Today's Financial Times has a piece on Blogs and Wikis. It talks about them in terms of a tecktonic shift in what's possible.
For those who subscribe to FT: Financial Times link
And a somewhat fuller version:
-----------------------------------
Tom Foremski: Blogging technology opens doors for enterprises
>By Tom Foremski
>Published: February 23 2005 07:50 | Last updated: February 23 2005 07:50
>>There is a new phase of the internet emerging and it is being fuelled by a new class of technologies coming out of Silicon Valley that don’t even have a name yet, but they have the potential to be disruptive in their application.
Some have begun calling this new phase Web 2.0, but I prefer the term internet 2.0 because it more accurately encompasses the broad nature of what is happening. Blogging, and blogging-like technologies such as wikis, are shaping up to become one of the most important features of internet 2.0. I would not be surprised if these technologies become recognised as the “killer applications” of the next few years.
Let me explain why I think these technologies are so groundbreaking. I know that most readers are familiar with the term “blogging” and many also read blogs. Their content consists mostly of personal views on the day’s events, and other subjects. The content of blogs, however, is not the interesting part – it is the underlying blogging software and its ability to automate the many tasks required to run a website. No technical skills are required of the writer, beyond being able to use a browser and the ability to type. For less than $100, blogging software such as the popular Movable Type, from Six Apart, is a good enough replacement for online content management systems costing more than 1,000 times as much.
That capability alone would be enough to be potentially disruptive to online publishing business models, but blogging technologies also come with a lot more, a distribution system that targets its audience perfectly. This is done through a feature called “trackback,” and a standard known as RSS (Real Simple Syndication). Trackback automatically detects if someone has published a link to your blog post, and it will publish their comment on your blog. This means that it doesn’t matter if a reader posts a comment on the writer’s blog, or, on another blog – the software tracks it all. The response of readers to a news story, for example, can be plainly seen in real-time. It also means that other bloggers, by writing a comment and publishing a link to the original story, become distributors of that content to their readers. And it shows that if the content is relevant, an audience will find it, and also personally recommend it to others through their blogs.
RSS is another way to distribute blog content. It allows readers to subscribe to a blog and read the content without having to visit the originating site. RSS makes it possible to aggregate the content from several sites within software called a “newsreader.”
Other types of related applications are wikis, which differ from blogs in that any reader can change the content of the web page. Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia written by internet users, is a good example of a wiki. It also showcases how wikis can be used as knowledge management systems.
Blogs have been around for several years and wikis are 10 years old. What is new however, is the realisation of the business uses for these types of technologies. If they can create communities of self-selected readers companies could potentially communicate directly with their customers. And customers can provide direct feedback to the companies. If it is done right, this means potentially huge savings in marketing, and market research activities.
Astonishingly, a very small number of people within the business community have figured this out. Even in Silicon Valley, the birthplace of blogging technologies, the common view is that it is a narcissistic activity by unemployed software engineers with plenty of time on their hands.
A few people are trying to educate the business community through conferences, and interest from corporations seems to be sparking up. For example, in late January 2005, I took part in a journalism panel at the New Communications Forum, one of the first US conferences on corporate use of blogging and wikis. Elizabeth Albrycht and Jennifer McClure, the organisers of the event, were having trouble reaching their modest goal of attracting 80 to a 100 people to the conference. “I don’t know why, but then suddenly, just days before the conference, we were swamped by people wanting to attend, and companies wanting to be sponsors,” says Ms Albrycht. Encouraged by its success, they are now preparing a similar conference for Paris in April, and one for New York in the autumn.
The enterprise sector is being targeted by new start-ups such as Jotspot, founded by Joe Kraus, the co-founder of Excite, once one of the largest search engine companies. “Corporate departments can use JotSpot to quickly and easily build custom business applications,” Mr Kraus says. Other entrepreneurs in this space include Ross Mayfield, of SocialText, also a developer of wikis for corporations. David Galbraith, one of the authors of RSS 1.0 has developed “Wists” a simple tool allowing users to create and publish online catalogues of images. In the UK, Fergus Burns heads Nooked, a company that helps enterprises manage their RSS feeds. And new types of web sites such as Flickr are creating novel communities and group activities that could not have been predicted.
A characteristic of these software technologies is that they behave as “platforms” that enable and support online communities on the internet or in the private corporate intranet. Social software is one label, but a more fitting one might be “community-ware” or even “community-aware” software.
Tom Foremski is a former Financial Times news reporter and now publishes SiliconValleyWatcher.com, a business news blog for northern California’s Silicon Valley. tom@siliconvalleywatcher.com
Thank you for providing this, as I wanted to read it but not enough to pay $110 for an FT subscription.
Posted by: Liz L. | 01 March 2005 at 09:53 PM