market as it could have done by launching an uber-connected device of it’s own manufacture today.  Google is aiming for everyday users like my wife, who want a cool looking device that is friendly to use.  Giving the everyday majority of users simple and useful mobile access to Google services is the aim here. It’s far better to let Samsung, Motorola, LG etc to do what they do best (continue to evolve the feature set of devices with mass consumer appeal), whilst Google captures the operating system ecosystem for this new era in personal computing.  Google is almost pulling the same trick as Microsoft did all those years ago - very smart!

There are differences to be sure - the fact that Google won’t be charging OS licensing fees is the biggest.  This is merely a condition imposed by this marketplace.  The zero fee is needed to gain initial entry, but does anyone seriously doubt that there isn’t a sound business case behind this strategy?

Microsoft used to aim for a PC running Windows on every desktop. Google is anticipating a smart phone in every pocket and is aiming to be loaded on to as many devices as possible.  Personal computing will be mobile, and Google wants a big a slice of this.

More of an FYI than a post, but I’ve now got around to updating the ‘Elsewhere‘ and ‘About Me‘ pages of my blog. Check them out if you’re curious!

Lots around the internet today on the San Diego fires and also on how news was reported, disseminated and shared by ‘citizen journalists’ documenting their own experiences with various social media services - especially Twitter and Flickr.

I’ve read a number of thought provoking posts, pointing towards how reporting of news is changing in response to a) our desire for faster dissemination of information and b) mass journalistic enablement. I recommend these posts, all of which set me thinking:

Twitter hashtags for emergency coordination and disaster relief

California Fire Followers Set Twitter Ablaze

“The next disaster will be Twittered.”

California Wildfires - Using New Media to Communicate In A Crisis

We really are approaching a turning point in news dissemination. We want information quicker than traditional media sources can deliver, we want it pushed to us at point of the event, and we want to be able to engage with it as it happens.

I was shocked to realise yesterday that I now consider even traditional web news outlets to be ‘old’ and slow. I was frustrated that I was getting quicker/better updates on the fires from Twitter than from bbc.co.uk/news - and I’m of the generation that would rather look up the news on BBC or CNN than wait till the evening bulletin!

Surely traditional news outlets, and official news suppliers such as government agencies, fire departments etc will start using new/social media services as channels for disseminating official information. A FEMA Twitter account, properly managed, would be a valuable service. Easy for affected citizens to opt in or out of, and a quick fire method for sending advice, updates and warnings.

The San Diego fires this week have helped to demonstrate that social media communities such as Twitter are valued communication channels - especially so in extreme circumstances.

I love random late night trawls around the internet, I often discover the coolest new things this way! Last night I accidentally came across FriendFeed and immediately registered for a Beta invite; this morning I found an invite email waiting for me when I logged into Gmail.

FriendFeed is a ‘lifestreaming’ service, allowing an aggregated view of an individuals social-web content to be captured within a single web site. The aim is to make it easier for friends to connect and stay in contact over the web, removing the need to check multiple sites for personal updates as all information from that individual is pulled into a single location.

FriendFeed has an impressive team behind it. It was founded by Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh - all of who previously worked at Google, where they designed and worked on a number of Google’s big products including, Google Maps, the Google Maps API, Google’s developer program, Gmail and Google Groups. It’ll be interesting to see what this team can bring to the growing lifestreaming area.

Lifestreaming is becoming increasingly popular on the web as RSS becomes ubiquitous and usage of web services more varied. Probably the best known lifestreaming service is the Mini-Feed provided internally by Facebook to pull updates from an individuals profile to the Facebook News-Feeds of their friends. This lifestream is currently limited to within Facebook’s walled garden, whilst other services such as Jaiku let you create and share a lifestream more openly.

FriendFeed is a simple concept, very nicely implemented. After spending most of today playing with the service, I thought I’d do a quick walkthrough and summary of my thoughts.

After creating your account and picking a nickname, the ‘Services’ page allows you to easily add in the online accounts you want to pull into your FriendFeed from around the internet. A really wide range of accounts and feed types are supported. In about five minutes I had easily added my Blog, del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, Google Reader Shared Items, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube feeds to my profile. Streaming of Amazon.com Wish Lists, Furl, Google Shared Stuff, iLike, Jaiku, Netflix, Picasa Web Albums, Pownce, Reddit, SmugMug, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp and Zooomr services is also supported - a pretty exhaustive list. Incidentally I wasn’t able to add in my Amazon Wish List, but I assume this is because I use .co.uk rather than Amazon.com - I’m sure this will be fixed easily enough at some point. It was really easy to add in all my services, usually just a case of providing my account username, profile name or public page link.

Once added, all your activity from all of your specified feeds is pulled into your lifestream and displayed in ‘My Feed’. The page is nice and clear, quite ‘Twitteresqe’ in fact. All my specified feeds were pulled in instantly, unlike in Jaiku where feed latency is a common complaint amongst users. I also think that FriendFeed does a much nicer job than Jaiku in handling multiple activity entries. Note that in the screenshot my Last.fm and digg entries list the title of multiple items separately; in Jaiku anything after the first entry is buried into comments. I checked this with Twiter as well and can confirm that FriendFeed also displays rapid Twitter posts separately. RSS for this page is of course available so you can re-use your lifestream data pretty much any way you want.

The ‘Friends Feed’ and ‘Public Feed’ are similar to ‘My Feed’. Again the Twitter influence is obvious - this is definitely no bad thing! ‘Friends Feed’ combines your output with those of friends you are following. ‘Public Feeds’ lets you see lifestream info from across the whole community. Again RSS is available for both.

Adding friends to your account is easy - just search for an email address on the ‘Friends’ page. A nice touch is that you can associate multiple email addresses with your account, so that if you are known by a number of different email addresses friends should still be able to find you.

In addition to RSS for every page the FriendFeed team have obviously put a bit of thought into how you will want to use your lifestream feed externally. A nice java badge is available for adding your FriendFeed to a web site, but more important in my opinion is the Facebook application which quickly adds your FriendFeed to your Facebook profile.

Why is this useful I hear you ask, doesn’t Facebook already pull my activity into my Mini-Feed lifestream? This I think is one of the really clever uses of FriendFeed. To share my Flickr, Twitter, digg etc activity with friends through Facebook I need to add separate apps for each service, then get my friends to do the same or else my activities outside of Facebook won’t show up in their News-Feeds. With the Facebook FriendFeed application I, and they, only need to add this one app in order to share all outside social web activity within Facebook. Pretty cool! It’s meant that I’ve been able to tidy up my Facebook profile quite a bit, soon I’ll be inviting my friends to install the FriendFeed application as well.

Add to this the fact that FriendFeed gives Twitter and Pownce users the same (or even better) lifestream features than those provided by Jaiku, and I think that the service is on to a winner! It’s an easily usable way to pull together the largest range of separate social-web services I’ve seen so far. It presents your lifestream in a clear, accessible format providing a personal’Mini-Feed’ even for those who don’t want to use Facebook. I will defiantly be adding FriendFeed permanently to my social-web toolbox.

As a Beta Tester I seem to be able to send invites to friends, so leave a request in the comments section below if you want me to send you on a FriendFeed invite.

I was lucky enough to go to a lunchtime talk by Glen Drury, Yahoo Vice President responsible for Northern Europe earlier this week. The talk and QA session was the first ‘food for thought’ speaker lunch orgainised as an internal communications activity by our Consumer Marketing Communications Team. It was a small but seriously interested audience, and Glen was a very engaging speaker. Some of the things he said on ‘connectiveness’ really got me thinking…

Glen really displayed a strong passion for Yahoo and their web strategy, nicely summed up I thought as ‘Yahoo is about connecting - with people, with information, with communities’. Glen was impressively open about the challenges and tough choices being explored by Yahoo - he even discussed the infamous Peanut Butter memo in some detail (”many of the senior Yahoo team expressed the same thoughts, they maybe should have done more to play up the memo when it leaked”).

It was obvious that Yahoo are seriously focused on consolidating around ‘connectiveness’ and wisdom of crowds - I expect Flickr, del.icio.us, Upcoming etc to become more obviously ‘Yahoo’ over the next year. Now I use the ‘other’ search engine on a daily basis as much as the next person, but what Glen was saying really felt right. There’s a value in ‘the connect’ that I think Google doesn’t have. Being able to leverage connected relationships to find relevance (be it an event, a photo or some other piece of information) is seriously valuable collective knowledge management. It made me think about Yahoo in a whole new light.

One success story Glen was obviously very pleased with is Yahoo Answers. He gave the example of how the AA used Yahoo Answers to illustrate how brands can use social media to interact with customers and ultimately advertise whilst adding customer value. It made me think that Yahoo should look to find ways to offer Answers as a managed service as quickly as possible! Imagine a Yahoo powered ‘Vodafone Customer Service Answers’ site where customers and advisors could interact over the web to solve inquires and resolve issues. Customers could be rewarded for sharing their knowledge, crowd wisdom could help find the best answer to a query all done quickly and relatively cheaply over the web!

One small side note; after the talk I was raving to Glen about Jaiku, which at that point he wasn’t familiar with. About four hours later it was announced they’d been bought by Google! I’m pretty sure everyone will have heard of them soon!