About 8 months ago, in April, I posted an article on my blog titled “A Map of the World 2.0 Canon” that tried to visualize how the emerging popular literature on the impact of 2.0 could be organized. The post went mildly viral. Here’s the visualization I came up with, and links to reviews to most of the books I included back then. Read the full piece if the logic of the diagram doesn’t leap out at you. Probably time to drop/add some books, so any suggestions? For those of you who’ve been lazy about keeping up, this might make for some good Cliff Notes level material to help you fake it.

The Reviews and One-Line Abstracts

I am linking to my reviews where I have them, and to Amazon where I don’t. For a book without a review (the starred ones), if you think you have a good one, send me a link.

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AOL has finally introduced AIM for Mac version 1.0. Instant Messaging Planet reviews the client and notes that it is fine for AIM, but offers little advantage to those using multiple IM services (or that want the additional functionality of Apple’s built-in iChatAV). Maybe instead of reinventing the wheel AOL could focus its efforts on building a client that integrates IM with Twitter (and perhaps services such as Yammer?), enabling people to see if their Twitter buddies are on-line and use a single application for both IM and microblogging?

Tags: Instant Messaging, Twitter

That’s the pitch that startup Unison Technologies is making with it’s new free UC client integrating voice, instant messaging, calendaring, and LDAP directory into a single application. The client forces you to view ads, but the company is betting that customers will accept ad-supported software in exchange for not having to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for similar features from Microsoft or other. But it doesn’t look like this is going to fly…..

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Before you worry about 2.0 technology for your company, ask yourself: does the business you are in even make sense for the 2.0 world? Enterprise 2.0 as an abstraction will obviously happen; it is only a matter of time. Whether your industry actually survives to benefit is not so certain. On this site, we often discuss Enterprise 2.0 principles in the abstract, usually with a hypothetical widget manufacturing company as our implied mental model. We then ask how social media and 2.0 principles affect various functions like sales, PR or engineering. What happens when you go from widgets to specific product or service industries, like baby food, cars, finance, farming or fast food? Will YourEnterprise 2.0 make sense in 2009, the year of dual disruption from 2.0 on one end and a recession on the other?

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GetSatisfaction is an interesting new approach to leveraging the power of the Web for fun (and maybe profit)? The idea is to create an open market place for customer support. Got a question about a particular company or product? Go to http://getsatisfaction.com/, enter your question, and hopefully within a few minutes you get a response via e-mail from someone in that company. There’s a pretty compelling business model there if you can leverage this sort of service to reduce calls to your contact centers. There’s also some interesting opportunities to meld this service with microblogging services such as Twitter.

So after much reluctance I have finally entered the world of Twitter so I could follow various folks reporting on events at this week’s Cisco C-Scape event in San Jose. Within a few minutes of registering I was able to quickly find friends and colleagues and follow their feeds. Without so much as posting a single “Tweet”, I already had folks following me. So I’m still a little skeptical of the whole Twitter craze, but there are some key value propositions….

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Tags: Microbloging, Twitter

I posted last month about the prospect of new phone companies seeking to leverage the Android platform, and it looks like we won’t have to wait much longer, as the Open Handset Alliance just announced 14 new members, including major vendors like Sony Ericsson and Vodafone.

Each new member must contribute significantly towards the advancement of the Android platform. This can manifest itself in different ways. Per the recent press release:

New members will either deploy compatible Android devices, contribute significant code to the Android Open Source Project, or support the ecosystem through products and services that will accelerate the availability of Android-based devices. With these commitments, the Open Handset Alliance will continue to drive greater and faster innovation for the benefit of mobile users and everyone in the industry.

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Tags: Android, Google, Open Handset Alliance

Like most social media enthusiasts/evangelists in the enterprise, I am constantly asked the inevitable “social media ROI” question. Sometimes with a smug, “gotcha” look, and sometimes with genuine concern. Over the last couple of years, my responses have gotten more sophisticated as I have learned more. The first, more serious part of my response involves a social media capability maturity model (CMM) that I have been developing informally, and which I’ll post about in January (stay tuned!). But the second part of my answer has started to rely on something I call “hit by a bus” (HBAB) ROI analysis. Here’s how you use it, to reframe ROI discussions that start off with inappropriate assumptions.

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Microsoft’s announcement that it is migrating FolderShare to Windows Live Sync in December has touched off a great deal of confusion over Microsoft’s application strategy for cross-system and cross-platform synchronization. FolderShare has been in beta since Microsoft acquired it in 2005. It is designed to allow individuals to maintain shared folders across systems, or share folders on their computers with others, both Mac and Windows clients are supported. The migration to Live Sync provides feature and branding improvements, but maintains the same basic functionality. Live Mesh on the other hand is similar to Apple’s “MobileMe” to enable synchronization of things like bookmarks, mail, and contacts across multiple devices. At some point I’d expect them to harmonize features and brandings, but for now think of “Sync” as a file synchronization service.

Tags: Microsoft

By way of Aswath Rao’s status update on Facebook I had the opportunity today to discover “Fonolo“, a rather intriguing application that merges the Web 2.0 and telephony worlds.

Fonolo translates IVR prompts into a web-based menu, classified by company. Need to call a company and don’t want to go through a series of prompts? Find the company’s listing on Fonolo, scan to the point in the IVR you want to reach, and click to call it directly. Fonolo places the call for you, navigates to the right spot, then rings your phone to connect the call.

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Tags: Voice