The Working Network

http://www.sermo.com/tour

Tier three designs and experiences (okay, call them web2.0 or social or whatever you like), so obvious they're invisible to the connected young and the initiated, are not obviously valuable to everyone. That's true despite the fact that social sites exist for Moms and "everyone" says they're going mainstream (see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118825239984310205.html).

I recently turned a psychologist friend of mine onto Youtube. He's into music and ended up discovering a lot of value in Youtube.

More recently I invited him into Facebook. The following is a transcript of our first conversation. His name has been changed.

Foo now has an identity, or something.

Between You and Foo Bar

Foo Bar

9:59am August 30th

BoB
I just joined this damn thing. What the hell is "aim" and why should I care. what the hell is going on with this thing. I haven't set up a "profile" yet, or at least I don't think so. WHat the hell have you gotten me into???
Foo 

Foo Bar

9:59am August 30th

what is this box for? oh brother!

Robert Rebholz

10:05am August 30th

It's for your photo -- question mark man.

Foo Bar

1:51pm August 30th

i'm not gonna put my photo there. I'll put one of my guitars.

Robert Rebholz

1:57pm August 30th

I wouldn't put your photo there either.

Foo Bar

2:31pm August 30th

LOL...
I've already connected with an old highschool friend who said "you have like no web presence"
Great.
Foo

Robert Rebholz

2:38pm August 30th

Sucks that all of our high school friends are old.

Foo Bar

3:51pm August 30th

Yeah, I'm glad I'm not old.

Lots of really fascinating stuff is happening in my world lately. Some of it is a bit unusual. For instance, my wife now refers to me as the Hannibal Lector of Microsoft -- I'm not going to pursue that other than to report that I don't actually bite.

Anyway, half of what I've been working on is what I've come to refer to as "Tier 3" design. From this perspective, what we sometimes think of as Web 2.0 is in part the next level of abstraction of the internet: from physical; to content; to people.

The diagram might look like this:

It might not look like much of an insight, and perhaps it's not, but the ramifications are significant. For instance, if this is accurate, then MSN Spaces would not be Microsoft's consumer social networking offering. All of MSN/Live would be our social networking "solution". The same could be said for Sharepoint and Enterprise 2.0.

In other words it means a re-visioning of online experience generally.

The question then becomes, how do we accomplish this re-visioning? I'm keeping some cards to myself for the time being, but I will share this, when we applied this thinking to product support and troubleshooting we came up with a much different solution than we see in place today, or hear discussed, across the industry.

I think we're taking to close a look at social computing to see it for what it really is. Stepping back, it looks a lot like social nets are the next level of internet sophistication.

From this perspective social nets are superimposed upon content nets which in turn rest upon an IP infrastructure.  Another analogy -- not without it's problems, but in the right spirit -- might be third generation languages versus assembly.

And that is why it works so well. I suspect that anyone who tells you their online behaviors haven't changed much since their adoption of social computing tools/services, hasn't actually made the leap.

Interestingly, Google reached into this higher order to help manage the content web with their original ranking methodology. I don't think that Myspace, or anything like it, is the Google of the social -- that has yet to be discovered (or perhaps revealed, I'm not telling one way or another -- who'd believe me anyway). And while we're on that subject, who or what, do you think, would be the Cisco of the social? I like this game.

Microsoft Social Networking [does not equal] MSN Spaces

Microsoft Social Networking [equals] MSN (plus live, plus whatever else)

Social Networking [is greater than] a single service – regardless of how feature rich it may be.

The social is pervasive. In the end, the people are the only network that matters.

"Any idea sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from nonsense."

I don't know this guy. I can't vouch for his credibility. But, I'd like to know the if what he says can actually be proven.

With the advent of MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Imeem and the flock, things are a changing.  I work for an internet measurement company with a focus on competitive intelligence so I am lucky enough to scope the evolution of the internet in real time.  It's not uncommon to see a website's traffic be 20-50% from search (google, yahoo, msn, live, mamma, etc.)  However, more and more the social networking community space is often times contributing the same if not more of a websites traffic. 

I guess I should just ask, huh?

Can't say find this shockingly original, but anything that contributes to the ease with which we can publish is worth noting.

http://www.slideshare.net/faqs/slidecast

Microcommunities? Well, of course. And a lot more too. We're just scratching the surface of social networking -- the absolute tip of the proverbial iceberg.

http://hubmagazine.com/?p=200

And it's becoming clear we've reached a significant juncture in terms of acceptance.

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/leeann-prescott/2007/07/social_networking_for_moms_ret.html

http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1519

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_networking_goes_global.php

http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_345.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11469141

And of course the man we have to thank for pulling (most of) this altogether, and adding his own commentary: Steve Rubel and his blog Micro Persuasion.