The Twouble with Twetailer
Golden Rule of Branding:
- Choose a name that is your URL
- Don't choose anything that paints you in a corner. With the word "tweet" in it, it's painted into a corner.
-- Mark Suster, referring to TweetUp at 6:11 into This Week in Venture Capital #2 with Mark Suster.
In the beginning
There was something familiar about Twitter back in December 2008 when I posted My Five Ws of Twitter in less than 10 minutes (video included). It wasn't necessarily the short messages - like text messaging (SMS), even though those were its roots. It wasn't so much the chat-like short messages either. It was something I recognized as an IBM MQ Series feature call Message Persistence - basically meaning, the messages are saved on some hard disk on some server somewhere on the network. So what? So as opposed to email, text messages, or, chat messages that are 1) unless they're spam, are sent to a select group of people, and 2) can be deleted, Twitter messages are potentially in the public domain, persisted (save to some disk) and searchable.
The original idea behind Twetailer was to expand on those persisted tweets, as if they were MQ Series persisted messages and use them as a poor-mans' communication channel. And just like MQ Series with its ability to have operating system agnostic clients communicating to the MQ Series server, there were already a whack of Twitter client applications out there like TweetDeck, Twhirl, Seesmic, etc. That way Twetailer could focus on the transaction engine and let its users choose their favorite client app. We even had free text messaging (SMS), courtesy of Twitter.
Hence the name Twetailer, which is short for Twitter Retailer.
Sounds like a plan, eh?
But Dom Derrien was concerned about relying on Twitter for these persisted messages, so, we decided to persist our own. Still true to our Twitter inspiration, we built a transaction engine that runs in 140 characters, or, less. As a Consumer, your initial request looks like:
d twetailer wii console locale:1235 us range:25 mi expires:2010-12-23
and subsequent requests could look like:
d twetailer rent twilight dvd
since we already knew your previous preference for location and default the expiry date to one month in the future.
Oh, by the way, Dom was right! To date, Twitter does not persist searchable messages beyond a few days, at best!
Too cryptic
While everyone we yakked to about the concept Where Demand comes to meet Supply loved it, they either didn't tweet, or, thought the messages were too cryptic.
How to paint yourself out of a corner
Twitter is still a force to be reckoned with. But so is email and so is the web and so is text messaging and so is Facebook and so is Google Talk and so is iChat and so is Android and so is iPhone and so is yada yada yada. Cryptic, shmyptic!!! Our Twitter-inspired transaction engine has an open application programming interface (API) allowing us, or, you to build more client apps than ever before. Nonetheless, we have to heed the outside-in advice of those we respect. So we're keeping http://twetailer.com as our project name but moving forward with http://AnotherSocialEconomy.com.
Thanks Jason, Mark & ThisWeekIn
A big thanks to Mark Suster, Jason Calacanis and the rest of the crew at ThisWeekIn for helping us paint our way out the corner. I'm pleased to say we have gone from the single Twitter Stream to multi-stream and from Twetailer to AnotherSocialEconomy.
Thoughts
Has anyone out there been faced with a similar situation? Did you stick with your 'program", or, re-positioned yourself?
The Yin Yang of Techie Start Ups
In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin yang is used to describe how polar or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn... Yin yang are complementary opposites within a greater whole. Everything has both yin and yang aspects,.. constantly interacting, never existing in absolute stasis.
-- Yin and yang - Wikipedia
Background
We've reached our techie milestone. We have quality code running in the Google AppEngine clouds. We've validated our concept with as many people that will listen to us. We're at the point now where we have to validate with the market. We need users. More specifically, we need Consumers and we need Retailers. We need marketing & we need public relations (PR).
Challenge
So while the real techie - Dom Derrien, can breath a little easier, the other - me, with my techie background, has to go out and market the crap out of Twetailer. But, I'm not really a marketing kind of guy. While I absolutely love demoing and presenting and evangelizing, I'm not particularly strong at finding the right people to get in front of. So, I need to find myself a marketing guru. But being an ultra-light start up (read "living of my wife and kids"), I need to find a marketing guru - preferably one shooting for the social networking sphere, who's willing to drink the Kool-Aid. Fortunately, Marc Bienstock likes Kool-Aid.
Lesson Learned
Twetailer was conceived and originally targeted for techies like ourselves - cube dwellers. Which is fine, since we never planned on using the line "If only 1% of China...". So demoing to techies was never a real problem, despite some minor usability issues. But in order to get to the next level, we had to demo to prospective partners, prospective CEOs, prospective Consumers and prospective Retailers. And the further away we got from the cube dwellers, the greater the usability issue became for those higher up in the org chart - tower dwellers. Thankfully, everyone got the true value of Twetailer's service: "Brokering Consumer Demand with local Retailers' available Supply - via simple messages, for f(r)ee, or, Reverse Retailing". But even our own accountant and lawyer turned on us with comments like "Can't I just have one button to press? I'm not very comfortable with all this texting stuff. Hey, I have a great idea! How about an app for my Blackberry?". Not bad for tower-dwellers, eh? 
So now I think I understand. While I originally intended to service techie consumers, I needed non-techies to help me get that service to them. In other words, my techie solution had a non-techie dependency.
Time to Pivot
It pays to get out of the basement. Last April, I attended the Montreal venue for the Startup Lessons Learned Conference where among other gems, I was introduced to what Steve Blank calls Customer Development process and Eric Ries calls the The Pivot:
“Pivoting” is when you change a fundamental part of the business model. It can be as simple as recognizing that your product was priced incorrectly. It can be more complex if you find your target customer or users need to change or the feature set is wrong or you need to “repackage” a monolithic product into a family of products or you chose the wrong sales channel or your customer acquisition programs were ineffective.
Modified Business Model
Originally, the fee plan was to charge both Consumer & Retailer a transaction fee similar to that of Amazon Flexible Payments Service fees (about 3%). But after speaking to several people, it became clear we couldn't build a sustainable business like that. The common thought was the best idea is to solve a real business problem and charge money for it. So we're going to charge a monthly subscription fee for registered Retailers. And because Marc felt Twetailer was too generalized and people needed a sense of urgency to use it, we've also introduced a Reseller distribution channel with our first one being targeted towards golfers & golf courses. (Congrats to Marc for being our first Reseller!) And to address usability issues, we're offering a Managed Service for those non-techie Retailers out there.
Modified Development Roadmap
As much as I didn't want to go down this route until there was actual income to pay for it, I seem to be in a Catch 22: If we don't build it, they won't come. If they don't come, then I can't afford to build it. So we re-prioritized some things & built it - an Android app targeted for the Golfer (Consumer) wanting to find a local Golf Course (Retailer). And since Twetailer is vertical agnostic, we're making the app open source so other's out there may be encouraged to built their own vertical, or, reseller market using our open application programming interface (API). Oh and by the way, for those of you like my good buddy Rick Boretsky who think only techies have Android mobile devices, I encourage you to take a look a the First quarter 2010 information from The NPD Group's Mobile Phone Track which reveals a shift in the smartphone market, as Android OS edged out Apple's OS for the number-two position behind RIM.
Golf Pivot Videos
Please take a look at our pivot trilogy (less than 10 minutes) and let me know your thoughts. The first is intended to address our target audience with the second identifying their pain and the third illustrating our solution (for non-techies and techies alike).
Reflection
What do you think? Am I setting a bad precedence? Am I clouding my inability to market/sell my start up by throwing more code, time & energy at the problem, as opposed to, finding/solving the root-cause? Or, do you think this is a step in the right direction?
What To Do When Your Kids Are More Connected Than You Are and Your First Social Safety Net
How to turn an unknown social network of yours into your kids safety net and maybe even help you start connecting too.
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
-- Bill Gates
Geniuses at Work: Gates watches his friend and future Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen typing on a teletype terminal at the Lakeside School in Seattle in 1968. Gates was 13 when he entered the exclusive prep school, which was around the time this photo was taken.
Background
I have two start-up projects underway. The first, Twetailer was inspired by one of those "OMG! Wouldn't it be great if you could just yada yada yada?" moments. The second, http://edu.cyn.in, was not. No edu, was created out of my 11-year old daughter Sara's frustration with her school's computer curriculum. Complaints like: "Why do I care if something is bold?", or, "Insert a column? When am I ever going to need that when I grow up?". Yikes! Wouldn't it be great if Sara could actually use technology for something she cared about?
You can't always get what you want
- Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones
But Sara also shared the frustration she felt when some of her friends - who are on Facebook, kept urging others to join up, even though they know the minimun age is 14. Similarly for those with MSN, or, gmail accounts. And while I love seeing kids adopt technology, there are valid reasons why these services have age requirements. So, as a parent, what do you do? Do you stick to the rules & tell them to wait until they're old enough? Do you let them waste their effortless ability to embrace these social technologies and stick to making things bold & inserting colums?
But if you try sometimes, you get what you need
- Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones
So again, as a parent, how do we monitor our kids' activities on the Net? Google it. Here's Dr. Phil.com - Advice - Monitor Your Child's Cell Phone and Internet Activity. There are lots of sites offering all kinds of advice. But mostly all of them assume one thing - that you are as tech savy as your kids. And let's face it, kids have a lot more time & friends to show them how than most parents do.
But what if you were able to trust another parent to monitor your kid's activities for you? Like when you let your little one go on a playdate to a friend's house, or, they're invited to the movies. If you trust the friend's parents then you let them go.
Perhaps your first digital social safety net
edu started out to be a way for Sara & her Grade 6 classmates to socialize in a secured and monitored Internet playground. A place where they could experience the power of blogs, wikis, discussions, audio, video, image sharing, etc. while learning the new minimun skills sets required in today's digital and globally distributed workplace. Pretty soon, edu will be made available for the rest of her school and any other school interested under the following conditions:
- The student has to be attending an educational institution registered with edu
- There must be at least one parent/guardian, teacher/faculty member monitoring that student's grade.
In Sara's case, I monitored her grade. Did that mean all the other parents trusted me (and edu with their children's related activities? Not necesarly. It turns out, most didn't have a choice. Over the course of the project, I spoke with a few parents and they simply felt they didn't have the skill sets to monitor. Even after informing them its just a matter of reading their email, they still felt uncomfortable with this "type of stuff", but looked forward to watching how their kids used it.
Do the math
So in essence, condition #2 above, became those parents' new social safety net. All they needed was one adult out of twenty students, to feel comfortable enough to watch over their child in their new digital playground. Is this any different than letting your child go to the movies, or, a school field trip with a parent like that?
My parents always told me: "All we want is for you to have more opportunities than we did growing up." And they certainly succeeded. As a parent in today's digital world, it would be a shame not to continue the tradition. edu gives those who aren't as connected as their kids the opportunity to do just that.
Reflection
What are your thoughts abouts giving your kids access to things like Facebook, MSN, Friendfeed, MySpace, Twitter, Google Talk, AIM, Bebo, Blogger, buzzup, Delicious, digg, faves, Gmail, Mister Wong, Reddit, Stumbleupon, twine, WordPress and Yahoo? Do you have the skills to monitor their activities across all these sites? What percent of parents do you think can? Where do you fit in this Study: Ages of social network users | Royal Pingdom?
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The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 3
Using social software to avoid building something that someone - other than me, thinks is awesome.
Once you have the community, let them tell you how to improve your product by exposing your engineers to the cheers and jeers. This type of feedback is one of the greatest values of a community.
idea - who
In the spirit of openness, I just want to state that this post is a plug for the wonderful folks at Cynapse and their awesome and even at times inspiring, social software platform - cyn.in.
The underlying theory behind outside-in software is that to create successful software, you must have a clear understanding of the goals and motivations of your stakeholders. Your ultimate goal is to produce software that is highly consumable and meets/exceeds the needs of your client.
- Wikipedia based on Outside-in Software Development: A Practical Approach to Building Successful Stakeholder-based Products, Carl Kessler & John Sweitzer
Now Guy, Carl & John can't all be wrong - developing software solutions in an ivory tower is no longer an option. As any external & internal stakeholder will tell you, you need feedback - especially in the world of global development & delivery (GDD). So how do you connect all these people from all over, with different skill-sets, different perspectives and most importantly different roles and rights? For example;
As a Developer (Internal Stakeholder), I would like to see Customers' (External Stakeholders), comments on how they interact with the system, so I can better understand what value they're trying to achieve.
As a Founder (Internal Stakeholder), I would like to collaborate with other Founders on our financial planning by sharing discussions, files and bookmarks, so we can communicate in a more timely and efficient manner than email.
Both of these scenarios involve the sharing and disseminating of information. However, not necessarily across Developers, Customers and Founders.
Having software development & start-up in my blood, I was thrilled to see the state of cyn.in. What the solution lacks in features, as compared to some of the competition, it makes up for in design, ease-of-use, quality and support.
I think the business model is great - its got something for everyone. For the techies, the open source model is a great way to use & potentially contribute to the code. For the folks looking for a free open source solution to experiment with, the VMware image provides the cheapest simplest in-house solution. And for those who want to avoid any hardware/software/networking issues and assure themselves of timely & helpful support, then the Software as a Service (SaaS) offering is the route to go.
For now, the one weakness is lack of documentation and knowledge base contents.
Since I consider myself a cyn.in early adopter, I hope to contribute to the requirements process - with my own spin of course In addition, I'll be blogging / tweeting about how we compliment certain features in their infancy with other solutions to achieve our desired results. Why am I doing this? Well, in the interest of transparency, I get a preferred SaaS deal for helping out and I better position myself as a potential reseller & service provider. However, most importantly, I actually do enjoy this stuff. And I will especially enjoy myself if I can contribute in a meaningful way to what I trust will be a distributed software development effort in an outside-in agile environment.
In addition to Enterprise Support, another SaaS benefit is being seamlessly migrated to the latest release - which by the way is as gorgeous as the Adobe AIR desktop client. If you're currently a cyn.in Version 2 user, then moving to Version 3 should be one of your priorities. If you're not, then Version 3 offers every feature you'd expect from a social software platform - minus some functionality. For example, while there are calendar Events, they lack the ability to invite members. Until that's enabled, we supplement cyn.in Events and with Google Calendar. In my opinion, a minor price to pay.
For whatever cyn.in lacks in documentation, they more than make up for it with their Enterprise Support. Despite being timezones away, I can always count on a timely, concise and helpful experience. There's seems to be no question too small, or, bug too big for them to answer in the same courtious manner. And in those special cases when I do come across a missing feature, it's nice to know that my input is used to help contribute to their development process.
A key feature for this start-up community is the ability to control user roles and their permissions. Currently, we use Personas to help us in our development effort. In the near future, we'll be ready to search for actual users to assume their own personnas and help us define and satisfy their needs. When that time arrives, I'll describe our community's site hierarchy and permissions for members to better understand how they fit in.
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Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life – Part 3
My outside your firewall, shared listening and engaging Community Product Manager service offering for social software vendors/providers.
Sharing does have its advantages
According to wikipedia
Shared Services refers to the provision of a service by one part of an organization or group where that service had previously been found in more than one part of the organization or group. Thus the funding and resourcing of the service is shared and the providing department effectively becomes an internal service provider. The key is the idea of 'sharing' within an organization or group.
As the title suggests, this is the third and final part of my Lessons Learned series and where I'll propose the business model I've come up with. Here's my previous related posts:
- How to infuse Social Content 2.0 into your social software lifecycle
- Trial offer to test the Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life
- Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life - Part 1
- Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life - Part 2
- I will assume the overhead costs associated with:
- Monitoring the social software market. Using Radian6, I would create a Topic Profile including keywords for social software vendors / providers like Socialtext, Atlassian, Blogtronix, MindTouch, Cynapse, Liferay, Vignette...
- Filtering out and tagging relevant buzz about product features and directions across the market
- Offering free service exporting tagged content and publishing on blog
- Offer monthly fee-based services where I would:
- Net out tagged content with respect to product features and publish on permission-based site (Say for example there's a few posts about "permissions". I would then write a 1-liner describing the "permission feature" and link to the original supporting content published Step 1.3)
- Offer hourly, or, tiered fee-based services where I would:
- Collaborate with respective social software vendors' / providers' (Customers') Product Managers to determine which features described in Step 2.1 should be elaborated
- Engage with original content authors and elaborate on product features selected in Step 3.1
- Privately share results of Step 3.2 with respective Customer Product Managers
- Collaborate with respective Customer Product Managers to determine which features described in Step 3.3 require further assistance / services
Other variations
I could resell Radian6 Seat licenses - governed by certain permission restrictions and share my Topic Profiles for those:
- Customers whose only pain is the cost of Radian6 (who can then determine later on if they want Steps 2 and/or 3)
- Potential colleagues who would collaborate on Steps 1, 2 & 3
What do think? If you're a social software vendor/provider, is this a service that may be of interest to you? Do you currently have a Product Manager? If so, is your Product Manager able to keep up with the social content? Do you see the any value in consolidating the redundancy? Do you see where it really is just a matter of per·spec·tive? Where ...
one piece of content can yield dividends for many investors
I'd love to hear from you folks in the field & prove there is a way we all could succeed at doing more with less.
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Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life – Part 2
per·spec·tive n. Subjective evaluation of relative significance; a point of view.
Perspective
In an earlier post, How to infuse Social Content 2.0 into your social software lifecycle, I reiterated a common theme I noticed in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Social Software. That theme basically stated that many social software providers' ability to execute may suffer due to their lack of resources, or, size does matter - according to Gartner. To address this issue, I posted my Trial offer to test the Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life where I proposed the services of a new player - the Community Product Manager. And finally, after receiving some much appreciated feedback, I followed-up with my Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life - Part 1 where I clarified the distinction between a Community Manager, Product Manager and a Community Product Manager. In this post, I'll focus on what I discovered during that trial week by presenting some concrete examples and how I think it fits into the big picture.
Recently, there's been a lot of news about Space Junk;
In June 1983, the windscreen of the U.S. space shuttle Challenger had to be replaced after it was chipped by a fleck of paint measuring 0.01 of an inch that impacted at four kilometers per second.
So here's my fleck of paint: For the purposes of discussion, I purposely selected trivial content in order not to distract from the point I'm trying to articulate. For now, you'll have to trust me about the volume of content flying around in cyberspace
Here's some content I found using Radian6 during the trial period and a few different perspectives:
Scenario 1: Broadcast of new feature to anyone listening for Socialtext
Tweet from pascal_venier on Feb 28, 2009 02:48 PM
Studying Socialtext wiki automatic "Email notification of Recent Changes" to your inbox. A nice feature. http://twurl.nl/ypcmoj...
| Perspective | Possible reaction |
|---|---|
| Anyone connected to Socialtext | May retweet |
| Competitor's Customer | Compares to current experience and may contact support, or, retweet |
| Competitor's Community Manager | May need to ask Support about feature and if it exists, may tweet their own spin |
| Competitor's Community Product Manager | Compares to current feature-set & if it exists then tweets their own spin else documents 1-line User Story. For example: "As someone interested in the contents published on a particular wiki, I'd like to receive email notifications of updates on a scheduled basis, so I don't have to visit the site to ensure I have the latest content." |
Scenario 2: Broadcast of feature request to Liferay & anyone listening for Liferay
Tweet from helmblogger on Mar 03, 2009 12:34 PM
@Liferay Our business problem... "News" both organizational and departmental. Need to display "all-in-one" and "by department".. thoughts?...
| Perspective | Possible reaction |
|---|---|
| @Liferay (Perhaps Community Manager) | Depending on their role, may forward to Support, or, Development |
| Anyone listening for Liferay | May retweet & contact Support too |
| Competitor's Customer | Compares to current experience and may retweet & contact Support too |
| Competitor's Community Manager | May need to ask Support about feature and if it exists, may tweet own spin |
| Competitor's Community Product Manager | Compares to current feature-set & if it exists then tweet their own spin else documents 1-line User Story. For example: "As an author, I'd like to publish hierarchical content, so that groups based on the hierarchy have permission to read it." |
Scenario 3: Blog post targeting sought after project management features and referencing a few social software players
The Best and Worst Project Management Apps posted Feb 08, 2009 05:17 AM
... But there are a number of organizations that command large amounts of cash who need to procure project management systems for their divisions around the world. This includes NGOs, Government Agencies, International Schools, Non-Profits and more. In these harsh economic times, businesses should be looking for ways to tap into new markets. Most emerging economies still have nearly 100% room for growth, if only developers take into account their needs and circumstances.
Do any project management products exist that are ready to serve this multi-billion dollar sector?...
| Perspective | Possible reaction |
|---|---|
| Anyone listening for Basecamp, Zoho, Google Apps, Zimbra, ActiveCollab, ProjectPier, OpenGoo, Dot Project, Cyn.in, Confluence, Rockclimbr, Drupal, Yammer, Noodle, Present.ly, Collabtive, Trellis Desk, Achievo, or, Product Planner | May comment, or, tweet |
| Anyone associated & listening for any of the above organizations | Compares to current experience and may comment, tweet, or, contact Support too |
| Competitor's Customer | Compares to current experience and may comment, tweet, or, contact Support too |
| Competitor's Community Manager | May need to ask Support about features and possibly comment/tweet their own spin |
| Competitor's Community Product Manager | Compares to current feature-set & possibly comments/tweets their own spin else documents 1-line User Story for each missing feature. This example is really about architecture: "As an emerging market decision-maker for social software selection, I need a self-hosted solution, so my users need only intranet access since Internet access is not always available." |
Assuming the organization has a Community Manager then there may be an overlap in responsibilities with a Community Product Manager. However, this can be easily addressed with a little bit of collaboration. However beyond the overlap, a Community Product Manager could potentially extend the above scenarios by:
- Reviewing User Stories with their counter-part Product Manager & determine any course of action
- Engaging with the source and/or user community to elaborate and document the feature requirements
- Supporting the Product Manager in the feature development lifecycle thereby completing the Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life (see post title)
Panning the River of News for gold
However, the most important pattern that emerged and lesson I learned was the one of Perspective. No doubt, even with the help of Radian6's River of News, there's a lot of work involved in mining for gold nuggets in cyberspace. But the beauty of striking these nuggets is that they're environmentally friendly - they're reusable! As illustrated in this post, one piece of content can yield dividends for many investors. It's just a matter of perspective.
My next post will propose a Community Product Manager business model. I'd love to hear any of your ideas and will be more than happy to attribute and share them here.
Reflection
Do the above scenarios and quotes help in providing concrete examples of where a Community Product Manager can add value to your development process? Do you need more? Do you have any examples of your own you could share with me?
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Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life – Part 1
Distinction between a Community Manager, Product Manager and a Community Product Manager
Feedback
First of all, thanks to all of those who shared their thoughts with me on my last post - Trial offer to test the Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life. In general, there were two common threads:
- Disticntion between a Community Product Manager and a Community Manager
- Can't justify business case for that role
Despite my attempt at defining the former, most thought I was offering the services of a Community Manager. To be clear, my understanding of a Community Manager is based on Chris Brogan's post Essential Skills of a Community Manager. Here's a quick summary: Community Managers
- are like a good party host mixed with a fine restaurant host.
- must be experienced communicators
- are ambassadors and advocates in one
- are bodyguards and protectors
- must build actionable reports
- cultivate internal teams for further support
On the other hand, there's Pragmatic Marketing's Product Manager definition which can be illustrated as;
Pragmatic Marketing Framework
In my opinion, while a Community Product Manager is in between these two roles, it's much more aligned with the Product Manager's, except, it's outside the development organization's firewall. Which means, a Community Product Manager could potentially assist the Product Manager with the highlighted areas illustrated above.
In an earlier post, How to infuse Social Content 2.0 into your social software lifecycle, I reiterated Gartner's findings that many social software providers / vendors may suffer from lack of resources. And while I received a bit of flack for the "size matters" point, I still believe the Community Product Manager role need is there - to some degree, which I'll save for another time.
In my next post, I'll focus on the content by presenting some concrete examples of what I discovered over the past week & how I think it fits into the big picture.
Reflection
As always, all comments are welcome.
Thanks again to those who shared their thoughts and a special thanks to Alora Chistiakoff over at Social Computing Magazine for suggesting a few concrete examples will help clarify matters.
Trial offer to test the Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life
More on infusing community and product management for social software development. Read on and email me at steven@stevenmilstein.com if you want to participate in my free trial offer.
Circle of Life
Background
I recently posted How to infuse Social Content 2.0 into your social software lifecycle where I mentioned 38 social software companies reviewed in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. I then went fishing for Comments by tweeting all those names and more (see tags listed below), with a link to the post. Good, or, bad, almost immediately, three of them left comments plus one sent an email plus another responded with a few tweets. I'm guessing that means their listening for their brands. I'm also guessing that the others may either not be listening, or, are too busy to get engaged - even with the post being resyndicated at Social Computing Magazine the very next day! As a result, I feel its time to stop blogging about it and start delving deeper into my theory.
Definitions
Social Content 2.0: Content derived from the spontaneous, effortless, contagious and insightful use of social software. This content flows independent of the networks, platforms and tools themselves and is solely driven by the interests, concerns, opinions and experiences of the community and their desire to contribute.
Community Product Manager: A new type of product manager whose primary task is to listen, engage and represent the stakeholders outside the software development organization and help communicate this nurtured Social Content 2.0 into the agile development process.
Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life: Harvesting Social Content 2.0 from both the outside and inside of the organization to feed further development and support of it's products and/or services, in turn producing it's next generation.
Tools supplied by Radian6
I'll be using Radian6's social media monitoring solution to harvest the social content.
Free Trial Offer Iterative Process
- Select social software vendors based upon their interest, ability to assign owner on the inside to collaborate with me and timeliness in replying to my offer
- Configure Radian6 for social software market place and filter for selected vendors
- Discover the content and it's contributors for five business days
- Analyze trends, keywords, level of engagement for five business days
- Blog about market-level results on my site
- Blog about vendor and product level results on vendors' extranet, intranet, or some other private space
Service Offering - Post Trial Offer Iterative Process
- Collaborate with traditional product manager representing outside stakeholders
- Participate in development process as required
- Engage with community contributors as required
- Reflect with respective community contributors
Trial offer
So how pragmatic can a Community Product Manager be? If you're a social software vendor and prepared to collaborate with me, let's measure the fruits of our labour. To be clear, my resources are limited, as I'm sure yours are too, and I cannot possibly agree to help everyone that responds. So if you're as serious about this stuff as I am, then please do not hesitate to respond and lets get going. You can email me at steven@stevenmilstein.com.
SERVaaS - Service as a Service?
If all goes well, then I hope to have a better understanding of the demand for Community Product Managers and the viability of offering the above services. Once I have a few customers in place, then taking it to the next level is already the subject of sleepless nights in Montreal and will have to be saved for another post down the road.
Reflection
What do you think? Are you in development? Do you think there's a place in the software development lifecyle for Community Product Managers? Or, are you a stakeholder on the outside yearning for a(nother) voice on the inside? Either way, please comment, share with a colleague, customer, developer and help get those email requests coming in.
Many thanks to the good folks; Amber Naslund, Cory Hartlen , Marc Whitchurch, Chris Ramsey and Marcel Lebrun at Radian6 for all their time and consideration.
And another Thank You to Alora Chistiakoff over at Social Computing Magazine for reaching out to me and offering my first resyndication.
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How to infuse Social Content 2.0 into your social software lifecycle
This is about me taking a traditional role in software development and creating its counterpart on the customer side to improve communications between all stakeholders. This is where Product Manager meets Community Product Manager.
Social Content 2.0: Content derived from the spontaneous, effortless, contagious and insightful use of social software. This content flows independent of the networks, platforms and tools themselves and is solely driven and by the interests, concerns, opinions and experiences of the community and their desire to contribute.
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Social Software (Oct 2008)
The social software state of affairs
- According to Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Social Software, there is not one software company in the Leaders quadrant and only Microsoft & IBM in the Challengers quadrant. That means, there's lots of room for improvement in today's social software offerings.
- Based on these excerpts, almost 40% of the players have size issues when it comes to their ability to execute:
- AskMe-Realcom: The impact of the June 2008 merger between AskMe and Realcom on the company's direction and product evolution will take time to work through.
- Atlassian: The company's size (currently 190 employees) and reach can limit its ability to handle growth and meet the demands of large global organizations.
- Awareness: Despite doubling to 50 employees during the last year, Awareness is still a relatively small organization.
- blueKiwi Software: Despite some growth in 2008, blueKiwi is a small company with about 30 employees, limited resources and no activity outside Europe.
- Blogtronix: The company's small size, small partner network and limited enterprise deployments limit its ability to execute.
- CustomerVision: CustomerVision has limited market presence, is very small in size (18 employees) and has a limited "ecosystem."
- Drupal: Acquia is a small and new organization with an unproven ability to execute.
- eTouch: eTouch is a small company (15 employees) with limited ability to execute.
- EMC: EMC has a document- and process-centric view of collaboration, with little support for informal communities in its current eRoom product.
- EPiServer: The company has almost no presence outside Europe.
- FatWire: Although TeamUp is being deployed independently, its primary short-term appeal will be among existing FatWire customers and creative marketing teams or media agencies dealing with rich media content.
- Google: Weaknesses in social interaction support and group information organization, moderation and expertise location will need to be addressed before the product is suitable beyond content authoring and sharing.
- GroveSite: The company's small size (15 employees) limits its ability to execute.
- Huddle: Huddle is a small U.K.-based company, with a limited ability to execute, and no large-scale deployments (beyond 2,000 users per site).
- IBM: Whether justified or not, perceptions of complexity and dependencies on other IBM products such as Domino, WebSphere or DB2 will make it more difficult for IBM to reach customers outside its existing customer base.
- Igloo: Igloo is a small company that needs to attract a broader customer base beyond its handful of customers in Canada and the U.S.
- Jive Software: Although growing, Jive Software's size will inhibit its ability to establish a clear positioning as an enterprise vendor.
- Josh: The company is very small (16 employees) and has limited exposure outside Europe.
- Leverage Software: Leverage is still a small organization (40 employees), with activities mainly in the U.S.
- Liferay: Commitment from the vendor and the Liferay communities to the collaboration and social software market is still unproven.
- Lithium Technologies: It offers limited support for team collaboration via document/content creation and sharing, and no informal project support.
- LiveWorld: It has limited authoring, document sharing or team collaboration support.
- Microsoft: There are functional gaps including social tagging and bookmarking, social search and an improved wiki (although some of these are offered by Microsoft as open-source components through its Codeplex community).
- MindTouch: Despite doubling to 26 employees in 2008, MindTouch is still a small and young organization that has yet to prove its ability to serve enterprises.
- Mzinga: The company has little experience with internal employee collaboration beyond talent development and social learning.
- Novell: Product visibility beyond the existing Novell customer base is limited.
- ONEsite: Despite the Social platform acquisition, ONEsite is still a small organization with just over 50 employees.
- Open Text: Despite capability enhancements in Livelink ECM - Extended Collaboration and the RedDot product line, some gaps will remain (for example, rich profiles, social tagging, social analytics and mobile support) until the release of new social computing offerings currently in production.
- PBwiki: The company is small (30 employees).
- Six Apart (Movable Type): Six Apart's main focus is not the enterprise, where it has an unproven track record beyond blogging services and technology.
- Small World Labs: Although it is a growing organization, it is still small.
- Socialtext: Its primary audience is outside the IT department, which makes it easier to strike quick opportunistic deals but harder to close large enterprise deals.
- Telligent: Although very good in general community support, there are functional gaps in social network analysis, social search and support for more structured collaboration (such as tasks, simple workflow and projects).
- ThoughtFarmer: It is a small organization with a small client base and no evidence of large-scale deployments.
- Tomoye: It has limited geographic and vertical-market diversification.
- Traction Software: Traction is still a very small organization (10 employees) that needs to grow faster if it is not to be left behind.
- TWiki: The governance issues between the TWiki.net commercial organization and the TWiki developer community, and the subsequent creation of a new splinter project (www.twikifork.org) in October 2008 will impact its ability to execute.
- Vignette: Collaboration has not been Vignette's main focus, although it is an important ingredient both in its outward facing Web Experience strategy and for supporting internal collaboration.
Using your browser, Find for the word "employees". Aside from this last occurance, there should be 12. Now Find "small". That should add another 2. That means 14 of 38 - almost 40% of the companies Gartner chose, have size issues related to their ability to execute. If you look through the rest of the report, you'll see that all of them, not just the others listed above, have product issues.
- The global financial crisis has resulted in major job cuts - software developers and service providers are not immune. That means that all of them are being asked to do more with less. For many that may mean focusing on customer support and maintenance issues, as opposed to, new features, innovation and growing their market. That makes the 40% even more vulnerable.
- Outside-in (see below) and Agile software development processes are proven & accepted methods for getting & validating that customers' needs are not only being met & delivered, but delivered with high quality. These methods help reduce the risk that precious development & testing time is only spent on features valuable to the business.
- Social software, in itself, is vital to outside-in agile software development. The content that flows through these products, like blood through your viens, is intellectual property conceived by the social network. Let's call that "Social Content 2.0". This content, this priceless commodity, needs to be injected into the products' development lifecycle to not only reduce risk but increase its value to the business and its stakeholders. (See my 2 minute video which refers to the various stakeholders.)
Community Product Manager - The missing link
Everyone is low on talent. Many are missing, or, simply can't afford the connection between the market and development. So why not have an outside-in community product manager for your social software? What does that mean? Traditional product managers work alongside the development team. They are responsible for a multitude of tasks, including gathering, prioritizing, managing and conveying requirements and priorities from their stakeholders to the development team. That's a lot of stuff for someone to do with decreasing resources. So how about having a counter-part whose sole purpose is to represent the outside stakeholders - like Principle, End Users and Partners. Preferably a Community Product Manager would have some of the following traits:
- A software product development background
- Customer facing experience
- Strong presentation skills
- Strong writing skills
- Training/mentoring experience
- Ability to effectively work remote to keep expenses down and more importantly, timeliness up
- Willingness to travel on-site
- Has a stickman profile image
One of the challenges facing many product managers is described in Chip and Dan Heath's book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. They call it ...
The Curse of the Knowledge: When we start to forget what it's like not to know what we know.
IBM's Carl Kessler and John Sweitzer wrote Outside-in Software Development: A Practical Approach to Building Successful Stakeholder-based Products. One of the key take away points for me, is the importance of mixing the social process into the software development process.
So the primary responsibility for the Community Product Manager is to filter, manipulate & translate that Social Content 2.0, derived from the stakeholders, into the language of the product manager and the development team. If everyone gets along, this should not only reduce the workload of the over-burdened product manager but also infuse the community's Social Content 2.0 into the product's development lifecycle. This is the aim of outside-in software development.
The time is now
Clint Boulton reports in Enterprise Social Software Headed for Consolidation Cycle During Recession
What do companies like Socialtext, MindTouch, Jive Software, Awareness, Yammer and NewsGator have in common? As providers of messaging and collaboration enterprise applications, they all may be fodder for acquisition in 2009. Gartner analyst Matt Cain says 60 percent of such vendors will get bought or go under, with the recession paving the way for more deals at cheaper prices.
Q. Now what else do you think these companies have in common?
A. Everyone should be highly motivated to welcome the services of a Community Product Manager.
It's your move
So this is my big plan. I'm going to reach out to the social software development community and offer my Community Product Manager social services.
Reflection
Infusion anyone? Do you think there's place in today's economy and social software's state of affairs for a Community Product Manager?
My Five Ws of RSS in less than 10 minutes (video included)
Here's a great little video explaining news feeds / RSS and how to get started.
Who's this for
Are you one of those folks whose seen these things on web sites & wondered what they're for? Or perhaps you know what they stand. Perhaps you once were adventurous enough to click one but, then decided to leave it for another time. If so, then this post's for you. If not, then maybe you can read on anyway & share your thoughts on how to help others benefit from this technology.
Why I like news feeds
Before we get started on our mission, the first thing I need to due is assume nothing. So if I want you to start following, and hopefully contributing, to this social experiment, I need to help make it easier for me to communicate with you. Of course, email is one way. Personally, for things like this, I really prefer news feeds.
A news feed, by it's own naming, sounds so fresh and up-to-date. But we all know that today's news is tomorrow's history. Now, let's think how that relates to our email's inbox. I know folks that receive 150 to 200 emails a day. Maybe you're just like them. Have you ever fallen behind? Even for a day, or, two. How about when you travel, or, go on vacation? Do the math.
200 emails /day x 5 days disconnected vacation = 1,000 emails
When's the last time you caught up on those emails? In my own case, and I don't receive anywhere near that volume, I pretty much read the subject and then decide if I need to use the scroll bar.
The beauty of news feeds, is that no matter when you read the content, it always feels like news. At least it does for me. (Feel free comment.) I think its because its there in front of me when I want it. So if I'm reading a post about a particular subject matter, then I know I can I can follow that feed's timeline, news history, previous postings, etc., to see how that content evolved. I find it a lot easier to get my head around things when in my Google News Reader, than my Inbox.
What's a news feed and how to get started
So, if you're wondering what's a news feed, or, RSS (, or even ATOM), then take a look at Common Craft's Lee LeFever's perfect little video from his "In Plain English" series.
Where's my RSS icons
So if you're convinced, here's my RSS icons. If not, I'll be just as happy if you subscribe via email.
When to subscribe
How about trying to subscribe right now and comment below how it went. Was it as easy as described? Did I oversimplify things? Would you like me to find some other helpful pointers out there regarding news feeds, or, readers? You'll never know unless you ask.
Up next
I'll post my Five Ws of Twitter next time. So if you have anything you'd like to share along these terms, please comment, or, Tweet me @stevenmistein.
Do you have any of your own preferences, or, RSS links you'd like to share?
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- “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip and Dan Heath
- “Outside-in Software Development: A Practical Approach to Building Successful Stakeholder-based Products” by Carl Kessler and John Sweitzer
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