The Social Internet: findings on how countries and regions engage differently with the web

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One of the topics that interests me the most is the variety with how different countries and cultures engage with social media, so I was very please to see in the current issue of Harvard Business Review a great spread on Mapping the Social Internet. Click on the image below to see the central visualization of how countries engage differently on the web.

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Source: Harvard Business Review

The axes of the chart are the portion of internet users who manage a social-network profile, and the portion of internet users who write a blog, a choice of dimensions which yields a few very interesting perspectives:

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Inmagic interview on Enterprise 2.0 and chance to win an Implementing Enterprise 2.0 report

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‘Social Knowledge Network’ vendor Inmagic recently spoke to me for their interview series. Unfortunately there were problems with the audio recording, so they’ve provided a transcript of the interview on issues including uptake of Enterprise 2.0, the Enterprise 2.0 vendor landscape, the future of work, and what I enjoy about my own work.

The full interview is worth a read, but here is a quick excerpt. I recently wrote what turned out to be a very popular post on What Enterprise 2.0 means for the CIO and IT department offering six key issues. Inmagic took a couple of these points and discussed them on their blog. Here is the follow-up on that during the interview.

Janelle: I want to talk about your latest book, which is “Implementing Enterprise 2.0.” It’s something that we covered on our blog at Inmagic and there was an excerpt that you had on your blog where you talked about six implications of Enterprise 2.0 for IT. And a couple that drew our attention were your points about how it enables end users and how the requirements for IT security and archiving have gone up. Do you see either of these as an impediment to E2.0 adoption or do you think they are necessary ways to help organizations operate?

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Corporate Twittering increases consumer trust, but many don’t want companies to listen to them

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A few days ago I asked the question How much do people want to know their conversations are being monitored?, given how brands such as Gatorade boast about how well they listen to online conversations. As it happens, someone has an answer.

Fleishman-Hillard has just released their Digital Influence Index report for 2010, with a wide range of interesting research and conclusions.

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Source: Fleishman Hillard

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How much do people want to know their conversations are being monitored?

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Here’s an interesting promotional video from Gatorade, which extols their ability to monitor social conversations, apparently using Radian6 and IBM technologies.

There are a number of basic messages in here, most obviously that anything you say about Gatorade will be heard and acted on, though also that your response to their promotions and campaigns will be monitored.

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Leaders in social networks usage: Australia by time, Brazil by reach

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In January I looked at the just-released Nielsen data on global social media usage, and wrote Australians are #1 globally in usage of social media: Why?.

New data from Nielsen shows an updated picture from April 2010, including the proportion of people online in each country who are using social networks.

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Click on image for large version

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New perspectives on crowdsourcing at Creative Sydney

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On Saturday I spoke at Creative Sydney’s Crowds + Collaboration event. I had just been invited to on Thursday to fill in for a speaker who couldn’t make it, but it was pretty easy to do given last week we launched our Crowdsourcing Landscape and I gave two keynotes largely about crowdsourcing (to Cisco and at a regional futures conference in WA). As such I addressed the topic The Future is Crowdsourcing, largely supported by the Crowdsourcing Landscape, as you can see at the bottom of this post.

The other speakers were excellent. In particular the story of Detours and Destinations was extremely inspiring. Highly disadvanted youth were given the opportunity to spend time at the Sydney Opera House creating their own performance. One of their many creations is below.

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Launch of Crowdsourcing Landscape and Getting Results from Crowdsourcing community

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Here is our Crowdsourcing Landscape, now officially launched after sneak previews to the audiences of the Getting Results from Crowdsourcing event on Monday and Cisco Insight 2010 on Tuesday.

Click on the image to see a high-resolution version

The landscape provides a kick-off and focus to our new community, Getting Results from Crowdsourcing (www.crowdsourcingresults.com). Go and check it out!

The site is fairly basic so far (forgive anything not finished yet). However we’ll soon set up a wiki of crowdsourcing platforms, introduce discussions on many specific topics in the crowdsourcing space, and try to really bring this to life. We’re also looking for contributions, so go to the Contribute page and put your hand up if you’re interested.

For now we’re keen to get the site going, so please add a comment or participate in the discussions!

Audience blog and Twitter reflections on Getting Results from Crowdsourcing event

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Last night was the Getting Results from Crowdsourcing event run by The Insight Exchange, the first in its SME Technology Forum Series. It was a fabulous night.

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Tony Hollingsworth and Luke Harvey-Palmer leading their Expert Roundtables at the event

I’ll reflect more on the event and ideas raised later, but I thought I’d capture some of the blog and Twitter reflections on the event .

I believe this is a topic for our times. The future is crowdsourcing. It is the manifestation of the old idea of collective intelligence. The global brain has arrived.

We captured some videos of the keynote panel presentations and discussion – we’ll try to get them up before long. It was an awesome discussion – many really interesting points were raised. Back later on those stories.

First, just some of the response from attendees.

Lesley Barry (at least I presume that’s who @LifeStuffiKnow is) wrote a great review of the event starting with:

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How to raise money from crowds: 11 crowdfunding platforms and examples

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Crowdfunding is one of the more interesting (and important) neologisms of the last few years. It takes the idea of crowdsourcing (getting services delivered by crowds) and applies it to raising money.

In a later post I will write about the implications of the rise of crowdfunding for venture capital and other early stage funding sources. Here I will just cover some examples of crowdfunding, many of them in creative domains.

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Kickstarter is a well developed creative crowdfunding platform, covering films, music, games, theatre, technology and far more. It uses the common all-or-nothing model, so projects are only funded if they raise their target funds in a defined period. It does not offer equity in the ventures, but project creators can provide specific rewards for funders. Kickstarter gained attention when the new open source competitor to Facebook, Diaspora*, sought $10,000 and has already raised over $180,000 before the funding period is over.

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Launch of online community SMETechnologyForum.com – join the discussion!

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We have been busy working on a number of major initiatives this year. One of the most important directions for Advanced Human Technologies is creating communities in which we provide useful content and a place for sharing and discussion.

Our first community is SME Technology Forum, which brings together community insights on leveraging tech for small and mid-sized companies. Check it out. And when you’re there please participate if you have anything to add to the discussions or comments.

We’re keen to get your contribution to the community. We’d love to post any useful articles you have. Also do let us know if you or anyone you know has learned valuable lessons on applying technology to business – we’d be happy to do an interview to write a case study. Full details on how to contribute to SME Technology Forum here.

We will be launching more communities soon, both ones dear to our hearts, as well as custom communities for companies that want to build a rich B2B community for their customers and prospects. Keep posted for more new communities – they’re intended to be valuable for you!