This is another post inspired in some way by Robert Scoble. He wrote a post and uploaded a recorded conversation with a guy who was kicked out from Facebook without a real reason. There are several comments that are valid and set the real situation - all the people are certain that people should not be banished like that while one of the comments done by Mike (no last name or a link unfortunately) points out properly that besides the fact that this is not right, Facebook owners and editors will not lose sleep over it nor this fact (which definitely is not the first occasion) will be a front page news piece. So far so good/bad … what is kind of important here, though?
These type of social networks must have some kind of spam prevention services or tools that really work, that is for sure. What the real deal for me is can be described like that – these type of managed /hosted publicly available and monitored/explored hosted social networks cannot be really trusted and used for serious business or important personal activities. They can get you down at any point. Absolutely. Sometimes (as in this case) without any real reason. They can always shut you down with the simple explanation that they do not like you. Since you “are not paying” anything, you cannot complain.
I do not want to diminish the value Facebook brings to the online community nor do I think it is useless. On the contrary, almost all WordFrame personnel have Facebook accounts and we also have a WordFrame group there. What I would like to point out is that one should have more than just warning lights lit when he/she plans to use Facebook for serious and important business or personal stuff.
There are at least a dozen companies that will help you create the proper business social network (WordFrame is one of them, (sorry, could not resist the bragging)). Some of the companies have business social networking tools for free, others have great offers for the software, plus the hosting or the maintenance after that. The software apps are different in type, functionality and usability - at least a couple are open source, some built on java, some on php, some on .NET/C# . The most important part here is that one can have a contract with any of these companies, and if anything happens – there is someone to take the responsibility.
Well, too bad for that guy, I really feel sorry for him, but he was supposed to think twice when he trusted an online social networking solution which clearly states that it cannot be blamed for almost anything when it comes to their free services.
Probably, it is high time for the people that need social media apps or social networking software tools online and they are planning to use them heavily, to realize that there is no free lunch. If you are cheap enough not to even pay for the hosting of a free application that will do similar things – well, please do not complain in such a loud voice. If you want to do some serious work, both business and/or personal – be careful and expect to be treated differently compared to the way the paid solutions will treat you.
Showing posts with label robert scoble. Show all posts
Showing posts with label robert scoble. Show all posts
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
"Dark" workplace environment
This post was provoked (in a good way) by Robert Scoble. Robert wrote a post about something that he was impressed with when he passed the Rackspace Headquarters. He found a department there that was completely dark.
I wrote him a small comment but I also promised him that will blog about it. For one or another reason (lots of work, new WordFrame customers, new trials, ICAEW community grew to 80,000+ users and a vacation) I could not write earlier. I am back on track now and I am posting everything that I had on my mind for some time now.
So, back to the main idea … For the last 13 years (since 1996) ITBrix development offices were on two locations. We spent 10 years in two large apartments which we converted into one office where we initially started with 4 people in 1996. At one point we were over 30 people on about 2500 sq. f. !
It was in 2001 when 3 of our guys started to completely block the sun and put thick paper on the windows. When we talked about the dark room idea it turned out that they feel more comfortable, work more concentrated and generally feel better. We did not need to talk more about it and we made two rooms very dark, just the light from the monitors.
When we moved to our new own office which we purchased in 2004 and completely renovated by 2005 we already had the idea that one of the main halls will be a “dark” one. We did install two types of blinds, external roller plastic blinds and internal Hunter-Douglas type blinds on all the office windows. We now have 7 people working in the dark hall with two guys feeling “left on the bright side” as they were in the dark rooms in the old office. One of them is the WordFrame Product manager – Rumen Yankov, but he manages to get a similar effect using the blinds we have on the windows. Plus the fact that Rumen has to be around his 10-people WordFrame development team on one hand, testers and support people on another and close to the CTO Hristo Serafimov.
I wrote him a small comment but I also promised him that will blog about it. For one or another reason (lots of work, new WordFrame customers, new trials, ICAEW community grew to 80,000+ users and a vacation) I could not write earlier. I am back on track now and I am posting everything that I had on my mind for some time now.
So, back to the main idea … For the last 13 years (since 1996) ITBrix development offices were on two locations. We spent 10 years in two large apartments which we converted into one office where we initially started with 4 people in 1996. At one point we were over 30 people on about 2500 sq. f. !
It was in 2001 when 3 of our guys started to completely block the sun and put thick paper on the windows. When we talked about the dark room idea it turned out that they feel more comfortable, work more concentrated and generally feel better. We did not need to talk more about it and we made two rooms very dark, just the light from the monitors.
When we moved to our new own office which we purchased in 2004 and completely renovated by 2005 we already had the idea that one of the main halls will be a “dark” one. We did install two types of blinds, external roller plastic blinds and internal Hunter-Douglas type blinds on all the office windows. We now have 7 people working in the dark hall with two guys feeling “left on the bright side” as they were in the dark rooms in the old office. One of them is the WordFrame Product manager – Rumen Yankov, but he manages to get a similar effect using the blinds we have on the windows. Plus the fact that Rumen has to be around his 10-people WordFrame development team on one hand, testers and support people on another and close to the CTO Hristo Serafimov.
So here is how the "dark" hall in our office looks like:
You can see that the light is from the camera flash and all the office lights on the ceiling are off.
So, Robert - not a new idea, and I am certain this “dark work place environment” can be observed in many offices or home offices all over the world.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Some update ...
I have not written in the blog for over two weeks now but I was extremely busy with a new product we are releasing – a brand new .NET based CMS plus I finally managed to squeeze a week of vacation within the very very busy schedule these days. So, I am almost back on track with all the things that happened in and around WordFrame and the super new products we are releasing this year. Whatever plans we had to do some new product releasing in 2009 are already changed – we are moving everything ahead. The WordFrame Enterprise Platform will start its test runs somewhere in Autumn 2008 guys …
Well, I am starting to post some stuff I had ready for weeks now – like the posts I did over three weeks ago and that were provoked from a couple of articles written by Robert Scoble (thanks Robert, you are always an inspiration) …
Well, I am starting to post some stuff I had ready for weeks now – like the posts I did over three weeks ago and that were provoked from a couple of articles written by Robert Scoble (thanks Robert, you are always an inspiration) …
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Corporate Weblog Manifesto by Robert Scoble
This document was created by Robert Scoble in January and February 2003. The actual publishing date is February 26, 2003. At that point Robert Scoble is still the Microsoft Geek Blogger. I personally met Robert about 30 months later while I was participating at an Event organized by Blog Business Summit / Parnassus Ventures guys and gall ( at that point Teresa Valdez Klein was the only girl in the team but that is not the case now). Parnassus Ventures are one of the WordFrame partners now and we are very happy with everything we do together. Anyway, I met Robert in late 2005 and i did tell him how I first heard about him – through his Corporate Blogging Manifesto.
Here is the link to the Original Document .
For those that the link may not work for some reason I am also attaching the entire URL for reference:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2003/02/26.html#a2357
The Corporate Weblog Manifesto.
Thinking of doing a weblog about your product or your company? Here's my ideas of things to consider before you start.
1) Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. If your competitor has a product that's better than yours, link to it. You might as well. We'll find it anyway.
2) Post fast on good news or bad. Someone say something bad about your product? Link to it -- before the second or third site does -- and answer its claims as best you can. Same if something good comes out about you. It's all about building long-term trust. The trick to building trust is to show up! If people are saying things about your product and you don't answer them, that distrust builds. Plus, if people are saying good things about your product, why not help Google find those pages as well?
3) Use a human voice. Don't get corporate lawyers and PR professionals to cleanse your speech. We can tell, believe me. Plus, you'll be too slow. If you're the last one to post, the joke is on you!
4) Make sure you support the latest software/web/human standards. If you don't know what the W3C is, find out. If you don't know what RSS feeds are, find out. If you don't know what weblogs.com is, find out. If you don't know how Google works, find out.
5) Have a thick skin. Even if you have Bill Gates' favorite product people will say bad things about it. That's part of the process. Don't try to write a corporate weblog unless you can answer all questions -- good and bad -- professionally, quickly, and nicely.
6) Don't ignore Slashdot.
7) Talk to the grassroots first. Why? Because the main-stream press is cruising weblogs looking for stories and looking for people to use in quotes. If a mainstream reporter can't find anyone who knows anything about a story, he/she will write a story that looks like a press release instead of something trustworthy. People trust stories that have quotes from many sources. They don't trust press releases.
8) If you screw up, acknowledge it. Fast. And give us a plan for how you'll unscrew things. Then deliver on your promises.
9) Underpromise and over deliver. If you're going to ship on March 1, say you won't ship until March 15. Folks will start to trust you if you behave this way. Look at Disneyland. When you're standing in line you trust their signs. Why? Because the line always goes faster than its says it will (their signs are engineered to say that a line will take about 15% longer than it really will).
10) If Doc Searls says it or writes it, believe it. Live it. Enough said.
11) Know the information gatekeepers. If you don't realize that Sue Mosher reaches more Outlook users than nearly everyone else, you shouldn't be on the PR team for Outlook. If you don't know all of her phone numbers and IM addresses, you should be fired. If you can't call on the gatekeepers during a crisis, you shouldn't try to keep a corporate weblog (oh, and they better know how to get ahold of you since they know when you're under attack before you do -- for instance, why hasn't anyone from the Hotmail team called me yet to tell me what's going on with Hotmail and why it's unreachable as I write this?).
12) Never change the URL of your weblog. I've done it once and I lost much of my readership and it took several months to build up the same reader patterns and trust.
13) If your life is in turmoil and/or you're unhappy, don't write. When I was going through my divorce, it affected my writing in subtle ways. Lately I've been feeling a lot better, and I notice my writing and readership quality has been going up too.
14) If you don't have the answers, say so. Not having the answers is human. But, get them and exceed expectations. If you say you'll know by tomorrow afternoon, make sure you know in the morning.
15) Never lie. You'll get caught and you'll lose credibility that you'll never get back.
16) Never hide information. Just like the space shuttle engineers, your information will get out and then you'll lose credibility.
17) If you have information that might get you in a lawsuit, see a lawyer before posting, but do it fast. Speed is key here. If it takes you two weeks to answer what's going on in the marketplace because you're scared of what your legal hit will be, then you're screwed anyway. Your competitors will figure it out and outmaneuver you.
18) Link to your competitors and say nice things about them. Remember, you're part of an industry and if the entire industry gets bigger, you'll probably win more than your fair share of business and you'll get bigger too. Be better than your competitors -- people remember that. I remember sending lots of customers over to the camera shop that competed with me and many of those folks came back to me and said "I'd rather buy it from you, can you get me that?" Remember how Bill Gates got DOS? He sent IBM to get it from DRI Research. They weren't all that helpful, so IBM said "hey, why don't you get us an OS?"
19) BOGU. This means "Bend Over and Grease Up." I believe the term originated at Microsoft. It means that when a big fish comes over (like IBM, or Bill Gates) you do whatever you have to do to keep him happy. Personally, I believe in BOGU'ing for EVERYONE, not just the big fish. You never know when the janitor will go to school, get an MBA, and start a company. I've seen it happen. Translation for weblog world: treat Gnome-Girl as good as you'd treat Dave Winer or Glenn Reynolds. You never know who'll get promoted. I've learned this lesson the hard way over the years.
20) Be the authority on your product/company. You should know more about your product than anyone else alive, if you're writing a weblog about it. If there's someone alive who knows more, you damn well better have links to them (and you should send some goodies to them to thank them for being such great advocates).
Any others? Disagree with any of these? Sorry my comments are down. Now Hotmail is down too. Grr. Where's the "Hotmail weblog" where I can read about what's going on at Hotmail? So, write about this and link to it from your weblog. I watch my referer links like a hawk. Oh, is that #21? Yes it is. Know who is talking about you.
Here is the link to the Original Document .
For those that the link may not work for some reason I am also attaching the entire URL for reference:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2003/02/26.html#a2357
The Corporate Weblog Manifesto.
Thinking of doing a weblog about your product or your company? Here's my ideas of things to consider before you start.
1) Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. If your competitor has a product that's better than yours, link to it. You might as well. We'll find it anyway.
2) Post fast on good news or bad. Someone say something bad about your product? Link to it -- before the second or third site does -- and answer its claims as best you can. Same if something good comes out about you. It's all about building long-term trust. The trick to building trust is to show up! If people are saying things about your product and you don't answer them, that distrust builds. Plus, if people are saying good things about your product, why not help Google find those pages as well?
3) Use a human voice. Don't get corporate lawyers and PR professionals to cleanse your speech. We can tell, believe me. Plus, you'll be too slow. If you're the last one to post, the joke is on you!
4) Make sure you support the latest software/web/human standards. If you don't know what the W3C is, find out. If you don't know what RSS feeds are, find out. If you don't know what weblogs.com is, find out. If you don't know how Google works, find out.
5) Have a thick skin. Even if you have Bill Gates' favorite product people will say bad things about it. That's part of the process. Don't try to write a corporate weblog unless you can answer all questions -- good and bad -- professionally, quickly, and nicely.
6) Don't ignore Slashdot.
7) Talk to the grassroots first. Why? Because the main-stream press is cruising weblogs looking for stories and looking for people to use in quotes. If a mainstream reporter can't find anyone who knows anything about a story, he/she will write a story that looks like a press release instead of something trustworthy. People trust stories that have quotes from many sources. They don't trust press releases.
8) If you screw up, acknowledge it. Fast. And give us a plan for how you'll unscrew things. Then deliver on your promises.
9) Underpromise and over deliver. If you're going to ship on March 1, say you won't ship until March 15. Folks will start to trust you if you behave this way. Look at Disneyland. When you're standing in line you trust their signs. Why? Because the line always goes faster than its says it will (their signs are engineered to say that a line will take about 15% longer than it really will).
10) If Doc Searls says it or writes it, believe it. Live it. Enough said.
11) Know the information gatekeepers. If you don't realize that Sue Mosher reaches more Outlook users than nearly everyone else, you shouldn't be on the PR team for Outlook. If you don't know all of her phone numbers and IM addresses, you should be fired. If you can't call on the gatekeepers during a crisis, you shouldn't try to keep a corporate weblog (oh, and they better know how to get ahold of you since they know when you're under attack before you do -- for instance, why hasn't anyone from the Hotmail team called me yet to tell me what's going on with Hotmail and why it's unreachable as I write this?).
12) Never change the URL of your weblog. I've done it once and I lost much of my readership and it took several months to build up the same reader patterns and trust.
13) If your life is in turmoil and/or you're unhappy, don't write. When I was going through my divorce, it affected my writing in subtle ways. Lately I've been feeling a lot better, and I notice my writing and readership quality has been going up too.
14) If you don't have the answers, say so. Not having the answers is human. But, get them and exceed expectations. If you say you'll know by tomorrow afternoon, make sure you know in the morning.
15) Never lie. You'll get caught and you'll lose credibility that you'll never get back.
16) Never hide information. Just like the space shuttle engineers, your information will get out and then you'll lose credibility.
17) If you have information that might get you in a lawsuit, see a lawyer before posting, but do it fast. Speed is key here. If it takes you two weeks to answer what's going on in the marketplace because you're scared of what your legal hit will be, then you're screwed anyway. Your competitors will figure it out and outmaneuver you.
18) Link to your competitors and say nice things about them. Remember, you're part of an industry and if the entire industry gets bigger, you'll probably win more than your fair share of business and you'll get bigger too. Be better than your competitors -- people remember that. I remember sending lots of customers over to the camera shop that competed with me and many of those folks came back to me and said "I'd rather buy it from you, can you get me that?" Remember how Bill Gates got DOS? He sent IBM to get it from DRI Research. They weren't all that helpful, so IBM said "hey, why don't you get us an OS?"
19) BOGU. This means "Bend Over and Grease Up." I believe the term originated at Microsoft. It means that when a big fish comes over (like IBM, or Bill Gates) you do whatever you have to do to keep him happy. Personally, I believe in BOGU'ing for EVERYONE, not just the big fish. You never know when the janitor will go to school, get an MBA, and start a company. I've seen it happen. Translation for weblog world: treat Gnome-Girl as good as you'd treat Dave Winer or Glenn Reynolds. You never know who'll get promoted. I've learned this lesson the hard way over the years.
20) Be the authority on your product/company. You should know more about your product than anyone else alive, if you're writing a weblog about it. If there's someone alive who knows more, you damn well better have links to them (and you should send some goodies to them to thank them for being such great advocates).
Any others? Disagree with any of these? Sorry my comments are down. Now Hotmail is down too. Grr. Where's the "Hotmail weblog" where I can read about what's going on at Hotmail? So, write about this and link to it from your weblog. I watch my referer links like a hawk. Oh, is that #21? Yes it is. Know who is talking about you.
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