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29 August 2009 Contradictions Abound—What Seems New Is Ancient—Sorting through the Clutter to Create Value
 Digital social networks are transforming every field of human endeavor, from society and romance to politics and business. This is happening because they change the economics of how people discover, develop and maintain relationships. Although some will argue this point, we humans share with other animals the propensity to take more of something desirable when given the chance, and social networks enable us to have more relationships.
However, as I predicted in the Web 2.0 Adoption Curve, 2009-2015, there will be a significant backlash against social networks during 2009-2010 because the market’s perceived value of social networks is much higher than its skill with the tools. This will result in inflated expectations and ensuing disappointments. Most executives are distracted by social networks’ strangeness and features, and they miss the obvious, that social networks offer a quantum leap in productivity for developing and managing relationships. Much of the market will reject social networks as a fad and will sit on the sidelines during the Failure & Disappointment part of the adoption curve. However, people and companies that understand the real proposition will develop a rare competitive advantage while competitors are snoozing.
15 July 2009 How an Injection Attack Took us Offline, and How We Fought Back—Remediation and Prevention Guide
 Last week I had just published a highly visible post (the Analysis of #snc2009, the Social Networking Conference), and I was just starting to promote it when I discovered that Global Human Capital had been blacklisted by Google for distributing malware! This effectively branded us with the scarlet letter. Global Human Capital runs on WordPress, is hosted on Network Solutions’ infrastructure, but we ended up on the wrong side of the numbers on Thursday.
This post will be useful to blogmasters who may not think of themselves as Webmasters but who face the increasing threat of malware attacks, which are increasing geometrically. The time is getting closer when you or someone you know will be affected. I’m not an engineer, but I got hacked, and this is a quick resource in which I aim to cut your learning curve. It took me four days to figure out what had happened and what I had to do, which I’ll share below. I also include what I’m doing to prevent future attacks to my websites and blogs. I invite your comments and suggestions.
First I’ll explain what happened, how I got us back online and what I’ve done to prevent reoccurrence. If you have an emergency and want to skip the context, skip Anatomy of a Malware Attack, and go directly to the Malware Bootcamp. Think of this as a guide, as I’m compiled many useful links, too. Although it’s written from the perspective of using WordPress, LAMP, Mozilla, Google and Mac OS X, I’ll attempt to write it so it will be useful regardless of the tools you use to manage your blog or website.
9 July 2009 Obtuse and Faulty Authentication Process Takes the Checkered Flag
 A Ferrari without a Starter
Chicago, 8 July 2009—Apple over delivers in many categories, and today the company can be proud of its latest accolade: the coveted Web 0.2 Citation. To win by such a landslide, the company had to prove its ineptitude over a period of several months, consistently inducing pain to customers during the Mobile me authentication process. Its performance was hands-down one of the finest examples of yechsperience this year. Here is the report from the judges:
27 January 2009
Twitter and Facebook Top of Mind | #snc2009 | Awaiting Discovery: The Nascent Power of Weak Ties and Small Touches
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 What 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 using social networking to evolve their companies by opening up to customers and adopting P2P, two-way communications.Yammer’s David Schwartz and Faceforce’s Clara Shih presented two tech innovators that promised significant disruptive potential. SAP’s Steve Mann, Opera’s Thomas Ford and Dow Jones’ Tom Aley all shared fascinating social networking elements of their portfolios, which were all enterprise-focused. Awareness Networks’ John Bruce was on hand to share good practices and pitfalls. I presented the only industry-focused preso, focused on how social networks were beginning to disrupt the U.S. healthcare industry. I also gave the pre-conference workshop, Successful Social Networking Projects in the Enterprise.
Between my workshop and conference track, I scribbled enough notes to share the high points of many of the tracks, which I’ll summarize before offering Analysis and Conclusions. The reportage follows this convention: the summaries are from my notes of speakers’ remarks, and [when a sentence is bracketed], it is a comment. Click on logos for abstracts of the tracks.
29 December 2008
Conventional Wisdom Scuttled—Disruption Preview—Business in the Batter’s Box
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 Barack 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, I’ll go on record now as predicting that you will experience Obama’s use of social media increasingly in 2009, and I believe that the election will prove to be only the beginning: the Obama Administration will leverage social media in governing. Although Global Human Capital endorsed Obama, I have no inside knowledge of the campaign or its strategies. Obviously, this is a huge subject, so I will use this post primarily as a way to frame an ongoing discussion so that it may prove valuable to business and government executives.
Continue reading Web 2.0 Case Study: Barack Obama’s Use of Social Media
2 August 2008
Enterprise 2.0 and B2C Web 2.0 Show Serious Traction—But Social Sticky Wickets Remain—How to Trust?
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 The 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 the armed services. Start-ups Twitter, Mowave, Faceforce and many others gave fascinating examples of innovation along several vectors. I beta-released the Social Network Roadmap in my presentation and moderated a panel with Visible Path, Jigsaw and LinkedIn in which we discussed various aspects of how enterprises were using social networks. IBM’s Rawn Shah offered a useful network for “social context” for planning and solutions for social networks.
Notable, too, was Daniel Brusilovsky’s very lucid presentation, “Social Networks: a Teen Perspective. Daniel is the 15 year old founder of Teens in Tech.
I have coverage of all these tracks, which I’ll summarize before Analysis and Conclusions. The reportage follows this convention: the summaries are from my notes of speakers’ remarks, and when a sentence is parenthesized, it is a comment. Click on logos for abstracts of the tracks.
29 June 2008
Reexamining “Content” in Light of “Conversation”
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 Web 2.0 is redefining content on the Web, and Duo Consulting’s and Content Wrangler’s Web Content 2008 Chicago, convened at the UBS Tower on June 17-18, 2008, was a rich opportunity to check in with the Web 1.0-Web 2.0 mashup. Embedded within the legacy concept of “content” (text, pictures, audio, video, etc.) is that few people create it and many people consume it, which is obviously less true with every passing month.
Something else is happening on the way to the forum, too: opinions about content are gaining more attention than the content itself, according to Day One keynote Dick Costolo. If so, where does that leave people who “manage” content? There is a whole ecosystem of professionals and vendors that manage content according to Web 1.0 rules, and many of them were here, sharing their visions and tactics for embracing Web 2.0. Day Two keynote Jerome Nadel provided a clue: a shift in emphasis to design: since “users” are creating the opinion content through their “conversation,” I’ll hazard that a key part of the concept of “management” will be providing a better whiteboard that enables people to share what and how they want with whomever they want when they want.
 Moreover, everyone had control issues. Speakers as a group did not agree whether consumers were in control now or whether content creators still prevailed. Chris Anderson’s adage kept flitting across my mind, “We live in an ‘and world,’ not an ‘or world’.” The conversation will not replace content; it will play with it. The two will synergize. As usual, I have summarized the remarks of speakers whose sessions I attended, and I’ll wrap with my own Analysis and Conclusions.
27 June 2008
How Consumer-Generated Content Is Contributing to Transparency in Healthcare
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 Healthcare systems worldwide are criticized for falling short of expectations, and countries like the U.S. which feature aging populations, are rapidly approaching a crisis. Demand and cost will grow, but the system as currently structured will certainly break down unless radical changes are made. Web 2.0′s disruptive potential can be part of the remedy: we need to introduce much more accountability and collaboration into all parts of the system. We need to change the paternalistic attitudes that pervade the system, treat patients as active participants and encourage everyone to be more accountable. This series introduces healthcare Web 2.0 innovators.
Business Drivers
Consumer-directed healthcare is an attempt to decrease U.S. healthcare costs by giving healthcare consumers (patients) a financial stake in the healthcare they access. At the consumer level, most programs consist of two parts, a high deductible health policy to protect against catastrophic expenses and a health savings account (HSA), which consumers use to pay the majority of their healthcare expenses. HSAs are tax-advantaged: in most cases, the consumer pays for healthcare cost pre-tax (healthcare costs reduce the tax rate). The consumer can save unused healthcare funds for following years.
Continue reading Consumer Disruptors: Healthcare Web 2.0 Innovator Case Study
26 June 2008
How a “Facebook for Health Conditions” Is Redefining Privacy and Collaboration
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 Healthcare systems worldwide are criticized for falling short of expectations, and countries like the U.S., which feature aging populations, are rapidly approaching a crisis. Demand and cost will grow, but the system as currently structured will certainly break down unless radical changes are made. Web 2.0′s disruptive potential can be part of the remedy: we need to introduce much more accountability and collaboration into all parts of the system. We need to change the paternalistic attitudes that pervade the system, treat patients as active participants and encourage everyone to be more accountable. This series introduces healthcare Web 2.0 innovators.
Business Drivers
PatientsLikeMe is a digital social network where patients of chronic, life-changing diseases share detailed quantifiable information about themselves, their diseases and their treatments’ effectiveness. The goal of the site is to improve quality of life by sharing information.
Continue reading PatientsLikeMe: Healthcare Web 2.0 Innovator Case Study
25 June 2008
New Life Sciences Accelerator Leverages Digital Social Network—Inspired by LinkedIn and Facebook
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 Healthcare systems worldwide are criticized for falling short of expectations, and countries like the U.S. which feature aging populations, are rapidly approaching a crisis. Demand and cost will grow, but the system as currently structured will certainly break down unless radical changes are made. Web 2.0′s disruptive potential can be part of the remedy: we need to introduce much more accountability and collaboration into all parts of the system. We need to change the paternalistic attitudes that pervade the system, treat patients as active participants and encourage everyone to be more accountable. This series introduces healthcare Web 2.0 innovators.
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Social Business Resources
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Digital social networks are transforming every field of human endeavor, from society and romance to politics and business. This is happening because they change the economics of how people discover, develop and maintain relationships. Although some will argue this point, we humans share with other animals the propensity to take more of something desirable when given the chance, and social networks enable us to have more relationships.
