I’m Yammering away…

Rob Wood’s posting I’m Yammering away describes how he obtained feedback from fellow Carphone Warehouse employees about a web page he had written by using Yammer.

“Previously getting this sort of feedback would have been a nightmare – I’d have had to track down the right person and then exchange a series of emails or phone calls with someone hundreds of miles away.

Instead of all that, Yammer let me type out a short question and chuck it out to everyone who was logged on. Within half an hour three or four people (several of whom I didn’t know before) had come back to me with suggestions about what I needed to consider.

It wasn’t just the speed that impressed me. The inclusive nature of Yammer means that’s everyone who could help with my problem did – even if I didn’t know who they were.”

Second Life – recent articles and resources

There was a brief discussion on Second Life on the LIS-UKeiG email discussion list recently, with links to resources  and recent news articles about  SL

Sam Kuper recommended postings by Jonah Bossewitch of the CCNMTL: http://alchemicalmusings.org/2008/04/

Thomas Krichel highlighted two recent articles on the possible demise of SL: Gawker – The End of Second Life – Second Life and Second Life’s span is virtually over as firms decide to get real – Telegraph

Caroline Roche pointed readers at a YouTube video about how a school librarian in Hong Kong uses Second Life for self-directed learning and for students.

And don’t forget Eduserv’s  Virtual World Watch, which surveys virtual world use in UK universities and colleges.

Updated list of UK local councils on Twitter

Liz Azyan has updated her list of UK local councils on Twitter. On April 11th 2009 there were 101 with Newcastle City Council having the most followers (1050). She has also started lists of US, Canadian and Australian local government on Twitter.

Brian Kelly reviews Slideboom

If you are looking for an alternative to Slideshare, you might want to try Slideboom. Brian Kelly has reviewed it in his latest blog posting and it compares favourably with Slideshare. Why would you want to change? Many Slideshare users were upset and annoyed by Slideshare’s April Fool’s prank. It was not so much the email telling users that views of their presentations had increased dramatically, it was that Slideshare had also altered the viewing statistics by adding two zeros to the end of the number. Many people take the view that visitor and viewing statistics are sacred and should not be tampered with even if it is only temporary and in jest. If you are prepared to forgive and forget – and Slideshare have apologised profusely – it is, in any case, a good idea to have a backup, and Slideboom may be the one for you.

Gartner Highlights Four Ways in Which Enterprises Are Using Twitter

Gartner has released a report that highlights the different ways that companies are adopting Twitter for business use.  Many organizations have begun to actively participate in Twitter but not all are using it in the same way.

Gartner has identified four different ways in which companies are making use of the Twitter application: direct, indirect, internal, and signaling.

Direct — The company uses Twitter as a marketing or public relations channel

Many companies have established Twitter identities as part of their corporate communications strategies, much like corporate blogs. They Tweet about corporate accomplishments, distributing links to press releases or promotional Web sites, and respond to other Twitterers’ comments about the brand.  Gartner recommends that at a minimum, companies should register Twitter IDs for their major brand names to prevent others claiming them and using them inappropriately.

Indirect — The company’s employees use Twitter to enhance and extend their personal reputations, thereby enhancing the company’s reputation

Good Twitterers enhance their personal reputation by saying clever, interesting things, attracting many followers who go on to read their blogs. As people enhance their personal brands, some of this inevitably rubs off on their employers. Twitter provides a way of raising the profile of both individuals and the organizations they work for, which elevates these companies that want to be seen to employ influential leaders.

Internal — Employees use the platform to communicate about what they are doing, projects they are working on and ideas that occur to them

In most cases, Gartner does not recommend using Twitter or any other consumer microblogging service in this way, because there is no guarantee of security. It is crucial that employees understand the limitations of the platform and never discuss confidential matters, because as a seemingly innocuous Tweet about going to see a particular client can tip off a competitor. Other providers, such as Yammer and Present.ly, provide Twitter-like functions targeted at enterprise microblogging with more security and corporate control.

Inbound Signaling

Twitter streams provide a rich source of information about what customers, competitors and others are saying about a company. Search tools such as search.twitter.com or the twhirl application can scan for references to particular company or product names. Companiescan  use these to get early warnings of problems and collect feedback about product issues and new product ideas.

Examples of the business use of Twitter can be found at 16 Examples of Huge Brands Using Twitter for Business and 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them

Twitter is not a competition

Thanks to Phil Bradley, @kurafire and @atebits for these two pages about Twitter:

Twitter is not a competition http://twitterisnotacompetition.com/

Twitter is not email http://www.twitterisntemail.com/

How to tweet yourself out of a job

Unless you have locked your updates, your Twitter tweets are public. I shall repeat that – unless you have locked your updates, your Twitter tweets are public. And even if a company or person is not following you they can still pick up your derogatory comments about them, as one person found to their cost.

Many organisations now monitor Twitter as part of their market and competitor intelligence.  Set up  search alerts on your organisation’s name and products and you can see what people are saying about you within a few minutes of their tweets leaving their iPhone, Tweetdeck or whatever.

How to Tweet Your Way Out of a Job recounts the sorry tale of a person who had received a job offer from Cisco. Unfortunately, after hearing the joyful news the potential employee tweeted:

“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

timmylevad from Cisco responded:

“Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.”

There are further details and comments at Careers – Big Brother – How Not to Get a Job Via Twitter but it really is stating the b******g obvious. If your updates are public then anyone can find and view them.  I would go further: even if your Twitter updates are private and you approve people to follow you, when it comes to Twitter you would still be well advised to keep your thoughts to yourself about the merits of future employment. It is all too easy to RT a comment into the public Twitterverse.

Note: RT stands for re-tweet, not Radio Times as I first thought! Caused me no end of confusion when I first saw it.

Google Docs suffers privacy glitch

Google discovered a “privacy glitch” that inappropriately shared access to a small fraction of word-processing and presentation documents stored on Google Docs.

“We’ve identified and fixed a bug which may have caused you to share some of your documents without your knowledge. This inadvertent sharing was limited to people with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document,” Google said in a note they sent to affected users.

So the data was not shared with the world at large, only with those with whom you have collaborated in the past.  But that person may have left the company or not have permission to access that particular document. Google estimates that the problem affected only 0.05 percent of documents stored on their service.  Although that might seem a small number, given the increased usage of Google Docs that could represent hundreds of thousands of documents.

This highlights potential security issues of Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing. However, local storage is not necessarily more reliable. There seems to be no end to the list of privacy, security and data protection breaches resulting from stolen or lost laptops, USB sticks and even hardcopy documents left on trains.

How to Delete Accounts from Any Website

“I’m sorry.. sob..it was not meant to be. We seem to have grown apart over the last few months. It’s not you, it’s me – I’ve moved on. I hope we can still be friends, but perhaps not. It’s good-bye I’m afraid and I hope that you can forget all about me and find someone else….”

If only ending relationships with social and networking sites were that easy.  PC Magazine’s How to Delete Accounts from Any Website takes you through the steps you need to take to delete your stuff from 23 services. You may have thought it was hard enough trying to stop Facebook being your friend but, as many of us have discovered, Google Blogger is in a class of its own:

“This Google-owned blogging service has accounts that can’t be closed. What Blogger does offer are steps to “create the same effect.” First, delete all blogs associated with the account, and remove any personal info from your user profile. Blogger even suggests you enter false information in the required fields to get around them. That’s all you can do.”

Thanks to Phil Bradley for the heads up on this one.

Twitter Search – 20 alternative search engines

This list of 20 alternative Twitter search engines is a must for Twitter addicts.

Personally I still think that http://search.twitter.com/ and its Advanced Search is by far the best, but Phil gives some interesting alternatives that have unique features.