A Journey In Social Media

The Great Taxonomy Debate

Sooner or later if you get involved in social media, or knowledge management, you'll get involved in the great taxonomy debate -- how do you set up categories so people will find things?

I think I've finessed the problem, but it will take a few months or so to see if I was right.

And perhaps it's one of those problems that just doesn't have an easy answer ...

OK, He Gets It

Well, he should.  It's Seth Godin, who does this social media stuff for a living.  Not an amateur piker like me.

I loved his most recent post.  I think you will too ....

Going Live

As I write this, it's Monday morning. 

We spent all of last week getting our first social media platform up and running and suitable for human habitation.

It was far more work than I envisioned.

Symmetry In Everything

LIfe is full of symmetry -- for every thing, there seems to be an anti-thing to balance it out.

It's true in particle physics, politics and pop culture.  And also in social media discussions in large companies.

So, if your experience is like mine, at some point you'll encounter the "anti-thing" -- maybe in several flavors -- and knowing what you're dealing with will help.

Why We Chose Clearspace

Sooner or later, you're going to have to chose a platform to get started.  Like any big decision that you can't easily revisit, there are a lot of forces pulling you in different directions.

For our purpose, we chose Clearspace by Jive Software. 

I thought I'd share with you our thinking, why we chose them, and our experiences so far.

SL: Conference Calls With Social Cues?

I wrote a bit about EMC's HR experiment in using Second Life to recruit.

But, there was an interesting application that came out of it -- one I want to explore at some future time.

Are Social Networks Dangerous As Business Tools?

So, a frequent topic of discussion is how should we think of social networking?  E.g. LinkedIn, FaceBook, et. al.

Now, remember, my job here is to harness this stuff for business purposes, and not rant about how cool all of this is.

And there are several observations that are making me very hesitant indeed.

Recruiting Initial Communities

I've come to think about the spread of social media (more properly thought of as community-building) as a viral phenomenon.  Create a couple of stong, virulent strains, and let nature do the rest.

But that brings up two interesting challenges -- one, how will you get the party started, and two, how will you manage the growth without bad mutations?

So, here's what we're going to do ...