Brent's CRM Blog

Six Apart's David Recordon on Social Netwok Portability...and Touching Base with Mom in a Web 2.0 World

On our radio show, Technology For Business Sake, we recently had a great conversation with David Recordon of Six Apart. David is their tech lead on for open platforms. Six Apart is one of those unique companies working closely with Google on OpenSocial, as well as with Facebook Beacon. And David is their point person. So he has soon interesting things to say about where we are with social networking, and where we may be headed with it.

Now I really was in to the conversation around what's going in the social networking space, and how tools are being created to make it easier for us to get the most out of social networking experiences, but what really fascinated me was the second part of the conversation where my co-host (Michael Thomas) and I started asking David about how he uses the Web 2.0 tools. We asked him because in addition to being one of the most knowledgeable people on the subject, we wanted to get the perspective of someone who has literally grown up using this stuff... because David is all of 21 years old!

Now I'm not jealous....OK maybe a little bit, because I remember (barely) what I was doing when I was 21. And it wasn't speaking all over the world as a highly respected expert. I was trying to pass intermediate accounting and deciding if I should have a grilled cheese sandwich or fish sticks for dinner. But I digress..... Anyway we really enjoyed listening to David talk about how he uses social media to communicate not only with his peers, but also with his mother. It really gave me a different perspective on how Gen Y operates, and taught me quite a bit about what to expect in the not too distant future.

So below is the whole show for you folks to check out. It's broken into segments, and the last segment features the part of the conversation where we focus on David's use of social media with respect to communicating with his mother. And the opening segment features a short conversation about solopreneurship, and a rant I did about Stanley Burrell (aka MC Hammer) becoming self-proclaimed technology entrepreneur. Yes this rant was inspired by my earlier blog entry on the subject. If you'd rather download the show just click here. Enjoy!

Technorati : david recordon, facebook, openid, opensocial, six apart

Salesforce-to-Salesforce: Community Comes to CRM, But Not To The Small Business Customer

Back in October when I was interviewed by Marshall Lager for the CRM magazine story on what's coming in 2008, I said:

"Social networking will continue to be big. It is absolutely critical for CRM vendors to reach out and roll their own social network and trackbacks, or to work with Facebook, LinkedIn, and the rest."

I can't believe I just lifted a my own quote. But hey, why not - after all I did say it. Anyways it really didn't take Negrodamus, to figure that one out. (SIDEBAR: that was the last time you will ever hear me refer to myself as the Negrodamus of CRM).

Well this week Salesforce.com announced Salesforce-to-Salesforce, a service that allows Salesforce.com customers to share information like leads and other data in social network. Once again Salesforce remains a few steps ahead of the CRM pack, issuing in the Social CRM era. Needless to say I think this is a good move. I would have said it to be a great move, except for one thing - the $1,200 annual price tag it comes with. Not to mention that you have to be at the Enterprise, Unlimited or Platinum edition to even be able to fork your $1,200 over. Which I think will effectively limit the adoption of this to mid-size and enterprise level companies. I echo ZD Net's Phil Wainewright when he asks "has everyone at Salesforce.com forgotten about network effects? Or is it just the mechanics of viral adoption that they don't get?"

Hey Salesforce, what about the little guys? We need social crm just as much as the big guys do...actually we need it more. So it's a real shame that we won't be getting it from you, at least not right now. But hey this is an easy fix if you just make it more accessible to the masses. At least it's not a big social misstep like Facebook Beacon.

Technorati : crm, facebook, salesforce.com, social crm, social networking

Will OpenSocial Do Better Than GoogleTalk?

I'm a member of the Social Network Portability Google group for about a month now and there has been a pretty steady flow of exchanges that whole time. But the focus over the last two days has been nothing but OpenSocial, Google's new set of APIs that will let developers create applications that will work with social network sites like MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster, Ning and a host of others. Also joining the cause is Salesforce.com, Oracle, Six Apart...and a host of others.

The promise behind this move, besides slowing the Facebook freight train that Microsoft just jumped on board, is to allow members of different networks to communicate and collaborate without having to join a new network. Allowing developers to create apps that can work with multiple networks could really make it easier to "come together", and Google has reached out to some powerful partners to increase the chances of success. It all sounds good at the moment, but....

I just remember there was a good amount of buzz when Google announced Google Talk, the instant messenger they built on open standards. The hope was that Google would force the major players to cooperate and make their instant message apps talk to each other so that you wouldn't have to have an account for each service so that you can talk to all your buddies. There has been some movement here but not the radical change I was hoping for...at least not yet.

I think OpenSocial has a chance to change things a lot quicker than Google Talk has. For one Google has reached out and got a number of major players on board right from the beginning. And these guys are different than the monsters of the instant messaging game - AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft. At the time Google Talk came out these guys were trying to be THE winner and force people to choose one...in other words no playing together, they each wanted to be THE CHOSEN.

But in this new age of Web 2.0 and collaboration, maybe there's hope that Google and its many partners will pull this off. Maybe Facebook (and their new buds at Microsoft) will open it up a bit as well. I hope so because I really don't need to join another social network just because a few folks I know are on it, or because it has a nice function but no one I know is on it. I'd just like to reach the people I want to reach regardless of the networks we belong to. Could you imagine if a Verizon customer couldn't call a Sprint customer? How about a Microsoft Outlook user not being able to email someone with Lotus Notes? Let's just hope we're on the right path here.

Technorati : facebook, google, google talk, opensocial

Walmart on Facebook: May Not Be Welcome But Still A Smart Move

Walmart has been catching flack from the Facebook community for creating a group aimed at generating conversations (and sales) of back-to-school needs for the dorm room. But you have to give them credit. They had to know they were going to get slammed for the most part by the community. Anything that hints of big business usually does, but that didn't stop them from doing it, which is good. It's better than the weak attempt they made before of promoting a supposedly independent blog site that ended up being funded by Walmart.

It takes guts to do what Walmart did and will take even more guts to stick it out and dialog in an open, uncontrolled forum rather than resort to trying to control the conversation through trickery, or ignoring it altogether. It may not be the easiest policy, but it's the best one if you truly want to be apart of the collaborative culture that Wikinomics is built upon.

Technorati : facebook, social networking, walmart, web 2.0
Del.icio.us : facebook, social networking, walmart, web 2.0