$ocial Media & Ma$$ Collaboration

Recently Komen Foundation did a 180 when it comes to funding Planned Parenthood.  An organization could be crippled to social pressures. This is the second big story compared to how Google, Wikipedia and other companies and individuals raised their concerns about SOPA.  Some of these individuals worked as contractors for the US government.  I personally did not object to SOPA and frankly I do see merits on how government should control piracy; nevertheless I am impressed by the power and gravitas of social technologies.  They can be used as steroids to gain rapid momentum on decisions on social issues.  There are blogs and social communities galore on issues like abortion, freedom of speech, gay marriage, small government, keeping corporations accountable.  This is a great that folks are exercising their right to express their opinions on various issues.  The reality is that these issues are so complex  and folks have such strong emotional reactions to them that in practicality these issues will remain in the US for a while.

The big question to ask is how folks can make money of these power technologies. I could write about the next big idea which needs seed funding and technologists to make the big idea happen but in reality no one will really know if this idea will take off.  It's like peanut butter slices.  Do you buy them? If so then please comment to this blog entry.  Unlike the next big idea, what I can write about is how we can use existing technologies to make money.  I am big fan of Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Four Square, Tumblr, and on and one.  What I have not seen is how businesses are successfully using all of these social technologies to sell their brand and simply market their products.  Online companies still use Adwords (Yes! Hail to the power of Google Gods [I say with sarcasm of course) and spend money on search engine optimization but they are struggling how to harness social computing.  At work, I worked on projects where social media and mass collaboration efforts are promoted however no one knows how these technologies will be used in my employer's enterprise.

The reality is that money can be made using social technologies in smart way.  If folks can persuade the masses on how SOPA is bad for you, your kids and you grandkids then I am sure we can use these technologies to sell a product smarter and more effectively.

2 days @Gartner Symposium

This is my second year at the Gartner Symposium IT/XPo in Orlando, Florida.  After the first two days of the symposium, I believe the mantra of the symposium is the three new pillars of technology which are the glued together by information.  The pillars are:

1. Cloud Computing
2. Mobile Computing
3. Social Computing

At first you think this is just bunch of hype.  What can a bunch of research analysts know about cloud, mobile, or anything else in IT.  Are these Gartner analysts creating trends from pure ignorance?   The answer is,"No"  Companies like Amazon, Google and Apple are creating technologies which are extremely disruptive and are causing problems in a positive way.  Today Gartner mentioned Google and Apple as the innovators.  I believe Amazon should be in that group. Amazon built the EC2  before IBM can spell cloud.
Amazon's model tends rely on developing services which are off-shoots out of its book business.  The Amazon cloud was a game changer and now Amazon's Silk which is a cloud browser will change the way things are done on the mobile space.

I attended couple of mobile sessions today and coule of social media sessions today.  Did I learn anything from these sessions?  The answer is Yes.  Social media has a defined lifespan.  Mobile computing is going to take over and the concept of cloud brokers was introduced.

I personally believe that cloud will reduce costs in the long run and increase throughput. I also believe that mobile will allow users to be more immersed in the internet and social computing is not a IT phenomenon but rather a social one.

The thing that caught my ear was the case study they did about the financial organization and how they built visual tools.  They updated their processes to be more "agile" so that the customer is engaged more in the development process.  I am therefore waiting for Agile computing.  This is the next big thing.  Once these technologies are stablize and drive costs down, businesses will be looking for more agility from their IT since the users will be changing their needs based on their social network.

It's been awhile...now Semantic Web is DOOMED!

It's been awhile since I last wrote my blog. I start off by saying that "Semantic Web" is dead. I don't think it will ever pick up and it's buzz has been replaced by "Social Media" and News Aggregators. Purpose of Semantic Web is to write code so that machines can learn and make inferences. For example I want to fly to Tahiti and I get my information on a web page which is written in OWL* (which includes Lite, DL and Full) and the machine via the internet is going to give me the best flight rates. This approach seemed great in 2004 however with the phenomenons of social networking and graph mining have squashed that fantasy. Don't get me wrong, Ontologies and OWL files are still needed in research oriented labs however they are not for the common users. Semantic Web promised us rich logic in the XML document which is parsed by the machine. Social Networks state that humans can relate to other humans and they are smart enough to make the right choices. I, personally, would rather trust someone in my social network to tell me about the hidden restaurant in Tahiti, where they serve grilled island crab and a glass of coconut milk, rather than an Oracle database churning on a RedHat Linux server somewhere on the cloud. With smart devices like iPads and iPhones, folks would rather view a YouTube video than to have a semantic web enabled application which is hogging up the device resources.

After looking at the trends, I have to say bye to "Semantic Web" and hello to "Social Web". Speaking about "Social Web", what do you guys think of Rock Melt?

Image taken by happy.apple and stored on Flickr