Business 2.0 tools for collaborating
- Blogs
A blog, or Web log, is an online journal that allows users to post their own comments,
graphics, and video. Unlike traditional HTML web pages, blog websites let writers communicate—and reader’s respond—on a regular basis through a simple yet customizable interface that does not require any programming. From a business perspective, blogs are no different from marketing channels such as video, print, audio, or presentations. They all deliver results of varying kinds. Consider Sun Microsystem’s Jonathan Schwartz and GM’s Bob Lutz, who use their blogs for marketing, sharing ideas, gathering feedback, press response, and image shaping. Starbucks has developed a blog called My Starbucks Idea, allowing customers to share ideas, tell Starbucks what they think of other people’s ideas, and join discussions. Blogs are an ideal mechanism for many businesses since they can focus on topic areas more easily than traditional media, with no limits on page size, word count, or publication deadline.
Microblogs Microblogging is the practice of sending brief posts (140 to 200 characters)
to a personal blog, either publicly or to a private group of subscribers who can read the posts as IMs or as text messages. The main advantage of microblogging is that posts can be submitted by a variety of means, such as instant messaging, email, or the web. By far the most popular microblogging tool is Twitter, which allows users to send microblog entries called tweets to anyone who has registered to “follow” them. Senders can restrict delivery to people they want to follow them or, by default, allow open access.
Real Simple Syndication (RSS) Real Simple Syndication (RSS) is a web format
used to publish frequently updated works, such as blogs, news headlines, audio, and video, in a standardized format. An RSS document or feed includes full or summarized text, plus other information such as publication date and authorship. News websites, blogs, and podcasts use RSS, constantly feeding news to consumers instead of having them search for it. In addition to facilitating syndication, RSS allows a website’s frequent readers to track updates on the site.
- Wikis
A wiki (the word is Hawaiian for quick) is a type of collaborative web page that allows
users to add, remove, and change content, which can be easily organized and reorganized as required. While blogs have largely drawn on the creative and personal goals of individual authors, wikis are based on open collaboration with any and everybody. Wikipedia, the open encyclopedia that launched in 2001, has become one of the 10 most popular web destinations, reaching an estimated 217 million unique visitors a month.
A wiki user can generally alter the original content of any article, while the blog user
can only add information in the form of comments. Large wikis, such as Wikipedia, protect the quality and accuracy of their information by assigning users roles such as reader, editor, administrator, patroller, policy maker, subject matter expert, content maintainer, software developer, and system operator. Access to some important or sensitive Wikipedia material is limited to users in these authorized roles. 32
The network effect describes how products in a network increase in value to users
as the number of users increases. The more users and content managers on a wiki, the greater the network affect because more users attract more contributors, whose work attracts more users, and so on. For example, Wikipedia becomes more valuable to users as the number of its contributors increases.
Wikis internal to firms can be vital tools for collecting and disseminating knowledge
throughout an organization, across geographic distances, and between functional business areas. For example, what U.S. employees call a “sale” may be called “an order booked” in the United Kingdom, an “order scheduled” in Germany, and an “order produced” in France. The corporate wiki can answer any questions about a business process or definition. Companies are also using wikis for documentation, reporting, project management, online dictionaries, and discussion groups. Of course, the more employees who use the corporate wiki, the greater the network effect and valued added for the company.
- Mashups
A mashup is a website or web application that uses content from more than one source
to create a completely new product or service. The term is typically used in the context of music; putting Jay-Z lyrics over a Radiohead song makes something old new. The web version of a mashup allows users to mix map data, photos, video, news feeds, blog entries, and so on to create content with a new purpose. Content used in mashups is typically sourced from an application programming interface (API), which is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. A programmer then puts these building blocks together.
Most operating environments, such as Microsoft Windows, provide an API so that
programmers can write applications consistent with them. Many people experimenting with mashups are using Microsoft, Google, eBay, Amazon, Flickr, and Yahoo APIs, leading to the creation of mashup editors. Mashup editors are WYSIWYG, or What You See Is What You Get tools. They provide a visual interface to build a mashup, often allowing the user to drag and drop data points into a web application. Whoever thought technology could help sell bananas? Dole Organic now places three-digit farm codes on each banana and creates a mashup using Google Earth and its banana database. Socially and environmentally conscious buyers can plug the numbers into Dole’s website and look at a bio of the farm where the bananas were raised. The site tells the story of the farm and its surrounding community, lists its organic certifications, posts some photos, and offers a link to satellite images of the farm in Google Earth. Customers can personally monitor the production and treatment of their fruit from the tree to the grocer. The process assures customers that their bananas have been raised to proper organic standards on an environmentally friendly, holistically minded plantation.