Day: 17 September 2007

I’ve been reading a lot, as you would expect. In this context, I would strongly recommend danah boyd’s months-old article on the subject, titled Social Network Sites: Public, Private or What? I was particularly struck by this quote early in the article:

What it means to be public or private is quickly changing before our eyes and we lack the language, social norms, and structures to handle it.

This is as true within the enterprise as it is amongst individuals “outside” the enterprise. Over the years, as we’ve seen a plethora of communications tools, techniques and devices invade the enterprise space, there’s been a corresponding change in the very concepts of privacy and confidentiality, when placed in the enterprise context.

The persistence, archival, retrieval and searchability characteristics that danah refers to is something I’ve been writing about for quite some time, as part of the Four Pillars approach. When I went down the Four Pillars route in 2004-05, I was quite heavily influenced by my working in a regulated industry.

Which is why I find some of the enterprise pushbacks on social networks mildly amusing. Even without the existence of social networks, there has been a gradual move towards openness and transparency in most regulated industries, with the consequent requirement to record and make retrievable all kinds of conversations. Many firms spend large amounts of money doing just that. So why not consider implementing something that looks remarkably like a social network within the enterprise?

More later.

This post was triggered by a comment that Andrew Back made on a recent post of mine, on orphan albums.

The long tail has two dimensions to it. On the one hand, it shows how the hit culture is breaking down, how there are many many niche markets for many many things. On the other hand, it connects people to the niche products.

Some of these niche thingummybobs have cult status.  Some of these thingummybobs have reached their cult status many years after the creation of the thingummybobs. Some of the people who created these thingummybobs now live in difficult circumstances, and  probably wish their thingummybobs had acquired cult status earlier.

We cannot alter history, but we can make a difference to those people now. Particularly if we have received years of enjoyment from the cult thingummybobs.

Just a thought, probably influenced by my delving into the life of Robert Johnson many years ago. These things are hard to prove, but there is anecdotal evidence that he died so poor that he wasn’t put into a coffin; there is also some similarly anecdotal evidence that his son and heir waited maybe 50 years before he received anything in the form of royalties.

In the past, it would have been difficult to trace the people who bestowed cult status on anything. Today the costs of searching for and discovering the cult fans is sharply reduced,  and it becomes possible to connect the fan with the creator. Any views?