Direct YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peYSjTxnzK0
Direct Vimeo Link: http://www.vimeo.com/12230792

Perhaps a more familiar term is ‘The wisdom of the crowd’. The idea is that many people can do more than one, a collection of opinions can construct a better opinion than that of an individual. For example, if you had a problem with the brakes on your car but weren’t sure why you could ask someone. They might respond that it could be they need replacing, while if I ask another person they may suggestion to check the brake fluid in the car. Another person may give another solution, and before you know it you have a list of 5 things to look at which is more helpful than before. You have started to hardness a collective knowledge and have a much better opinion than if you had of asked one person.

Continuing on with this metaphor, problems can happen. The people I might have asked could be all Holden mechanics and showed a bias against my Ford. The range of people who I asked might be very wide – as in some opinions were very qualified as they have been an mechanic for 30 years and another person may have never drove a car before yet their opinions get valued the same (as I might not know there background).

So how can this be applied to the internet? Are there any examples?

Wikipedia – It hardness collective intelligence as multiple people can contribute and edit articles to provide better answers and once that are more up to date. In many cases it does better than many encyclopaedias.

Yahoo! Answers – A way to ask questions and find answers. You can post a question and then people can answer (similar to my example above).

E-How – A place where you can find how to do something, or tell the world how to do something you know. From E-How’s home page, “What would you like to do? How to Attract Consumers? How to Lose Weight? How to Make Money in a Bear Market? eHow is the world’s most popular place to find step-by-step instructions on how to do just about everything.”

So is anything on the web an example of collective intelligence?

No, information must be presented or processed in some sort of way, otherwise it is a collection of opinions and not knowledge. This information must flow freely and not be censored.

The collective or group needs to also have some attributes to. Opinions to be as diverse and independent of one another (a persons opinion shouldn’t be a reflection of someone else opinion), aggregation (a way of hardness opinions to make a decision or judgement).

Web 1.0 – Static Pages, HTML Based, very much like a ‘document’

Web 2.0 – Dynamic Pages, Social Networking and generally “2″ way communication

Web 3.0 – The Semantic Web – structured information

Justin Lee, has put together a great slideshare presentation which I would like to share. It explains the direction Web 3.0 is moving and offers a few examples.

Web 3.0 seems like a natural progression, and it is. The ability to have data easier to get to and analyze might not seem that exciting now, but the buzz word is developing and so are the applications. Web 2.0 offers so many different uses and is still expanding today and if the changes that come with Web 3.0 sites and applications is anything like the changes brought forward from Web 2.0 we will be in for an interesting time.

The original Napster was a hugely successful online music sharing service, which was shut down by court order. However it paved the way for many other P2P file-sharing programs. The question of whether these sites are ethical is still a controversial issue.

So what can the music industry do to solve this dilemma? There has been an interesting site discussed on several blogging networks that may just have a solution.

Guvera, a new website has stated that they have found a way to make downloading music legal! “The biggest change to media in history. Music, film and TV for free”. As stated on their Myspace page, Guvera is set to give people access to free music, built around a very unique business model that still pays the artists.

There is a still a lot of mystery surrounding the site, however you can pre-register at www.guvera.com. The site asks its users a number of questions, such as their interests in music, food, films, countries and much more.

For more information, click on the following link:

http://www.promoney.com.au/pdf/client_resources/Guvera_Investor_Presentation_August09___1_20.pdf

http://www.promoney.com.au/pdf/client_resources/pdf2/Guvera_Investor_Presentation_August09___2_20.pdf

It appears as although advertisers will be paying for the free content themselves. This concept definitely sounds like a new and exciting way to gain access to television, film and music content. I think it could represents a new Internet phenomenon.

What are your thoughts on the matter, would you be more tempted to download content if it is free and legal? Or would relying on advertisers to provide this service deter you? I for one cannot wait to see what Guvera presents.

Information on the internet suggests that the planned launch of mid this year has had some unexpected delays but it can’t be too long now.

• http://twitter.com/Guvera – Guvera’s Twitter Account
• http://www.myspace.com/guveradotcom – Guvera’s My Space Account
• http://www.linkedin.com/companies/guvera – Guvera’s LinkedIn Account

Jeremiah Owyang has posted a list of A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media which you should take a look at, but here are 5 of my favorite stories.

• United Airlines Gets the Viral Video Treatment It Never Wanted
• The naked NOKA chocolate uncovered
• Louis Vuitton gets Brandjacked in Anti-Genocide Campaign
• Furniture Company Habitat Self-Evicts on Twitter
• Brit ISPs censor Wikipedia over ‘child porn’ album cover

So a word of warning for companies out there, to perhaps think about your approach to a customer or act as it may blow back on you. Just to finish it off, this blow back effect resulted in the term the’ Streisand effect‘ in 2003 when Barbra Streisand sued a photographer over privacy concerns.

Imogen Heap – Hide and Seek (Live at Fearless Music, NYC)

So Imogen Heap has done some amazing stuff as a musician and more importantly she is using Enterprise 2.0 concepts. She is engaging in two way feedback with her fans on a daily basis and has created a sense of anticipation that surrounds her day to day life.  So what has she done? How is she a great example of enterprise 2.0?

She as created a lot of accounts on the web where she allows fans to follow, write comments, give feedback and more importantly she interacts back with everyone (myspace, twitter, youtube, etc) . Imogen Heap is putting a lot of time and effort in communicating what is going on in her life through these technologies which seems to be paying off. Through the use of twitter she keeps fans informed and has even asked them for advice, guidance, ideas in relation to her latest album. Back on myspace you can preview her latest album (which has now been released) and get a feel for the music.

I only knew about Imogen Heaps use of these technologies after reading an article called The New Music Business Model: Imogen Heap at Deep Drive Marketing which is really well written. I recommend you head over to their site and read it as I don’t want steal the light away from the effort put into the post by the author.

So is Imogen Heap takings things to far by letting people know what is going on in her life? I don’t think so, because she is doing so of her own back and enjoys it . I actually prefer the way she is engaging fans compared to Britney Spears. If you don’t know already Britney Spears has a twitter account that has 3,079,749 followers compared to Imogen Heaps 997,892 followers (as of today). So what is the difference between the two? Britney has someone manage the account for her and the tweets are generally broad and informative, Imogen Heap on the other hand are personal. She invites people to help out or give feedback, contribute photos, etc and “talks” to people.

Imogen Heap also has an account on youtube, where she posts video blogs (vlogs) – http://www.youtube.com/imogenheap It is a place where you can see inside of her home as she posts, but also get a look at her latest music as she officially releases it.

So is this method of using Enterprise 2.0 concepts and technology going to change the music industry? Personally I don’t think it will change the industry but it will change relationship between fans and musicians forever. For those of you who are starting a band, this concepts Imogen Heap has used can be applied easily to your group and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of some up coming stars who get popular through the use of Enterprise 2.0 over the next few years.

This got me thinking about the importance of creating a strong brand name. A brand, an image, something which stands out and makes consumers want it! There are some very good examples of how companies brand themselves well such as: Coca-Cola, MacDonalds, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Apple are another great example, but not only do they manage their company brand well they create a very strong product brand for each of the product lines they sell. One way they do that is by engage an emotional response. They associate a great experience, easy to use and a product that makes your life more enjoyable with it. So how quickly did it take for you to look at the picture of a person’s silhouette, bright background, with white head phones before you realised it was for Apple, and then related to iPod / iTunes? I bet that you would of picked up on it before I asked the question (maybe I should of removed the iPod wording).

So besides creating a company brand or a product brand, how can you create your own personal brand?

• Get yourself a business card (paper, electronic, etc) – People need to establish who you are and how to get back in contact with you
• Network yourself, before you need to network
• Create yourself a resume! Nearly every job requires one, so give this some attention
• Get yourself a domain (www.mydomain.com) and ditch (subdomain.com). If you don’t want to blog, create a static page at least
• Produce your own content, don’t just consume what you read. Add value to yourself by sharing
• Integrate your social profiles / online profiles (eg: Twitter, Facebook, LinkkedIn)
• You don’t always have to agree
• Remember your brand isn’t just your web presence
• Become an assets for your co-workers, business and clients

I would love to hear your thoughts on how you have created your own brand. Any stories in how branding work in your favour when you least expected it?

So lets have a look at what Enterprise 1.0 is and compare it with Enterprise 2.0:

Taken from http://www.e2conf.com/about/what-is-enterprise2.0.php

If you compare the two tables you will see the differences between the two. Business can also transition from a Enterprise 1.0 driven organisation to an Enterprise 2.0 driven organisation over time. There are strong benefits in that Enterprise 2.0 allows the knowledge of many accessible to many. Information is no longer constrained to help files, e-mails, books and traditional methods. Most importantly, Enterprise 2.0 is happening now (with or without you).

Professor Andrew McAfee, formally introduced the concept of Enterprise 2.0 in 2007. One of the easiest ways of describing the technology the enables Enterprise 2.0 (without showing or describing the technology itself) is by SLATES (or S.L.A.T.E.S.).

S – Search
L – Links
A – Authorship
T – Tags
E – Extensions
S – Signals

These concepts were quickly identified as an Enterprise 2.0 checklist. This concept has been developed further in recent times (FLATNESSES) but the 6 key concepts are still there. We can identify Enterprise 2.0 technologies using SLATES or more recently FLATNESSES, so lets move on to Enterprise 2.0 platforms.

Chances are that you are using these or have at least seen them. In fact I can guarantee it (your on my Blog – that you can search, view links, read articles I’ve written and allowed you to provide feedback, views tags I’ve used on content, seen extensions like my twitter updates and one of the ways I’ve signalled this is by using RSS feeds).

Wikis

Blogs

Mashups

Online Communities

Social Bookmarking

Social Networking

Differences between Enterprise 1.0 and Enterprise 2.0 – check
Ability to identify technology that uses Enterprise 2.0 – check
Available platforms which helps oraganisations use Enterprise 2.0 technology? – check

So, do we know what Enterprise 2.0 is?

It seems that a few people are interested in organisations and sites that are actively using it. I’ll try gather a few sites together and share some examples in the near future.

Twitter is a micro blogging web 2.0, social networking, latest trend, etc…. site….. that allows you to post short messages (think sms), videos, links, photos ‘Out There’ (the Internet/twitter sphere). If you are more of a video person, the guys at http://www.commoncraft.com have put together a great video which you can watch here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o

Or just click play – below:

So in short, it is a way read and share messages from people you know to see what they are up to and also a way to see what the rest of the world is up to. Of course not everyone is doing that, or believes there is a point in doing that. If you have the time, take a look at this interview that David Letterman had with Kevin Spacey: Letterman on Twitter: “A Waste of Time”

It is a great video and well worth the watch. But it does raise the question. Is Twitter a waste of time? Before I answer, I would like to point to another video by Common Craft which can be watched here – http://www.commoncraft.com/twitter-search

or just watch the video below:

So if you had to ask yourself as a business is Twitter as waste of time? I would strongly advise you to rephrase that and put forward the question ‘Can we ignore twitter?’.

I would like to focus on Dell. They have embraced the web, and have been a great example how distribution/warehouse costs can be managed effectively to create a ‘just on time’ business model with its partners. Until this year, they only sold their products online. Now they have changed that and have Dick Smith Electronics, and Officeworks where you can walk into a store and buy a PC.

So what have Dell done with twitter? Embraced it! Here are a few of the Dell twitter accounts (there were at least 20 different accounts I found I could follow depending on my needs):

• http://twitter.com/Direct
• http://twitter.com/DellHomeSalesAU
• http://twitter.com/Direct2Dell
• http://twitter.com/DellYourBlog

Dell has been tracking the amount of people who have clicked through their links and it has raked in a cool $3 million (Mentioned on ViralBlog). With results like that it puts Dell up there in the top 100 most mentioned brands on twitter. For a full list of sites you can check out www.revolutionmagazine.com where you can see the likes of Starbucks taking up first position.