social

Some Interesting items from LS12

The Connections “next” features were some of the most interesting announcements:

  • Activity Streams & Open social support. Redesigned homepage. embedded experiences.
  • OAUTH2 support.
  • New mobile tools in major appstores, very nice stuff.
  • Superior integration with Microsoft assets.
  • New tool called IBM docs will allow Google wave style editing of office docs with Connections as the storage cloud (files).

Fun, Interesting things….

  • Michael J. Fox and Sir Tim Berners-Lee talks in opening sessions.
  • I won a crazy goofy hat that I’m unlikely to wear.

Some things that drove me nuts at LS

  • You can’t take pictures of an important slide?
  • You can’t stand up in the in back or move a chair?
  • Social conference with no working wifi? Wow.
  • If you plug in your device during a session they will take it away until session ends?

Where to be Social?

Social networking tools are becoming a commodity. Look at the script panel of any Internet hosting company and you’ll see blogging tools, interactive content management systems, wikis, and more. There are also a host of free software service sites. Blogger.com and wordpress.com are just a couple examples in the blog space. These online services offer something more than software – they provide an audience!

Through the front page of these sites, taxonomy, and search people can find your content. These sites also are starting to provide integration with other social media through open APIs like OpenSocial.

So given the option of self-hosting a site or using online services what should a person or organization choose? While there are a lot of variables to consider, I think integrating online services into a hosted community is a great option. Maybe your thought leaders should have a blog on blogger.com and incorporate that into your website with RSS/Atom. That gets your organization a place on the larger internet but still allows the content to be part of your custom website.

I think smaller organizations and communities can greatly benefit from hosting a package that best fits their needs. That might be a wiki, SN Site (PHPzabi, Dolphin, etc) or CMS (like Drupal or Joomla). Using blog feeds, IM presence indicators, and flexible profile options allow for the greatest community customizations while embracing what is already available as a service on the web.

This opinion is subject to change next week 😉