Tag Archives: twitter

19 April 2010

Twitter Goes all Gaga for Data

By Rick Ladd
Oh Boy, we're in twouble.

Where's this going . . . annotation-wise?

So it looks like Twitter is going to add annotations to their service. Developers will now have the ability to provide for “tacking on” (as I understand it) more information, whether it be metadata or some other type of distinguishing information, via newly provided fields or other ways of accessing the extra space provided. I came across, via Kendall Thiessen (@ideasurge), a very interesting article on the concept – with lots of discussion about the different ways in which it might be used (links, extended tweets, languages, etc.).

My favorite part of the discussion, written by Mal Curtis, is where he talks about what problems this new capability could surface. The first issue he raises is closely related – I think – to the long-standing issue (argument?) between the use of a taxonomy (with its accompanying structured vocabulary) and that of a folksonomy (which can be characterized similarly to the author’s as a “Wild West” approach).

I also really like the first comment, from R_macdonald, which begins (and I can’t tell if he’s being a bit facetious here or if he’s just a bit more wound tight than I am), “Good post Mal, you are on top of a remarkably extensible chance for substantive innovation on the Twitter platform.” He goes on to discuss the semantic web and Tim Berners-Lee’s dream for a far more transactional and interactive web. All very interesting in my estimation.

Not being a real Techie, though, I’m curious to know what others may thing about this upcoming addition to Twitter and how it will (or can) be used by others developing apps to utilize this extension of Twitter’s capabilities. Anybody out there?

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in E2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management

10 February 2010

So many places to “be” – I’m so cornfuzzled!

By Rick Ladd

Copyright 2010 GoogleWith the release of Google’s Buzz yesterday I have added yet another platform/channel to my ever-growing arsenal of social tools with which to engage and, especially, to learn from a long list of wonderful and generous people who willingly offer their intelligence, passion, and wit by freely sharing what they know. I don’t know about others, but even with locations that federate, or aggregate (oh hell, I’m not sure which it is), many of the places I “am”, I still find it difficult to completely see the larger landscape of the social  network I’m entwined with. Dion Hinchcliffe hints at Buzz portending a change in the way the “knowledge” of who we are, what we like, who we know, etc. is treated in his “First impressions of Google Buzz: Smart, useful, long road ahead“, posted yesterday. If I understand him correctly, Google is using algorithms that can draw context from the web, associated specifically with what our (singular and collective) behavior, connections, and interests are evidence of, and serve up relevant and (one would hope) useful information for us.

I hope this turns out to be the case. I’m reserving judgement for now, as it took  me at least six months after signing up for Twitter before I could see any use for it that made sense to me. If Buzz is anything like Twitter (only better) I plan on being a bit more ahead of the curve than before. Only time will tell, but the thought of having some help in making sense of all the chatter (including my own) is pretty exciting to me. We may end up with a half-dozen different “suites” (which will, no doubt, find some overlap in the apps used) for us to choose from and I’m torn over whether or not I would prefer some sort of standardization. Nevertheless, the reality for now – for me – is that I’ve been using Gmail and other Google platforms for many years and am unlikely to pass up a chance to get (and put) most of my info into their hands.

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7 August 2009

Social Computing Isn’t Just for Old Folk!

By Rick Ladd

I don’t suppose there are all that many people my age who get so much satisfaction out of all the social computing services and tools available on the Internet nowadays. If they do, I suspect they’re mostly on Facebook, as I am. There’s so much more available, though, and I’m trying to make the most of them. Sometimes it seems a bit overwhelming to try and keep up while also learning how these services can benefit my company (or any company – you never know) as well.

This evening was a great example of why I’m so enamored of them. The weather for the last couple of days has been quite temperate for southern California; far cooler than the previous week, when the temperatures were getting into triple digits. That was great for using the pool, but now I favor just sitting outside and enjoying the cool breeze that picks up at the end of the day.

While I’m sitting on the patio, enjoying at tall Scotch & water, I’m also using my Blackberry to communicate with people all over the country; sometimes all over the world. I have – on my BB – both Twitterberry and Facebook mobile, as well as my Gmail account. So I’m reading an email  from a friend in Florida, carrying on two Twitter conversations with friends in Texas and New York, taking and uploading a cute picture of my oldest (8 y/o) daughter, and reading a response from a friend in Arizona.

The connections available through the Internet are absolutely astounding and it pisses me off to think all this is coming in the late autumn of my life. Nevertheless, I plan on squeezing every last bit of connectivity, education, joy, and solace I can get out it before I move on. This in one awfully contented evening.

PS – As I sit here typing on my laptop, my daughter (who cannot yet type) is sitting next to me with a disconnected keyboard, mimicking my actions, Ooh! Sweet!

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6 August 2009

The Sky is Falling

By Rick Ladd

For the record, I am neither religious nor superstitious. However, enough things have gone wrong today to make me wonder if I shouldn’t at least be knocking on wood my house is still standing and (obviously) my fingers are still working.

The first thing to go on the fritz was our only service/tool I would consider a social tool where I work. We’ve had our IT folks and support from the vendor look at everything and each one of them, so far (time to put the hammer down), is looking at the machine logs and – seeing nothing untoward – shifting responsibility. The problem, however, remains and needs to be dealt with immediately, if not sooner.

So . . . then Twitter suffers a denial of service attack and is either down or clunky for hours on end. I was going through double withdrawal and it was beginning to make me twitch a little bit. Something had to be done.

Well, not much I can do about Twitter but, as the project manager for our internal social tool, I could raise a ruckus and get people doing something – collectively – to help fix this problem. So we get the vendor rep on the phone and he is always helpful and knowledgeable and we work with him frequently to resolve minor issues and discuss feature upgrades, etc.

The conversation starts out just fine but suddenly his phone starts distorting and cutting out. He tries using his cell phone and, after a couple of minutes, it drops from the call. He calls back and, again after a few minutes, it starts distorting again. As of now, we’ve been on and off the phone for over an hour, the problem still exists internally, Twitter stills seem famischt, but at least the phones kinda worked.

I’m wondering, the Perseid meteor shower is only six days away. Maybe Comet Swift-Tuttle is returning to slam us and we’ve just missed it. Maybe its the end-of-days, maybe the Mayan calendar is right or Nostrildamus hit it “on the nose”. Stay tuned.

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Business

5 August 2009

Blogging While Employed & Finding Value

By Rick Ladd

I’m finding it difficult at times to keep my mind on work, mostly because I want to follow the threads of the tweets those I follow on Twitter are providing – and it’s time consuming to do so. There is so much good information out there about how social computing can transform an organization – or even an individual (see Nancy White’s wonderful article here) – and I want to study it all.

I’m not exactly a newbie to this stuff, as I’ve been tweeting for around a year now, I’ve had a blog for seven or eight years, and I’ve been a member of Facebook for quite some time as well. However, the exigencies of my work and family life have kept me from participating as fully as I would like to. This is especially true of my work life. I want to write about it but worry I should not do so, as it might be perceived as disloyal or, heaven forbid, tantamount to sharing information they do not want to make public. I know all about the first amendment, but I like my job – despite the company’s hierarchical, command-and-control past and (mostly) present.

Thankfully, there is change in the wind as more and more people are discovering just how useful social computing can be and how important it is to the future of our company – especially as the market for our services is changing and the need to move from strictly government contracting to far more commercial endeavors increases. Our reluctance to change, I’ve discovered, is not limited to my industry (see this post) – which I find heartening, if somewhat disquieting.

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27 February 2009

Discounting Twitter

By Rick Ladd

A little while ago I was at a meeting with reps from an advertising agency that specializes in creating web presence for organizations. They’re pretty well known and have won a webby for one of their campaigns. My organization has never advertised by itself, though it has benefited marginally from ads by parent organizations (and there have been a few . . . organizations, that is).

I was impressed with the web savvy and the general tenor of the presentation these guys gave. Equally, I was happy with the direction our executives went in when discussing this stuff and their overall approach to moving in this direction. There was, however, one item that came up which disturbed me somewhat, and that was a discussion of Twitter in which they were summarily dismissive . . . which I think is a big mistake.

Now I’ll grant this – a business such as ours is not interested in tweets like “Just finished my croissant with black currant jelly. Starbucks is so yesterday”, or “Just finished walking the dog. Back with large bag of poop. Weather looks to be quite comfortable today”. Neither do we care about monetizing Twitter or some similar product. It’s not what we do. However, and this is true whether Twitter finds a way to monetize themselves of whether they just flat out go out of business, the concept of micro-blogging is NOT going to go away. It has too damn many use cases to be ignored.

One example I can think of off the top of my head (and I believe NASA is using this very model to prepare orbiters for missions) is for a geographically dispersed team to stay in contact with each other with respect to the completion of critical items that impact downstream activities. I have experienced numerous situations where the lack of communication regarding the completion of a step in a complicated series has resulted in the loss of a day or half day in the completion of the project. This is not trivial.

At any rate, I really think there are lots of use cases for Twitter within the enterprise. Dismissing it out-of-hand is foolish and short-sighted in my opinion.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in Business