Recently in Internet culture and politics Category

The ever-groovy Mark (@redeye) links to this funky service. I've just received my D from Twitter and apparently it will take " Mr. Tweet would take roughly 4.4 days to be ready to serve you. We know this sounds long, and we are working hard to speed things up!" so lessee now...

The Slideshare link

I recently had a QA on Linkedin with a guy who asked:

Community-based websites: the effectiveness of engagement and Interaction? There is still a real opportunity for them to be a leader using a community-based solution. How long will these community-based solutions continue to be effective?

Since about 2005 I've been getting a steadily increasing demand for sites that build, support or promote community. I was surprised by the above question as it was beginning to feel like pretty much every brand out their had gotten on the bus with varying degrees of commitment and success.

So I thought I'd drop my answer in hear for safekeeping:

If you rephrase your question slightly:

"What can my client do with interactive technologies to increase value co-creation and engagement?"

If the creation of social capital and the building of a value co-creation network become core business objectives then the worth of community-based efforts becomes self-evident.

A community can rally around an issue (changing legislation, agreeing safety standards for toys) or a task (designing the Lego Mindstorm, pushing GM towards sustainability) and collectively generate solutions. The alternative is a network of business development types driving around the country in cars. I gotta say, I like the website option better.

Please take note of Stephen's point about commitment. A thriving community does require investment in capital, in time, in risk management. Make sure you factor these issues into your planing.

> B to B is typically not a great area for community

I just wanted to add a comment about Tom's point above.

I have recently implemented "group pages" that allow insurance advisers to ask each other questions in a private, branded area. The service is hosted by the underwriting insurance company.

Here's what the value-map looks like:

1 - Each advisor builds her knowledge and feels more competent as a result of participating (similar to what we are doing here)

2 - The system reduces the number of calls to the underwriters which means they get more done in a day (their days become more valuable)

Created social capital:

The partner advisers deepen their engagement with the underwriting company. The experience of dealing with this company as opposed to one that doesn't provide this service is such that over time the business relationship is stronger (ie sales increase)

It's always worth trying to quantify this value when deciding what to build.

Experience value-mapping

I'm developing a methodology to map the co-creation of value by customers onto the traditional human-centred design assets we already use. I'm not sure where that's going to end up. Should I start another agency? (still a little sobered after the Pumpernickle experience) or do i just use this as a consultant, bringing the techniques to my day-to-day work?

In the meantime, feel free to ring me on 07515 661655 if you're a product owner and are trying to understand how value co-creation can impact your business requirement choices.

Oh thanks Mark this is just wonderful on so many levels :-)

Check out the The Overdub Tampering Committee manifesto

We are a group of musicians who have downloaded newly leaked albums by popular artists, quickly recorded many subtle overdubs over the work, and then re-leaked it to the internet.

Subverting Big Copyright in new and joyous ways...

OK one last post before bed... I've just been reviewing the impact my mucking about with the templates has had on old URLs and came across the old splorp post with the "powered by Newton" gif.

I click on the link and ta-dah! the Splorp Newton server is still running, still reliably serving both static and dynamically generated pages - not sure why that makes me so happy but it does :-)

Well I don't want to offend church-goers but this really got me: ascii-art messages from Dog in the source code. It's like playing the LP backwards but for my source-code generation :-)

How cool is that?

Have been catching up on US writers recently, and having just come into the office to discover our parent company is to be nationalised, I'm hoping those sleepless senators listened to voices like Joseph Stiglitz

If, as Paulson claims, banks get paid fairly for their lousy mortgages and the complex products in which they are embedded, the hole in their balance sheet will remain. What is needed is a transparent equity injection, not the non-transparent ruse that the administration is proposing. [...] The fourth problem is a lack of trust, a credibility gap. Regrettably, the way the entire financial crisis has been handled has only made that gap larger. [...] With lack of oversight and transparency the cause of the current problem, how could they make a proposal so short in both?

Aside from really pissing me off (odd getting pissed off at finance ministers but there's a first for everything) this comes just days after Tim started posting a set of thought pieces on transparency (he asked me to help with these which is how transparency has become an overnight obsession) which introduced me to Alan Knight and his organisation, Accountability.

Tim has posted a video of Alan talking about the need for credibility in the markets and the development of reporting and assurance in the markets. In particular, he describes using wikis as tools to empower the stakeholders of his new accountability standard.

Now there's a thought, didn't your mom tell you to never let yourself get pushed into things? Shame there wasn't time for congress to invite constituents to help write the recovery bill together via a US governement wiki!

Wow, I thought I'd be playing with RC5 for a while before getting the final release but no, the real thing is here. Go grab yourself a copy

With the long list of recent launch disappointments (with iPhone 3G by far the smelliest) I gotta say, Six Apart have not only delivered a hugely improved product (faster, more features) but a whole new license structure.

The new licenses are very much value co-creation engines. In a nutshell, let the mass of small businesses and bloggers use all the variations and toys for free, let them build on them, change them, and if they manage to scrape some revenue out of their enterprise, then ask them to buy services (primarily the excellent support) and pay for a commercial license.

I am very, very impressed and will be upgrading all my installations immediately. Great work 6A:-)

Yes, the A List Apart guys are running an improved version of the survey they did in 2007. It's good to feel one's industry is maturing, it somehow helps when trying to make plans for the future:-)

So why not take the survey yourself?

You know it doesn't get more cutting edge than this. First, after much stress and waiting, I jailbreak my iPhone and go in search of hot software. Great, open, free liberating productivity apps here I come and lo, I end up with the iFart, which pretty much does what it says on the can...

So yeah, post Jailbreak briccups (handset would cycle instead of turning off--made reseting impossible), have replaced iPhone and wait patiently for the 2.0 firmware to be delivered via proper channels and sync away with itunes and visit the app store and yes! I know have the iPhone light-saber app installed.

Surely our parents could never of conceived of such a wondrous world;-)