Jon Lebkowsky, Bill Anderson and I met this morning for another round of "what specifically are our offerings at Polycot Associates?"
These meetings are simultaneously fun and frustrating for me. The fun part is arguing about all kinds aspects of the latest social/technical aspects of our culture. The hard part is nailing it down to something focused enough to be considered a business.
A bit of background: Jon and I have been running in to one another for about 18 months or so, and notice just how dang much we have in common. I met Bill at the 2006 SXSW Interactive (Bill "heckled" me at my Beyond Folksonomies panel (mp3 available) -- actually, Bill had very good comments, and strong opinions; he and I have a quite a bit in common as well).
The driving question is for our potential clients: how does today's web intersect with me and my business?
Business websites are the norm now, though the majority of small to medium businesses, and a surprising percentage of larger businesses still use the web as a replacement for print brochures. The flow of information is all one way, and too often sounds like market-speak. When Cluetrain Manifesto was born, the notion of a dialog across the web was practically unheard of. Today, technology makes it almost trivial to allow not only a two way conversation between customers and providers, but to also enable the tangential discussions among customers, potential customers, and passers-by. How widely one should enable this, and to what degree one becomes transparent to the market place is a necessary discussion to have; this topic really shouldn't be ignored.
The array of options can be overwhelming, and implementation, while becoming easier, still begs for a bit of hand-holding. Blogs, wikis, tagging, RSS, forums, social networks, mashups, web2.0; what is a business to make of it all? Simply focusing on the technology will almost certainly fail to foster the desired results. Social Technology is generating quite the buzz; many companies will miss the mark by focusing on the technology part without understanding the social piece.
Business is Social. The Cluetrain Manifesto was all about bringing awareness to the fact that the psuedo-social feel good marketing blather that we have long learned to filter out no longer works. Technology doesn't replace the human touch, it only accelerates the speed of the transaction. It is even more important in this environment to listen to the praises and grumbles of the marketplace. To be able to respond to the shifts in customer satisfaction and market demand.
The technology is getting better at a fast pace. The social protocols are in need of a tune-up, and in some cases, of an overhaul. There aren't enough people helping with the social aspects of business.
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