2010 Predictions and Recommendations for Web 2.0 and Social Networks

2010 Predictions and recommendations for enterprise social networking and Web 2.0: how executives and enterprises can leverage social business to increase competitiveness. Understand how social networks are contributing to the end of the Industrial Economy: the importance of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, MySpace and focusing on relationships. […]

Year in Review—2009/Enterprise Social Networking Gains Legs on Heavy Seas

2009 year in review: insider’s knowledge of Web 2.0 adoption, enterprise 2.0, enterprise twitter, facebook for business, enterprise linkedin, the economy and social networking platforms. Case studies, analysis and practical advice for bypassing competitors. […]

Post-Product Marketing and Engagement

Drive customer engagement and brand value by focusing on the experience of using your product or service. This is the manna of word of mouth and social computing conversations. […]

2009 Los Angeles Social Networking Conference Highlights Enterprise Social Media Experience

Report and analysis on the Social Networking Conference #snc2009 featured enterprise social networking managers sharing their in-the-trenches experiences and advice: Electronic Arts, Nokia, Intel, Sun, Wal-Mart, Digg, HP, Oracle, Dow Jones, Yammer, Google. Learn about how social media is unfolding in the enterprise, enterprise 2.0 […]

Social Networking Conference: Reno Marioni on Mobile Social Networking Trends

Nokia’s vision for mobile social networking, and how it plans to muscle into the higher value chain using OVI.. how mobile with transform social networking via LBS location-based services […]

Recap Miami: Enterprise Social Network Workshop

Recap of enterprise social networking workshop for how to create a repeatable process for designing and managing successful enterprise social networking initiatives […]

Social Networks Reach Puberty: 2009 Miami Social Networking Conference Shows Broad Enterprise Case Studies

Twitter and Facebook Top of Mind | #snc2009 | Awaiting Discovery: The Nascent Power of Weak Ties and Small Touches

Design 4What a difference a year makes! The Social Networking Conference debuted several years ago as a forum for social networking sites and vendors, with enterprise clients few and far between. Miami 2009 took place January 22-23, 2009 at the Miami Beach Convention Center, and it was a veritable enterprise 2.0 conference. Many of the presenters hailed from enterprise-focused high technology vendors, but they spoke as social networking practitioners. The good practices they shared reflected the maturation of social networks. Don’t get me wrong, we are still in early days, but it was obvious to see that social networks would be completely mainstream this year. Enterprise-focused vendors provided additional evidence by explaining some of the new social network features in their offerings.

Social Networking Watch’s Mark Brooks gave an overview of key trends, while jetBlue’s Morgan Johnston and IBM’s Adam Christensen drove home the message that companies could be rewarded for trusting their customers in social networks. Ford’s Scott Monty, Sun’s Lou Ordorica and Microsoft’s Marty Collins shared how they were […]

Web 2.0 Case Study: Barack Obama's Use of Social Media

Conventional Wisdom Scuttled—Disruption Preview—Business in the Batter’s Box

election2008_eecBarack Obama’s presidential campaign was more than a major social media milestone because it ushered in a new relationship model among leaders and their supporters. Due to social media, an unprecedented number of individuals had a new kind of active, direct role in Obama’s campaign; moreover, I predict that the Obama campaign and imminent administration will change citizens’ and consumers’ expectations of “leader” and “follower” roles in government and business. Amazon.com changed consumers’ expectations about retail in general—information on demand, reviews, unbelievable variety at low prices—and a significant portion of Obama supporters will want to continue their support to “make the change happen.” These supporters will bring their changed expectations of action and collaboration to their vendors. That means your company.

The Obama campaign is very instructive to business leaders because business customers are changing expectations of their leaders, as we’ll discuss in more detail below. As the Global Human Capital Journal is not primarily focused on politics, I am less interested in the fact that Obama was elected than how he was elected. Moreover, […]

Enterprise Digital Social Networks: Executive Adoption Snapshot 2008

2009 Poised as Inflection Point in Enterprise Usage—LinkedIn Increases Relevance to B2B Executives

P2P_worldDuring the 1990s, I was intimately involved with helping global organizations to decentralize their information technology—as a management consultant and marketing executive. However, a far more disruptive force is imminent today: communications and marketing are rapidly evolving into a networked, distributed pattern, following IT’s lead. Individuals that congregate online will have an increasing role in affecting how other people make decisions, significantly weakening the influence of the mass media on which many marketing strategies depend. Organizations that depend on centralized, controlled communications will be astonished at how fast they become irrelevant over the next five years. Although the case studies are still being written, I’ll go on record as saying that the 2008 U.S. presidential election will prove to be an inflection point of digital social networks’ disruptive potential.

LinkedIn is a leading venue for B2B and B2C executives, so it merits significant attention. The inputs for this Executive Adoption Snapshot are varied: I have had the opportunity to work with hundreds of executives to apply LinkedIn to their business processes in 2008. I met two LinkedIn executives […]

San Francisco Social Networking Conference Provides 2008 Mid-Year Adoption Snapshot

Enterprise 2.0 and B2C Web 2.0 Show Serious Traction—But Social Sticky Wickets Remain—How to Trust?

SNC-logoThe Social Networking Conference (SNC) was an excellent place to check the pulse of Web 2.0 adoption from customer and provider perspectives. Producer Marc Lesnick explained in his opening remarks that, in the months preceding this conference, corporations had knocked on his door asking to get involved. His Ticonderoga Ventures had held several SNCs over the past few years, and it had been largely the purview of social networking start-ups and their facilitators. This is a very apt indication of the enterprise adoption predicted by my State of Social Networking Forrester coverage and 2007 Review.

SNC SF 2008 took place July 10-11, 2008 at the UC San Francisco’s Mission Bay Conference Center. It was a focused conference that balanced start-ups’ and enterprises’ innovation—with a dash of perspective from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Social Networking Watch’s Mark Brooks. On the enterprise side, GE’s Grewal and GM’s Denison covered the enterprise 2.0 and B2C Web 2.0 perspectives respectively, while the U.S. Air Force’s Adkins presented nascent cross-boundary collaboration in […]