Lee Bryant of Headshift provides an amazing overview of developments in social software in the recent past.Blogs are not an end in themselves and are bound to grow along multiple dimensions.. Too excellent an stuff to try and summarise... it is a must-read. Excerpts:
What is really going on is a major shift in the way that we are able to communicate, collaborate and share things with each other using online technologies. The key to this is not the technology itself - there is remarkably little that we can do now that wasn't possible 5 years ago - but rather the critical mass of connectivity between people that we are finally reaching, as the Pew survey makes clear(We recently covered the details of the growth in the blogsophere). The real story is about about ease of use, availability, culture change and most importantly network effects, as Jon Udell rightly emphasises. As can be noted,the only slight negative in the Pew stats is the relatively low level of RSS adoption among non-expert users. This is something we should all work to address, as RSS/Atom and other syndication schema are the glue that binds this growing ecosystem of connected conversations.
The enterprise social software market is in a very exciting phase. More and more groups within companies and public or networked organisations are starting to see the practical benefits that these tools, techniques and approaches can bring to areas such as knowledge sharing, corporate communications, project management, customer feedback, marketing, research and innovation. There are some good tools and great ideas around. The key to success is how to combine these within a rounded service offering, based on a sound methodology that takes into account the many non-technical issues that surround deployment, including support, training and user engagement.
An excellent article with rich links and probably among the best in terms of the next phase of growth in the blogosphere- this is not only rich , the sequence and more importantly the perspective that you have provided in terms of the new initiatives that are being tried now - adds substantail meaning and depth to the article. A MUST READ for all interesting in the blogging phenomenon, new age media, intenet, technology and social systems
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