Thoughts on Google Wave

Conversations over the weekend got me thinking about Google Wave and the confusion it has engendered. What's it for? How do I use it? Why is it any better than email? I don't understand...

I'm becoming more and more convinced Wave sits outside our current paradigm for doing stuff online. It's simply not something our current world-view can encompass - except for a few bright people at Google, of course!

An analogy that's sprung to mind is that of the car, in its early days. The first prototypes were considered impractical, of no real benefit - certainly not likely to replace horse-drawn carriages... People of the time couldn't think past their experience and couldn't see the potential of the new technology. Sound familar?

So I think Wave should be treated as what it is; a prototype. It won't fit everyone's needs, today. It may be of little practical use. Indeed, it may turn out to be a complete failure.

On the other hand, it may have the potential to completely change the way people communicate online - we just don't have the capability to predict what that will look like!

Corporate IT - Us vs Them?

This post is in response to a post from Euan Semple - go check it out first! I don't disagree with his main point - there's no doubt that many organisations are hindering their peoples' performance with an outdated attitude to new technologies. However, what I don't think gets nearly enough recognition is that not all individuals want to use social software or new technology, or care about why they should.

That's a pretty controversial statement amongst web 2.0 and social media folks. Why would anyone not want to have more control, more responsibility? Why would anyone not want to choose the ideal tools to get their work done? Simply because we're all different.

It's all too easy to forget that many people just want to go to work and do their job. They don't want to waste a day comparing browsers, or installing different Twitter clients. They certainly don't want to be responsible for re-imaging their PC when it's corrupted and virus infected!

The cultural expectation of most employees is that their employer provides them with technology that enables them to do their job - and the employer bears the responsibility for it working properly. At the moment, this entails restrictions on what the employee can do - sure, this might hurt productivity, and it makes us early adopters furious. But I honestly believe that for a majority of workers, they'd prefer stable and supported technology over the latest innovative tools.

So when considering the use of IT at work, the main point I'm trying to make is that it's not about the individual versus some monolithic, faceless corporate entity. It's about the attitudes, expectations and culture of the organisation's people. If we want a change in the use of technology in the workplace, we need to convince a majority of our colleagues why this will be a good thing!

How might we do this? Trends over time will help - although I don't agree that technology use is driven by whether you're a baby boomer, Gen X or Gen Y, there's little doubt that the constant flow of younger people into the workplace will drive cultural changes. There will also be change over time through ambition. Once people realise that social software isn't just a toy but a tool that can transform their performance - and hence, their prospects of reward - they will be much more enthusiastic!

Technology developments may help too. Again looking at current trends, there's lots of room for improvements in technology stability. Why are computers still so prone to failure? Specifically for the workplace, I think virtual machines could be a way forward. If made easy enough to use, why not provide a personal VM environment within which people could use social or personal productivity tools, whilst keeping the host system clean and stable?

To finish, then, I'd like to point out that us web 2.0, social technology evangelists are on the leading edge of this change. I think we tend to forget that! Early adopters will be frustrated during change - there's no avoiding that. This shouldn't stop us advocating use of social tools, far from it! But we should recognise that change may take years, or decades, to truly sink in. We should aim our efforts at the audience that matters - not some corporate entity but rather our colleagues and friends who remain dubious about the whole idea. Obviously the opinion of top management in any organisation does make a difference! But ultimately, the combined opinions, expectations and culture of the individuals making up that organisation have to be convinced before we can expect widespread change.

Facebook as portal to Microsoft Cloud?

A recurring theme from TechMarketView has been the possibility that Microsoft could buy Facebook and use it as a portal into their cloud-based computing services. This doesn't make sense to me for a number of reasons.

What might MS' Cloud offerings be?

• Office-as-a-service - Word, Excel etc - apparently planned for Office 14 anyway.
• Business Stuff - CRM, ERP, etc.
• Personal Financial Management, pretty much "Money-as-a-service"
• Online collaboration spaces - "SharePoint as a service"
  

I can't think of much else, although maybe others can. I don't see MS as coming up with anything especially innovative or radical - it's pretty much business as usual, just delivered through a browser rather than local applications.

So, what's the problem with "Facebook as portal to Cloud"? The first problem I have with this concept is user expectations & behaviours. What do you go to Facebook for? To stay in touch with friends, organise social events, form groups for issues you care about, share pictures. Where does any of this form a natural lead into using MS offerings? About the only service I can see being relevant is online collaboration, and I don't see MS adding much over what Facebook already enables with groups, events and so on.

I guess what I'm really saying is that Facebook/MS Cloud integration seems, to me, to be a big context shift. The only way I can see it working is for the two to remain fairly separate, and simply be driven by association - i.e. I'm on Facebook anyway - now I need to edit a document - ah, MS Cloud is right here, I'll use that.

But Microsoft could do that anyway, right now, by advertising their cloud services on Facebook. So what reason would they have to buy the whole thing?

This is all rather assuming that MS will find a way to make money from increased traffic on their Cloud services - this is a challenge in itself. Maybe they'll do it through a "Free + Premium" model such as Flickr, but I remain to be convinced... Anyway, let's stick with this assumption for now.

Therefore MS would be looking to Facebook to drive traffic to their Cloud services. But not so fast! They can't mess about too much with Facebook's usability, lest they drive away users. They can't turn it into an obvious MS portal, for fear of losing its cool, its cachet - again, driving away users. So again, the only real integration I can imagine is simply a link from Facebook through to MS Cloud. As I've said above, they could already do this via advertising.

The last point to address is about competitiveness in the Cloud services space. Facebook is all about people connecting with other people, talking and exchanging opinions. If MS Cloud services were in ANY way flawed, or lacking functionality, or weak in comparison with offerings from Google etc., then sure as the sun rising Facebook users would be pointing these flaws out, and suggesting their friends try alternatives instead. If we're talking freely-available, internet-delivered services, then I can't conceive of any way MS could lock-in users to their services through Facebook without huge irritation and negative PR - again, driving users away from Facebook and losing any possible benefits.

So anyway, the whole thing doesn't really add up to me. Maybe there are some nuances to this I'm missing though! I do think it's an interesting area to explore - monetisation of social networks will clearly be a driving purpose for big companies in the near future. Would love to hear any opinions or further thoughts...

Stories

Came across a good piece about the power of stories on Seth Godin's blog here and was very struck by the mention of people relating to stories more than features.

I think this is a vital thing to understand when dealing with people in any business where you can't supply everything they wish for. It's easy to dismiss people who say they want something to work "just like Google" or who complain that their laptop isn't as sleek & stylish as a MacBook. To a certain extent this is justified - as a business, we certainly can't afford to kit people out with the latest cutting edge gear every 6 months!

However, we should recognise that when people talk this way, they aren't necessarily talking about the functionality or features of the technology. They're talking about their own stories for how it makes them feel. For example, Google search isn't infallible - but they've done an incredible job of framing their offerings around you, the user.

If we want people to buy into what we can do for them - and I feel this applies to both KM and internal IT - then we need to understand how these sorts of stories work. We can't compete with Google or Apple in marketing terms. But there's no reason why we can't understand our users and develop stories around them that make a powerful case for what we offer.

NB: This is an edited version of a post to a corporate internal blog.