The great game on the Internet is to own as many of the disparate pieces that make up The Internet Operating System.   The pieces of this puzzle are many (and well covered in Tim O’Reilly’s post on the same which can be found here):

• Identity (Think Facebook)
• Search (think Google or Bing)
• Photos (think Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa)
• Music (think Apple, Amazon)
• Software (Think Google Docs, Salesforce etc.)
• Storage and computation (Think Amazon, VMware, Rackspace)
• Location (Think Foursquare, Facebook)
• Video (Think YouTube, Netflix)
• Content Management (think WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger)
• Telepresence (Think Skype, Cisco or AT&T)
• Etc.

The major players in this battle royal are slugging it out and Google Plus is the latest entrant.   It is a big one.   If any single player is to win they will need to embed the social functionality that brings the disparate pieces together.    Here is why:

Social is identity. Social motivates people to fill in structured information and maintain a complex profile.  It also moves them to self-organize into groups.  This is the magic of Facebook (and to a much lesser extent Twitter) and is the vital (and slightly terrifying) future of advertising/marketing.  Identity also enables frictionless sign in across the various services.

Social is the network effect – the more people connected to any of the above services the more value it has since it is has wider reach and more openness to sharing and co-creation.  To wit, Euan Semple’s comment this morning on switching from Flickr (Yahoo) to Picasa (Google).

Social is the distribution service – Services increasingly rely on peer-sharing as the means of distribution and credibility in public consciousness.   Services passed along via social networks are implicitly (and explicitly) credentialed.

Social is productivity – The next frontier of productivity is real-time collaboration which is driven by shared (read social) services in the cloud – from Google Docs to Salesforce.

Social is Discovery - As the signal (meaning) to noise ratio grows on the Internet, social is the discovery filter that enables us to quickly find what is needed and move on.  Those able to embed social as a filter within search will win.

With that in view – a quick screenshot of the revamped Google Plus interface shows how many of these pieces Google has in play.

What do you think?  Does Google Plus Represent a major shift in the Internet OS front?

Related articles

• Tim O’Reilly – State of the Internet Operating System (itc.conversationsnetwork.org)
• Google Plus as Google’s glue (charman-anderson.com)
• How Google+ Transformed Picasa Web (googlesystem.blogspot.com)

Fundamental to the Internet as a many-to-many communications network  is the notion of disintermediation.   Everyone has their own broadcast tower and doesn’t need a middle-man to  put their voice into a public forum.  What’s more is the ability to turn a monochromatic broadcast event into a multifaceted, interactive experience.   Strange case in point,  I am right now watching the coverage  of the Royal Wedding live on the couple’s YouTube channel.   While it is being broadcast in the mainstream television stations, the YouTube channel provides something quite different:

• It has provided an always-on prelude to the main event – enabling on-demand access to the story as it unfolds: wedding plans, musical schedule, costume design and so on.  Whatever piques your interest becomes the path you take into the story and enriches your sense of the main event.
• It goes well beyond broadcast by connecting to a host of Internet service such as Maps of the wedding route, wedding book etc. providing a richer set of interactions
• It enables viewers to convert well wishes into positive action through donations to charity
• It allows you gain a semblance of intimacy by  “Send[ing] your Message…” to the couple

It is one more example of how the Internet can put you at the center of a multifaceted story – allowing you to choose what interests you, and participate beyond the broadcast.  I am not much of a royal family watcher – but it is a great example of tapping the potential of the internet to put people at the center of a story.

Related articles

• The Royal brand engagement (econsultancy.com)
• YouTube to stream royal wedding live (macworld.com)
• Prince William and Kate Toss Fans a Digital Bouquet (livescience.com)
• Royal YouTube channel to stream wedding live (news.nationalpost.com)

My new article for Forbes covering the real-time web is out this morning here:

There is a lot of fuss and confusion over the term “real-time Web” epitomized in this recent comment on O’Reilly Radar:

“I’ve been baffled about all the hype surrounding the ‘real-time Web’ in the past few months. Other than breaking news (which I already had no trouble finding online) I don’t see why everyone is excited about searching real-time content.”

To answer the question, real time is a big deal and it goes way beyond searching content on Twitter. Here’s why:

But real time has the most compelling possibilities for human interaction. Humans operate in real time–we receive information, process it and react in real time. Slowly our entire media and communications infrastructure–what Marshall McLuhan called “The Extensions of Man”–are moving into real time. On the Web this is most commonly understood through services like Twitter or Facebook where communications with your friends and their status updates flow as a constant, up-to-the-second feed. But that is just the beginning. The real-time Web is being used to coordinate group action as it happens–from protest actions in Tehran to Moldavia to California. As a consequence, the next decade will be defined by the rights and regulations surrounding privacy, anonymity, free speech and the right to electronically assemble–as citizens flock to the Internet as a means of promoting civil change.

Real-time systems also help to build social bonds and accelerate knowledge sharing. The power of Twitter goes beyond the information that flows through it, or the fact that it serves as an effective channel for “breaking news.” Twitter’s power lies in the fact that it helps broker social connections. As John Hagel, the renowned business and technology strategist, points out: In times of rapid change the type of knowledge that is valuable shifts from explicit (what can be contained in a document) to tacit (what is contained in a person). The promise of knowledge management lies in connecting people with other people, not with documents. Real-time communication flows will play an increasing role in making sure the questions find the right person (as opposed to the right document) and that we are in a continual state of connectivity.

Real-time testing feedback loops also put a premium on building a learning organization. Winners, on the Web and off, will be dynamically testing and improving closer to real time. Another way to think about this is to consider how Google would run your business–where every user action is used to provide a better service to the next customer. Considering the actions of your users as implicit feedback to continually refine your service is the heart of Web 2.0. It is also the future of being competitive in business.

With the rise of real time we are moving from lagging indicators (customer surveys, focus groups, long product cycles) to leading indicators (online analytics, real-time optimization, lean start-up methods for business). The lag time between question-and-answer and between customer response and company reaction is the arbitrage opportunity for many businesses today.

If the ’90s metaphor for the Internet was “the brain”–a giant, storage and processing system for all the world’s information–the new metaphor is the Social Nervous System, where all of this information is bound up with ubiquitous, real-time communications and used to direct activity in the world. In the Social Nervous System, the boundaries between online and offline become extremely blurry.

We are just scraping the surface of a real-time revolution–but make no mistake, it is a big deal. That is breaking news.

I have been working for a few months on a Radar post titled “Anonymity is the Fifth Estate” –I have been buried in work and haven’t been able to pay it the attention I believe that it deserves.

The core premise around Anonymity as the Fifth Estate is this:

Journalism, as the fourth estate ensures that the actions of the powerful are made transparent to the public. As its counterpart, the ability to organize, communicate and coordinate political group action with anonymity is critical to maintaining a free society.  In other words, anonymity is crucial to having a public willing or able to do anything about what journalism uncovers.

While we have been wringing our hands over the loss of newspapers this year, I fundamentally believe that journalism will come out OK… I can’t say the same for the prospects of remaining anonymous in civic life.

The mix of sensor tracking, facial recognition technology, GPS in every mobile phone, the increasing ubiquity of surveillance cameras in urban centers, and the massive consolidation of identity brokers such as Facebook and Google make anonymity increasingly difficult – online or off.

Corporations from Sprint (who gave away customer data 8 million times in one year) to Facebook, (whose new privacy policies have been roundly criticized) are in it for business – not high-minded civics.

The convergence of online consumer tools that trade off of identity and location doesn’t bode well for privacy and anonymity in civic life.   These tools encourage sharing as a core part of their model.   Sharing and making your information public encourages network effects which are core to Web 2.o business models.  Network effects lead to winner-takes-most markets (aka monopolies) in a market (the internet) that has 1.7 billion members and growing.

I predict that in 2010 privacy will come into its own as a uniquely 21st century concern.  What will it take for that to happen?   Two things:

First, a first class Tiger Woodsian privacy breach.  Not sure what that means yet – but I would imagine it to involve Facebook, third party holders of your publicly identifiable information (every quiz you ever took knows just about everything about you and your friends) and some cross-hack into a financial services firm.  Call it identity theft 2.0.  Mi

Second, the emergence of a  clearer language to describe privacy.  Just as the Eskimos famously have seven words for snow – we need a more refined language to speak about this issue.  Privacy is vague and means different things to different people.   Law follows language.  I once read an essay that until “date rape” was in the common vernacular it was hardly a prosecutable crime.

What do you think about Privacy?  Is it overrated?  Am I an alarmist?

Web 2.0 hinges upon the notion that online users add value through (1) explicit co-creation;  think of Dell’s Ideastorm or Threadless, (2)  their behavior; think Amazon’s recommendations “people like you also bought…” or (3) the meaning implicit in their actions; think of how Google uses your search behavior to improve each subsequent search result.

Web 2.0 businesses leverage user contribution to build valuable, unique data sets.   The more users, the richer the data – The richer the data, the better the resulting good or service.

Security hinges upon the notion that users add risk and new technologies increase vulnerability.   Where Web 2.0 puts a premium on open networks and user contribution, our models of security seek to create limits to both.

In many engagements the  question comes down to finding a balance between the proponents of Web 2.0 (usually marketing or innovation officers) and the people (usually IT and legal) who are tasked with security.  This is a healthy tension.

Here are some questions to ask in order to keep these in balance.
Can we separate mission-critical data from potentially value-added data? Very often large company’s make no distinction between data that is usable/sharable vs. data that is not.  An example, Mint.com takes financial information from its users (in aggregate) to help users make wise financial decisions.  Meanwhile, Financial Services company’s would not dare to use this data (I know since I suggested it to an FS client years ago) – even as an anonymous, aggregated service.  Opportunity Missed!

Can we gain more benefit from releasing “sacred” data than we get by withholding it? Barack Obama’s campaign decided to give away top secret voter lists to online volunteers to allow them to canvas and make calls directly.    See Open Beats Closed on this point.
Can we create guidelines that encourage our employees to join the Social Web without releasing sensitive information? HP, Cisco and Wells Fargo all have constructive (and instructive) policies encouraging employee participation while setting limits to how employees use social media.

In my experience just getting these groups talking (web 2.0 proponents and the guardians of security) usually resolves the problem.  Legal and IT are there for a good reason — it’s just that usually that “reason” doesn’t mean you can’t get your Web 2.0 project going…

Here are four key principles for creating a stronger business in the network economy:

• Listening beats Talking
• Open beats Closed
• Relationships Beat Transactions
• Questions beat Answers

Over the course of the next few posts I will be going into details on each.  If you have questions or other examples to put into the posts – please add them into the comments.  Part one focuses on Listening beats Talking.

Listening beats Talking
In the network – listening is a prerequisite to learning.  It is the critical precursor of everything we do – the beginning of joining conversations, building trust, learning and developing relationships.
Listening is not passive, it is another way of finding answers from new places – from customers, partners and employees outside of the traditional leadership circle.  It sounds simple but the problem is that most of our companies are structured to talk – Marketing, PR, Communications departments, even tradshows and events are all vehicles for advocacy – not inquiry or information gathering.
Fox, GM (yes, it is true), Salesforce.com are all examples of companies that are listening in new ways  but I want to take a deeper look at what Starbucks is doing as an illustration of Listening beats Talking:
I am no fan of the company but I have been impressed by www.mystarbucksidea.com.

Taking a quick look at the interface you can immediately see what they are doing right.  Users can submit any idea for consideration.  Other users (and this is critical) can vote these ideas up or down and discuss  them.  Often the comments build out the initial idea and give it more substance or potential value.  The key insight here is that the normal role of the product manager, the person who sorts through ideas and assesses their potential value, is being done by the community itself.    Rather than ask and answer the question from within the company, Starbucks is using listening as a form of customer led innovation. This same idea can also be applied to many areas of your business including product development (which ideas are most important to improve customer experience of my product) and human resources (more on that below).

Once the ideas are in motion Starbucks has managers that can respond in the comments.   Ideas that get a lot of votes/comments can then be put into review.  As a user you can see that the idea is actively under consideration.  The whole process is public; from “under review” to “reviewed” and (potentially) “Launched”

For a quick tour of all the changes and innovations that have been inspired by their customers – check out the Starbucks blog here.  This is just one detailed example of Listening beats Talking.
Dell and Salesforce.com have also had great results with these types of idea exchanges.  On the B2B front Salesforce used the same Idea Exchange platform has has been able to deliver “four new releases [in 2007], in contrast to only two in 2006.  New releases now include three hundred new features, three times as many as in previous years.” (source, Groundswell pg. 186)

Human Resources Where Art Though?
Lest you think that this is just a business-to-consumer idea – what about hooking your internal employee population up to something like this?  Imagine two big buttons on your intranet, “Things we Should Do Less Of” and “Things We Should Do More Of”  -  “…Less Of” lists suggestion to drive down waste and inefficiency   “…More Of” drives employee led innovation through suggestions on what the company should be doing.   Following Starbuck’s example, all suggestions are transparent to other employees and can be voted up or down – management closes the loop by putting winning ideas under review and implementing select ones.  Traditional “workout” sessions aimed at eliminating redundancies and waste that used to be conducted with a limited team together in a room can now be distributed on a simple platform accessible to all employees regardless of title or workplace.  That is powerful.

How to Prepare:
In its more mature form Listening is a commitment to take action on the part of your company so if you launch something like this then be prepared to handle the “tail costs” of reviewing ideas, responding to comments and honestly committing to a few winning ideas.  Also, be prepared to see some criticism aired in the open.  Trust me, that criticism is already happening around the proverbial watercooler (for your employees) or in other public forums (for your customers).  The difference here is that you will be able to see it and do something about it.

Next Post will focus on “Open beats Closed”

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a Forrester round table on the future of the Social Web put together by Jeremiah Owyang and hosted by SAP (thanks to both for an incredible job).  It stimulated a lot of thinking I have been doing about change – the next few posts are inspired by the rich conversations that took place there:

When talking about bringing social technologies into business I think it is helpful to address both the “bottom up”  and and the “top down” ways that it occurs.

I think of it in terms of Pirates (with a nod to Matt Mason) and Poohbahs (with a nod to Gilbert and Sullivan).

Pirates push change at the margins - Often the ones making the changes inside the organization are the Pirates – agitators for a new order.  People who operate at the margins, across borders, challenge business norms, and bring new ideas into being.  Pirates can come from every business unit: IT, Marketing, R&D, HR etc.    Pirates can sometimes even be in leadership (Poohbah) positions (Scott Cook of Intuit, Shari Ballard of Best Buy, Bob Lutz at GM).   Pirates push change at the margins.   However at some point leadership needs to get engaged to move from margin to core business.  From small payoffs to big payoffs.

Poohbahs push change from the core. Poohbahs set the vision and goals to be met .  They exemplify the cultural traits they want to see in the organization.   Poohbahs can create safe haven for their pirates (a.k.a. sponsorship and championing a cause).   Most importantly Poohbahs can help drive education around new ways of doing business – the what, why and how of social technologies.  After all, a company that speaks the same language and shares the same vision is unbeatable

False Logic of the Holy Pilot: Since social technologies are essentially bottom-up and built upon the participation of the lowest common denominator of an organization; customers or employees, the argument goes that the rollout of these technologies should be bottom up and organic;  “Let the employees (or customers) play with the tools and you will have a wildfire on your hands….”  I say think small and you stay small.

Pilots are sometimes a good start.  Often it is a necessary start before making the case to the Poohbahs.  But it is not a roadmap to transforming your business – often I have seen it become an excuse to underfund an initiative.  If you want to harness the power of social technologies to transform business get ready to tackle the harder stuff – leadership, change and culture.  This requires both Pirates and Poohbahs.

If you look at what is happening at Best Buy, Intuit, Proctor and Gamble (very different industries),  the Poohbahs are driving these changes – creating a safe haven (indeed a culture!)  where pirates can thrive.

Pirates and Poohbahs Unite!!

I often refer to the “harder stuff” as shorthand for leadership, change, culture and implementation so I thought I would reproduce a post I made in Radar last week titled, “ Getting Web 2.0 right: The hard stuff vs. the harder stuff…” – along with one of the comments that I took issue with:

I had a powerful conversation recently in Europe with one of the top executives of a major industrial company. They have 100K+ employees in over 50 countries. When he joined five years ago their business was struggling and in need of major transformation; their stock was at two dollars a share, they had ethics issues and product quality problems – you name the malady, they were suffering from it…

Fast forward to 2008 and now they are one of the most extraordinary success stories in Europe – stock is over $28 a share, great profits, growing operations, well regarded in the business community etc. When you fly through a European airport they are everywhere.

I asked him how they were able to turn such a large, multinational ship around.

He told me most executives talk about “the hard stuff” vs. “the soft stuff”. Their focus for success in the organization is on the hard stuff – finance, technology, manufacturing, R&D, Sales – where the money is to be found, where costs savings are to be made. The soft stuff – leadership, culture, change and implementation – is there in rhetoric but not in reality (e.g., “people are our most important resource”). But the truth is that it is not the “hard stuff” vs. the “soft stuff”, but the hard stuff vs. the harder stuff. And it is this “harder stuff” that drives both revenues and profits by making or breaking a decision, leading a project to a successful conclusion – or not, and allowing for effective collaboration within a business unit or an organization – or not. He told me it was a consistent focus on the harder stuff that allowed them to turn their company around.

This is an apt description of the problems we face in bringing Web 2.0 into the enterprise. Web 2.0 is a game changer – it holds the potential to turbo-charge back office functions, foster collaboration and transform every business unit in the enterprise. Yet the resistance occurs when it comes down to implementing Web 2.0 because it represents a series of shifts that challenge traditional business culture and models of leadership. How often have I heard the knee-jerk reaction, “we can’t let our customers talk to each other” or “we don’t share our data” or “we are going to upgrade to a new platform – we are on a three year plan to get it done” (I keep a list of these reactions so please help me add to it). If developing a web 2.0 strategy is the hard stuff – moving that strategy forward is the harder stuff – and the bigger the company I work with – the harder the harder stuff is.

Rick added this to the comments:

Implementing 2.0 stuff doesn’t necessarily to be very difficult to implement. If I relate to my experience there are at least two ways do it wrong:
1) Top down push (employees, middle management just gets another tools, and do not experience any advantages)
2) Technology push (advantages are unclear, most often a geeky solution with less usability).

What I think you should do is to identify what would drive this people. What would make them to use / adopt a new tool. Is it time saving, is it the ability to work at home, it’s money saving, opening a new market for their product, inexpensive innovations (Lego Case *)). Technology push will not help to implement a 2.0 tool, having a useful tool that match their business and change drivers will help you to make adoption and implemention easier.

*) Concerning Lego: Lego used to have 100 designers creating 300 designs a year and the average age of a designer was appr 29 years. By introducing Lego Factory they now have 1 million designers creating 3 million designs a year and the average ago of designer is appr 9 years (and these 1 million people do not have to be payed by Lego!)

Rick made some good points and it allowed me to clarify:

@ Rick
I agree that tools are a distraction and I think this is a very useful way to think about the issue in terms of traditional business objectives and adoption. However this frames Web 2.0 as an incremental improvement to business as usual (better customer intimacy, better operational efficiency, better innovation) rather than a game-changer (customer/employee led innovation, rethinking IP, rethinking the whole concept of marketing etc.). IMO It is the more radical potential that isn’t being tapped into.

In the case of Lego my understanding is that it required senior leadership to make some big changes in the way that they conceived of and executed on innovation and that they also had to rethink their notion of IP. Lego’s story is one of transformation.

Don’t you think that both leadership (and I mean leadership in a “2.0″ way; leadership that allows leaders to surface at all levels of the organization) and your model of change need to be aligned for real business transformation?

Here is a basic Web 2.0 overview (shortened due to time constraints) that I just gave to a group in Detroit:
[slideshare id=540228&doc=web2jmicheleross-1217801034380621-9&w=425]