What about facebook?

It seems like facebook has become everybodys public “phonebook” Being there is like having one of those old Phone sentrals, but now I operate it myself. Is that all we want to use Facebook for ?

 
Of course it isn’t. You can make a great impression of yourself on facebook, and you can flirt, You can act silly and come with fun remarks. You can throw sheep’s, answer hilarious quizzes and give friends a virtual plant to grow, but can you do what you would like to do on facebook? Is it useful and functional for you? Is it developing you yourself or/and our society?

The profile, and stating who we are is for sure one aspect. That’s very nice to do. Or is it? Well we might forget that we are different people in different situations. Amongst friends we might want to show some aspects of ourselves, we wouldn’t show our boss, or clients. But you can be sure that your future employer will search your digital tracks and try to find out. (maybe the photos from your last party wasn’t such a great idea that your so called friends (hurmpf) posted, showing you with your head far down into a – toilette. On the other side we can let people know what we love to do, private or work wise, and meet up with people who also love to do the same. Any one up for Tango tonight?

Finding our “tribe” is another. We all want to belong to, at least one group. The “better” the group, the “better” we feel. It’s great to connect – or should I say re-connect with old friends and schoolmates and former co-workers, and at the same time everyone else can see who you are, valued by your friends. Do you have some semi celebrities on your friend list – or not? You can make an interest or support group. Obama did, with success, and plenty of him, supporting everything you can imagine, literally.

Facebook is like a huge eves dropping arena. Like running the telephone central, make a call to someone when you like, and listen into others interesting conversations.

It’s web 2.0. It’s community. And then I remembered what I learned (and believe to be right) what Valery Maltoni said: “Collaboration leads to Community, and Community needs Contribution.” To me it seems like we most likely will see the triangle coming together soon. I wonder what facebook are capable of as a brand – can they adapt, or will we see new players on the scene soon ?

Collaboration, Community and Contribution are interconnected

I read a blog article today that made me think (again). Valeria Maltoni’s blog article about “Real collaboration” address something very important happening right now. She formulated something I wrote about earlier, but she put it so neatly and short: – Collaboration leads to Community, and Community needs Contribution.

Well this is a concrete example of what mass creativity might lead to, new thoughts, that might create better ideas as the interactions flows.

We have seen communities on the internet growing, like facebook, myspace, dating services and so forth, not at all dull, but still many have thought – Community, So?

As we are speaking we see communities with a  new twist emerging. Addidas , using community to build and develop their brand and offer products that has evolved via their own community. Even more interesting is the growing communities of politicians (just think of Barack Obama’s support group on facebook) and  nongovernmental organizations, like Amnesty international.

This starts to look like somethings that makes a difference in the world and have serious impact worldwide. Social engagement! I can’t imagine how many postings politicians have gotten on their community based internet activities the last days from people all over the world being concerned of all the civilians killed or hurt in the ongoing Gaza conflict. This is real change!

As Valery Maltoni point out : Collaboration, Community and Contribution are interconnected and works together. I think that there is great hope for our near future, where the collective consciousness gets connected very effectively. I think I like it!

Great collaboration ideas

Do you know why so few organizations have started using digital collaboration as a basic way to conduct their business? We really know everything that is needed – Or do we?

 

I wonder what your thought might be on the subject. Or even better, what are great ideas for start using digital collaboration in your environment, work or otherwise? Do you at all use any digital collaboration of some sort? What arguments do you believe would be the best ones at your company, and towards whom?

I’ll let the question hang there- for a while.

Digital collaboration in three steps

To get where you want, you need to know where you are heading

The three most important steps are,  to define your needs, what is it you want to achieve? and how to implement it? Does this sound easy? Well it is – sort of, then again this is where most organizations fail.  If you want to get a deeper understanding of my viewpoint you can look at my presentation at Slideshare : Here

The main point in my presentation is that we have collaborated as long as we have been around, but now more than ever. There have been collaborative tools around for a long time, but now we have new possibillities as the web have developed, the introduction of broadband, web 2.0 and so forth.

Integrating what we know already will make digital collaboration more effective, and very soon a commen way of conducting any work tasks as we know them.  There are three levels of digital collaboration:

1 – Digital collaboration fitted to meet internal challenges is an improvement from the situation today
2 – Digital collaboration that involve the organization with partners and customers is an even better idea.
3 – Integrated digital collaboration with social media enables organizations to achieve an optimal environment where you, your organization and the market itself are so woven together that you might not be sure about who came up with an idea, innovation, service or product you can put in effect. Was it you, or your market?