Empirical Rationalism and Other Oxymora
Posts tagged Web 2.0
The Cost of Transparency
Dec 24th
Historically, much of the discussion that I’ve seen about transparency (particularly in an enterprise web 2.0 sense) centered around the notions of risk vs. the relative benefits. However, in a recent blog post, Chris Anderson (of Long Tail and Wired fame) discussed the energy and effort it takes to be transparent:
Perhaps most people can only be truly transparent about one thing at a
time. After all, it takes a lot of energy to loop the whole world into
every twist and turn of your progress. Transparency is hard work.
Constantly updating the world on your status can become a job all by
itself.
Personally, this is the biggest reason that I curtailed my blogging over the past year (and have been slow to pick up Twitter). Putting together cogent thoughts day in and day out (beyond, “I am now having toast with my coffee”) actually takes a lot of work. Chris agrees:
For all that Twitter and other microblogging makes lifecasting and
other status updating easier, for most people it still feels like
another obligation, taking time to do well and causing guilt when
neglected.
From an organizational perspective, this discussion raises an interesting dilemma — once you’ve introduced transparency, and your customers/employees begin to expect it, how do you continue to deliver on the implicit expectations that you have created? If you are transparent on some things and not on others, can you maintain a sense of authenticity? What about the Hawthorne effect?
The Rise of “Searchndising”
May 4th
One of my colleagues here at Aberdeen, John Lovett, is doing some interesting work on the online customer experience. He recently published on report on website search (available for free download for a limited time). I think one of the most interesting things to come out of the report was the notion of “searchandising”, or the convergence of search and merchandising capabilities. According to Lovett, more than half of leading online retailers use search as a merchandising tool and nearly two-thirds (62%) of those continuously fine tine results. The research indicates that retailers utilizing these technologies are more likely to convert browsers to buyers. However, despite the potential, many of the respondents (41%) spend very little time managing search; only 17% had dedicated staff and only a third (33%) spend more than 5 hours a week fine tuning search. This seems like a quick-win with a little time and effort.
MaSpace (Parenting 2.0 Style)
Apr 22nd
Since our daughter was born about 5 months ago, my wife has been looking for a local Mother’s group to join. She’s tried a few in other towns, but it just hasn’t worked out for one reason or another. My wife has talked about forming her own group, but didn’t want to commit to being the group leader and full-time organizer. Yesterday, we ran into another mom at the supermarket with the same problem. When we got home, it dawned on me that this is a perfect application for social networking software — I logged into Ning and about ten minutes later “MaSpace” was born. She’s sent out invites to all of the other mother’s that she knows and now has a self-governing forum for mom’s to plan outings, share experiences and post pictures/videos. Best of all, setting up the group was fast, free and sites like Ning offer pretty sophisticated user permissions to keep the wackos out. It should be interesting to watch how this develops.
Now, That’s What I’m Talkin’ About!
Mar 30th
I have posted before about the general need for a sensing mechanism to capture and monitor direct and indirect customer feedback. Check out this post and the comments by Pete and the Social Media team at Well Fargo. It is pretty cool to see this happening in live time. Well done to Wells Fargo.
This is How We Roll in a Web 2.0 World (or 37 Signals Revamps Highrise)
Mar 22nd
OK, now I’m impressed. Earlier this week, I reviewed 37 Signal’s new contact manager Highrise. I still think it is feature light compared to some other stuff out there, but just 36 hours after launch, 37 Signals has made (not announced… made) significant changes to the product and pricing based on early user feedback. Some of the major changes include:
- Everybody gets “cases”
- New “solo” version for freelancers ($29 per month)
- More contacts for free (from 25 to 250) and personal (from 250 to 500) accounts
- More storage at all levels.
37 Signal’s ability to sense and respond to customer feedback this quickly is truly impressive. Can you imagine how long this would have taken for an on-premises application vendor? Well done guys.
