While doing product demos on the tradeshow floor of Web 2.0 Expo, we witnessed an interesting phenomenon. As soon as one person started to watch a demo, a few more people would join in. Then a few more. After a few seconds, we'd have a crowd.
Why does this happen? Because people are interested in what other people are interested in. The same affect can be witnessed as long lines form to get into the hottest new club, or as you look in the window of a crowded restaurant and decide you want to eat there.
This "crowdification" also happens with social software tools, where as more people become active in a system, the more value the system has. Kick Start The Process
At our demo booth, when we had a few quiet minutes, we would have one of our staff pose as an interested party whom I would demo to, and inevitably a crowd would form. So how do you get this type of traction for your company's internal social software tools, such as blogs, wikis, microblogging, groups, etc? You do the same thing. Find a few key people who have an interest in seeding the conversations/content. They are often called Champions or Evangelists. Have them start to participate, and make sure their contributions provide value to their colleagues. Those people will then respond, either by adding to the existing content (edits/comments/links), or even better adding new information of their own. One person will turn into 3 or 4, which will then turn into 10 or 12, and then the crowd will form.
So don't simply roll out new tools, make sure you have the leaders in place that will encourage others to follow. This will help a crowd form, and make your new social software platform the hottest club inside your company.
Lotus Notes Mail - The Gems And The Warts
Tue, Aug 31st 2010 10:00a Alan Lepofsky Every time I hear some "2.0 evangelist" sing the praises of Gmail my stomach churns a little, my heartbeat quickens and my face tenses as I ponder what could have been if more attention had been paid to the Notes UI years ago. I both enjoy and hate giving the "Lotus Notes did that a decade ago" speech. I enjoy it because I like showing people that these awesome new features are neither new nor innovative. I hate it because it reinforces how IBM was never successful in getting people to like u [read] Keywords: admin
ibm
lotus
notes
rich text
desktop
eclipse
email
openntf
widgets
208
Firefox 4 You Had Me At Organize Into Groups
Thu, Aug 26th 2010 10:10p Alan Lepofsky A few days ago FireFox 4 Beta 4 introduced "Panorama" which allows you to group tabs together and switch back and forth between different sets. You can manually do this today with FF3 by having multiple windows open, but this new ability to create the groups and see a visual representation has already greatly improved my web experience. I've created groups for "things I'm doing right now", "email, calendar and social media stuff", "articles to read later", "future to-dos", etc. The UI e [read] Keywords: email
firefox
Understanding The Pecking Order
Thu, Aug 5th 2010 8:30a Alan Lepofsky I'm happy to see Twitter gets the hierarchy right. Now if only my account was verified to prove I'm the real Alan Lepofsky. Thanks for the image Volker [read] Keywords: twitter
The Greatest Vacation Ever
Tue, Jul 20th 2010 11:30p Alan Lepofsky Go to http://www.gapadventures.com , under Region you'll see GAP is offering some pretty awesome destinations, Far Far Away... Packing for both Tatooine and Hoth on the same trip is going to be tough. [read] Keywords:
89
Calling All Developers. Extend Enterprise Applications With Social Features
Mon, Jul 19th 2010 9:50a Alan Lepofsky Are you looking to extend your application development knowledge to include open internet technologies such as JSON, WebHooks, Activitystrea.ms and PubSubHubbub? Would you like to help your company or your customers by integrating existing enterprise systems with today's "2.0" social technologies? Are you free next Wed? If you answered yes to any or all of the above, then join us Wed July 21st at 9:30 PST for Integrating Enterprise Applications with Socialtext. Members of our Eng [read] Keywords: application
applications
development
enterprise
integration
Firefox 4 Option For Tabs On Top, Like Lotus Notes
Sat, Jul 10th 2010 10:40a Alan Lepofsky I've been hearing a lot this week about how Firefox 4 will be providing an option to put tabs at the top of the screen. Well, once again Notes which is always slagged for its UI was ahead of the curve. All kidding aside, this is a good video about UI design: [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
application
firefox
