Is Xbox Live better than golf for digital business networking?

July 14, 2010 By 1 Comment

I’ve never managed to get into golf as a sport, but I’ve often been made aware of it as a useful social gathering for business people to get together. Was I missing out due to my lack of interest, ability and plaid sportswear?

My Lucky Golf Outfit by Jeff The Trojan on Flickr

‘My Lucky Golf Outfit‘ by Jeff the Trojan on Flickr (CC Licence)

Well, if golf was the social context for business networking in the past, I’m rapidly realising that Xbox Live appears to have replaced it. Obviously my network is self-selecting to an extent, but a quick scan of my friends includes:

  • a couple of founders of significant start-ups (i.e. companies you’ll definitely know).
  • a fair number of journalists, including a couple of editors.
  • 5-10 fairly prominent digital marketers.
  • a handful of tech experts in specialist areas.

Theoretically it’s possible I could keep up with all of these friends in the pub, although it’d take a mighty amount of diary juggling and even then, some of them are rarely in the same city with enough free time.

But it’s easy for me to meet up with them online and spend some time gaming (and occasionally chatting about general tech stuff in between). And without wishing to provoke the wrath of Sony/Nintendo fans, the fact that Xbox Live has long been the most seemless and best integrated online networked console experience, means it’s a pretty good time all round…

It interesting how this facet of being social has become integrated into the digital world automatically and subsconsciously alongside keeping in touch with family, friends, colleagues and the looser circle of connections around them both on a personal level, and sharing links, information etc…

And even if the game of choice is pretty much always Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360), I could probably even be tempted into a spot of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 (Xbox 360).

Filed Under: Videogames, xbox 360 Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Open Software – from watches to newspapers

July 5, 2010 By 3 Comments

One of the most interesting trends of recent years has been the way that increasing openness has been embraced by a growing number of proprietary business who realise that they probably can’t come up with all the great ideas for a product.

For example, the wristwatch has been coming under attack from the fact so many people use their mobile phone for checking the time (and a lot more). And past ideas to include digital information in a watch have generally been a bit, well, rubbish, as they’ve tended to look like a reject from the 1980s vision of the future.

But Fossil seem to have a cool idea, as reported by ReadWriteWeb. Make something that looks really good, allow the type of notifications which are short, actionable and time-sensitive. And then open-source it to developers to come up with amazing ideas for what could be displayed there, rather than trying to think of them all.

Meanwhile, the Journal Register company has been experimenting with producing online and print editions of their newspapers using only free tools. Dubbed the Ben Franklin project, it’s involved using a variety of tools – for instance, WordPress as a publishing platform, or GIMP for image editing.

And they’re honest about the fact that this experiment is about finding the best ways to publish print and digital products for the future, using more cost-effective ways to exist in a challenging market. Their blog about the experience is well worth reading, and already alerted me to an interesting open source Desktop Publishing System called Scribus which I haven’t had the good fortune to try yet. (H/T Tim Windsor)

Free and open isn’t the only solution you should look at – there are sometimes very good reasons for going the proprietary route. And open comes with certain commitments it could be easy for companies to overlook (Such as the commitment to contribute back to the codebase – easy to forget if it comes after all your business-critical tasks). But with those caveats in place, proprietary software now has to work so much harder to earn its keep.

Filed Under: Digital Publishing Tagged With: , , , , ,

One potential USP for Diaspora

July 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I’ve been following the progress of Diaspora since it started – in the midst of Facebook’s last privacy problems, four young programmers at NYU asked for funding to create ‘a privacy aware, personally-controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network’.

And they got a lot more funding than they asked for – before they’d written a line of code, their Kickstarter page raised over $200,000. And they’d originally set a goal of $10,000. Backers even include Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg!

They’ve just posted their one month update, and things seem to be going well. But in the midst of writing a post on 140char, something struck me.

The big worry about Diaspora is that even if it’s finished, available, and a great service – not enough people will necessarily care enough about privacy etc to sign up and get critical mass to it.

So what about taking a different route.

Advertisers and marketers are increasingly using social networks as a primary route for reaching consumers effectively.

Revenue generation is increasing for the social networks and companies using them.

Customer service and CRM are following along slightly behind.

So why not make the unique selling point to the average user something slightly different – why not make Diaspora the first social network to serve as a platform for Vendor Relationship Management?

With Diaspora, not only could you control all your own data from a privacy point of view, but you could control all your own data from a VRM point of view – selecting what you might want to release to a company, and how long you’ll allow it, whilst it’s relevant.

It could be the social network which doesn’t let you ‘Like’ a company – but lets you control your relationship with all the companies you’d like to do business with. And with the open source and distributed, open approach to data, it could be made easy for consumers and companies to hook up using Diaspora as a platform and channel, rather than having to be within the social network itself.

Maybe that would give both movements more leverage?

Filed Under: open source, social networks, Vendor Relationship Management Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

So have you launched a new project yet?

July 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A reasonable amount of people apparently saw my post yesterday on how little it costs to launch a new media brand or project online.

So if you were one of those people – have you launched something yet? Plan to? Started thinking about it?

If you weren’t one of those people – go have a look, as it might prompt you to do something. Even if you’re one of the many digitally aware people who realise how quickly and easily you can produce content online, maybe it might spur you to actually go and do something with that knowledge.

And what better time to start than now? It’s Friday in the UK, and you’ve got a whole weekend ahead of you to get something done. Don’t fancy writing? Why not record some audio? Or some video?

I’d love it if just one person reading happens to be inspired to go and produce one thing this weekend – so let me know if you do…

And in return, I’m going to be finding ways to get more productive on my own sites, so I’ll be able to share some more tips and the results shortly…

Filed Under: Blogging, Digital Audio, Digital Publishing, video Tagged With: , , , , ,
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