The rapidly building wave of online outsourcing and crowdsourcing

By

The Age today has an interesting article titled Outsourcing on steroids that looks at the array of online technologies that are enabling the outsourcing of small tasks and the crowdsourcing of design, innovation, and other key business functions.

I’ve noticed that in just the last few weeks mainstream media coverage of online service exchanges and crowdsourcing tools is picking up. As the article in the The Age concludes, “it’s certain crowd sourcing is a key business trend for the future”. The

The article quotes me in two different sections:

Although odesk and similar sites such as elance.com are known for being a meeting place where businesses can access very low cost services, crowd sourcing is not just about finding the cheapest service provider possible.

Futurist Ross Dawson says: “Online services exchanges are places where anyone anywhere can get people to perform services; it’s about the development of a global talent economy. Some services are commoditised – you might want someone to count the number of tennis balls in a photo for the lowest price possible. But they also allow you to find the best person for the job and price isn’t always the primary factor why you hire someone, sometimes it’s more about finding talented people. I use odesk and the last person I hired wasn’t in Egypt or Latvia he was in New York.”

This idea of how best to tap the most talented – rather than the cheapest – professionals in the global market is the subject of my next book. I’ll be writing a lot more about this on my blog.

Later in the article:

Read more →

What robots.txt tells you about corporate culture – the case study of Nike and Adidas

By

Even if you are not a technical person, you may have heard about the apparently arcane robots.txt file which sits on websites but is seen only by computers, not by human visitors. The file contains instructions for search engines on what they can and cannot index and make searchable.

Note that in the examples below # indicates a comment line that is not read by the computer; the other lines provide specific instructions to allow or disallow access to search engines.

Let’s look at the robots.txt file on Nike.com – www.nike.com/robots.txt

# *.nike.com robots.txt — just crawl it.

User-agent: *

Allow: /

Crawl-delay: 20

In contrast, look at the file for Adidas.com – www.adidas.com/robots.txt:

# go away

User-agent:*

Disallow:/scripts/cud/cud2.asp

In fact this means that the entire Adidas.com site except for one file can be crawled by search engines, but the comment does seems to suggest a difference in corporate culture from Nike :-).

(Hattip to @larsv!)

The top 10 blogs for small to mid-sized businesses

By

Blog search engine Technorati recently revised its blog ranking algorithms and created categories for the rankings.

The list of the top 10 blogs for small business provides an excellent resource for attendees of our SME Technology Summit in Sydney on 1 December, where there will be deep insights into all of the topics covered by these blogs.

Many of these blogs are for businesses of all sizes, but all of them provide valuable insights for small to mid-sized businesses. Check them out!

1. Online Marketing Blog

https://www.toprankblog.com

sbtech1

Covers digital marketing topics, focusing on social media, online PR and search engine marketing. A broad team of writers brings diverse perspectives to bear.

Read more →

Speaking at Future Forum – creating the future of the enterprise

By

I first met Mark McCrindle when we were both part of a small team of futures thinkers engaged by a major bank for its innovation program. His company McCrindle Research provides a variety of research services focused on generational change. They also organize the Future Forum, an annual event run in several Australia cities which pulls together insights on key trends across all domains into a compact one-day session.

I will be speaking at the Sydney event on November 6, talking about Enterprise 2.0 and how to create the future of the enterprise, including how organizations can leverage social media for competitive advantage. A video overview of the event is below, full information and agenda here, and you can register here.

Future Forum Australia 2009 from David Birley on Vimeo.

Five reasons why Turkey is one of the hottest Internet markets in the world

By

Last week I gave the opening keynote at IPZ2009 Interactive Marketing Summit in Istanbul. Here are my slides for my keynote on the Future of Interactive Marketing.

It was a fantastic event, the fourth annual IPZ conference organized by Günseli Özen Ocako?lu and Hakan Senbir of Marketing & Management Institute, which publishes a range of leading magazines including Marketing Türkiye.

In preparing for my keynote and during my visit I discovered many fascinating things I did not know about the Turkish online market. It is in fact one of the hottest and fastest-growing Internet markets in the world.

As it happens I have a very deep interest in language-defined online markets, such as Japanese, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Korean. Each of these markets – some within national borders and others spanning countries – has very different characteristics across all facets including which types of social media are used, which are dominant players, and the most successful business models. I have written about this before in the context of blogging languages and global media strategies, and will be doing further analysis of country markets soon.

Here are five facts that illustrate how exciting the Turkish online market is.

1. Turkey is the third largest country in the world on Facebook

facebookcountries_Nov09.jpg

Source: CheckFacebook

Coming from almost nothing two years ago, Turkey now has close to 14 million Facebook users, overtaking France and Canada earlier this year to be the third largest country on Facebook after the US and UK. Facebook does not dominate social networking in other high population countries such as Brazil, Russia and Japan, so Turkey with a population of 72 million and a very rapid uptake of online services ranks close to the top of the list.

Read more →

Business Today: Interview on how business can use social media

By

Yesterday I was interviewed on the Business Today program on the Australia Network, ABC TV’s international network which broadcasts across Asia.

The interview can also be viewed along with other material in Business Today’s archives.

Key points covered in the interview include:

Read more →

What are the most useful social media tools for small business?

By

Most business owners recognise that there are many social media tools that can help them run their businesses more effectively. The problem is sorting through the plethora of tools that are available today to work out what to use, and how to use it.

Mashable has come out with a useful list of 10 of the Best Social Media Tools for Business, mentioning:

1. Google Apps for Domains

Online email, calendar and office software

2. LinkedIn

Professional social network

3. Basecamp

Online project management tool

4. Facebook

Social network with fan pages, apps and other tools

5. Twitter

Micro-blogging for relationship building

6. Get Satisfaction

Customer self-support forums

7. MailChimp

Web-based mailing list manager

8. UserVoice

Tracking customer feedback

9. YouTube

Hosted videos for marketing, education and advertising

10. Monitter

Monitor Twitter for relevant conversations and comments

Read more →

Tech23: SaaS/ In the cloud panel: Angusta, IPScape, MyCosm, Tagmotion

By

A few quick notes about the four companies presenting on the SaaS/ In the Cloud panel at Tech23 (for background on the event see my post from this morning). A very impressive line-up.

Angusta Systems. Uses combinatorial algorithms to help banks manage their physical cash inventory – a solid niche apparently worth over $100 million in value to each of the big Australian banks.

Read more →

Tech23 showcases the rising tide of outstanding Australian tech

By

I’m at Tech23, probably the biggest and best showcase so far of Australian upcoming tech companies. After creating the list of Top Web 2.0 Apps in Australia list last year and in 2007 and organizing the associated Web 2.0 in Australia events, I had originally envisaged that we would organize a broad information technology showcase event this year. However this did not manage to fit into our very packed priority list, and as it happens others are taking on the task of bringing attention to the best of emerging Australian tech. Rachel Slattery of SlatteryIT, who has long been running events for Australia’s tech community, has done a great job in creating Tech23.

Frankly, one of the challenges in running tech showcases in Australia is finding a sufficiently deep and broad pool of excellent early-stage companies. Overall I have been very encouraged by the pace at which new companies have emerged over the last two years, though there is still further to go. There were some great companies at Tech23, but I imagine that it would be harder to find another 23 hot emerging companies. By the time this event runs next year, and hopefully other tech showcases emerge, the signs are that the pool will be considerably deeper.

Unfortunately I am not able to spend the whole day at the event, but below are some quick notes from some of the more interesting companies that I managed to catch this morning. [UPDATE:] See also my notes from the SaaS/ In the Cloud panel and presentations.

Read more →

Tools for lifestreaming become available

By

camera_lifestreaming.jpg

I have had extensive media coverage this week for my forecasts for social technologies for 2016. One of the predictions that has attracted the most attention is that lifestreaming will become commonplace. Many of us will capture videos, images, audio of conversations and far more. This may be to record for our own purposes, to share with friends or family, or to provide access to teh world at large.

The underlying technologies to do it are certainly available, including cheap storage. However the practical tools that make it easy are only just now getting onto the market. It is not easy to rig up automated cameras or head-mounted video recorders and automatically synchronize with online systems.

The latest is a tool specifically designed for lifestreaming. New Scientist says:

Worn on a cord around the neck, the camera takes pictures automatically as often as once every 30 seconds. It also uses an accelerometer and light sensors to snap an image when a person enters a new environment, and an infrared sensor to take one when it detects the body heat of a person in front of the wearer. It can fit 30,000 images onto its 1-gigabyte memory.

The Vicon camera will be marketed to researchers initially at around US$820, and be available to consumers next year.

Interestingly, the device has emerged from the Microsoft Sensecam, which has been shown to help people with Alzheimers and dementia to recall the events of the day. This kind of memory aid could be equally as valuable to the rest of us.