The Daily Me is finally arriving with the convergence of social news and tablets

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Last week I wrote about Flipboard and Paper.li: Social news curation hits the tipping point. The news today is that Betaworks, which developed or supported the highly successful Tweetdeck, bit.ly, Tumblr and far more, is working on News.Me, a ‘personalized news service’, in collaboration with New York Times.

While neither organization would say much about it, this will clearly be a social news service that will tap, among other resources, the vast data bit.ly has (presumably) collected on what links are shared on Twitter and other social networks. New York Times invested in Betaworks in its March $20 million Series B, and then shifted one of its early stage products into Betaworks, where it is soon to emerge as News.Me.

In his 1995 book Being Digital Nicholas Negroponte wrote about the idea of a ‘Daily Me’ newspaper, that would provide news tailored to the individual. This spawned a multi-year debate about the supposed evils of the Daily Me, which would mean people wouldn’t be exposed to the diversity of the world and would live within their own navels.

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7 Shifts: The Future of Social Media and Internal Communications

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Melcrum recently released a report on How to use social media to solve critical communication issues, with as usual some great case studies and many practical insights. Go to the report website for a full overview and executive summary.

I was asked to write the closing section in the report, on The Future of Social Media and Internal Communications. Below is my article in full. If you’re interested in the topic also see my recent Thoughts on the future of workplace communications.

The Future of Social Media and Internal Communications

Organisations achieve their objectives by bringing together the talent and energy of many people. As such, the raft of emerging communications platforms today have the potential to literally transform how organizations work. From the 1990s, email fundamentally changed how most jobs were done. Now a wealth of new communication tools are being used to create sometimes dramatically different ways of working.

Based on the rapid emergence of social media and other new communication platforms, there are seven key aspects to how organisational communication will change.

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Key trends in media and communications usage

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Ofcom, UK’s communications regulator, annually produces what is the most detailed study of the local communications marketplace available anywhere in the world. Every year it provides deep insights into many aspects of media and communications usage and the state of the industry, and Communications Market Report 2010 is another gem.

Depending on your interests different data will come out – here are some of the results I found interesting. All charts are from the Ofcom report.

Ofcom10_simultaneous.jpg

The results that have received the most attention is the multi-tasking in media usage. Everyone multi-tasks, but younger people more, to the point of 29% of media usage being concurrent in 16-24 year olds. Back in our Future of Media Report 2006 we described how simultaneous use of media would drive future media consumption.

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Thoughts on the future of workplace communication

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Earlier today I spoke on a live webcast on the Future of Workplace Communication as part of Viocorp’s Future Forum series.

I took notes during the panel session and posted these live on my blog right after the event. I took notes while the other panellists were speaking: Nicky Wakefield, head of human capital at Deloitte, Philip Cronin, general manager of Intel Australia, and Oscar Trimboli, head of the information workers group at Microsoft.

I wasn’t able to take notes while I was speaking myself, so having had a look at the panel discussion which is now archived and can be viewed at the Viocorp site (requires registration), I’ve written out some of what I said during the discussion.

10:50 – 14:00

Workplace is not a good term to refer to the future – people will be working from anywhere so workplaces will have less impact than they have today. In the bigger context we also have to question whether organizations as we know them today will exist. Transaction costs are going down, meaning that moving forward, organizations will have to justify why they exist. There will be many business models bringing together loosely coupled talent and processes.

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Thought leadership in technology – five key services to influence clients and increase sales

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It is sometimes difficult to describe what my companies do. That is now a little bit easier, as we have created a flyer describing the key services of Advanced Human Technologies, focused on clients in the technology and media sector. The flyer does not mention our publishing and ventures activities, but covers the kind of consulting we do for vendors. Our Enterprise 2.0 flyer describes our work for corporate clients on implementing Enterprise 2.0.

Thought Leadership in Technology – Advanced Human Technologies

I hope it’s useful for those that want to know more about what we do (or may even want to engage us!).

I will later share some snapshots of what Future Exploration Network and The Insight Exchange are up to, to give a better picture of the group and how it fits together.

Lessons from iPhone4 Applegate: social media augmentation of consumer voices and the need to listen

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A few days ago I was interviewed by ABC’s Newsline program for a segment they did on Apple’s response to the iPhone4 ‘Antennagate’ problem.

Here is the second part of the segment including my thoughts. To see the full piece go to the Newsline archives and click on ‘Bad Press’ dated 21/7.

Despite the way the piece was edited, I was not scathing about Apple’s response. I think their solution of a free Bumper case is, so far, reasonable. However there are two important points.

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Will the future of social networking be open and distributed? Here comes Plexus

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I just caught up with my neighbor and fellow futurist Mark Pesce, who over a coffee at our local briefed me on his new project Plexus, which he publicly announced at his recent keynote at Pycon Australia, for Python developers. His excellent speech, titled How Not to be Seen, is below, and the transcript on Mark’s blog.

In his presentation Mark starts with his long relationship with programming and finally moves on to describe his project Plexus, which will provide a new platform for social networks.

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Revisiting the Web 2.0 Framework for insights on the web landscape today

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I have just been requested permission by London School of Economics to use my Web 2.0 Framework in their Management and Innovation of eBusiness program for the next four years. The first part of the framework is below, and the industry landscape further down the page.

Web 2.0 Framework

Click on the image for the original description and full pdf

I’m delighted that the framework is still seen as relevant and useful over 3 years after it was created in May 2007. Certainly the original post continues to get plenty of traffic, not least because an image from the framework still appears on the front page of a Google search for ‘Web 2.0’. The phrase ‘Web 2.0’ has been largely replaced with ‘social media’, ‘cloud’ and similar terms, but the underlying concepts remain valid in understanding what is going on today.

I thought it would be worth reviewing the framework today to see what is still current and what I would change.

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Looking for a great blog writer for Crowdsourcing Results site

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Of the many initiatives we have on, one of the most exciting is rolling out a series of websites/ forums – we have a few up now and many more coming. As we do so, we are looking for outside writers to complement our own content.

One of our most popular new sites is CrowdsourcingResults.com, which showcases our Crowdsourcing Landscape and provides insights and discussion on how to use crowdsourcing effectively.

Below is the ad we are posting. Please apply if it’s of interest, or if not please pass it on to people who might be interested – probably mainly for interest in the topic and the visibility.

Also note that we will soon be creating a detailed report on crowdsourcing, so great writers/ researchers who want to get stuck into a bigger project should also get in touch – we can discuss terms.

Job title

Great blog writers with a deep understanding of crowdsourcing

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Four awesome animations on YouTube

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My one-year old daughter Phoebe has woken up from her afternoon nap so I’m introducing her to YouTube. I spent a lot of time with her older sister Leda on my knee watching YouTube videos a couple of years ago – it’s time for Phoebe to explore the world of online video.

I have a number of favorites that I’ve watched many times, quite often as much for me as for the children. In case you haven’t seen them before, here are these choice morsels – hope you enjoy them!

1. Big Buck Bunny

A collaborative effort to promote the (awesome) open source 3D platform Blender – outstanding!

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