The Utility of Private Social Networks – Building Better Organizations and Saving Money Too

At a company I worked with last year I was asked to look at the documenting of all of its processes. The exercise was about creating collective awareness of best practices throughout the organization. Through documentation, we would discover redundancies, modify processes and create new efficiencies.

Everyone was invited to contribute their part of the process in a collective blogging exercise. What quickly became apparent was there was “tech speak” that often caused one part of the company not to understand what the other part was talking about. I was referee while at the same time I had to cut through the jargon and create something that everyone could understand.

As bloggers made their contributions and jargon got sorted out it became apparent that a common knowledge repository was needed and an internal Wiki that had lain dormant for some time was revived and populated. Employees were encouraged to contribute to the company Wiki. The beginnings of a enterprise social network were underway.

Blogs, wikis, chat and document sharing are just a few of the tools available within the category of web software applications that we call social networking today. In an article written by Andrew Conry-Murray, entitled “Can Enterprise Social Networking Pay Off?,” he describes a number of high technology company projects where enterprise social networking is in play.

Companies like Dell have yet to try to measure the dollars and cents impact of their investments in enterprise social networking. Says Bob Pearson, a Dell VP, “It’s not like you’re creating revenue.” But Pearson is convinced that social networking will alter the way Dell works.

Another article penned by Chris Murphy describes quotes John Parkinson, CTO of TransUnion, a credit rating company, who estimates that the company has saved $2.5 million in the first five months while spending $50,000 on a social networking platform called Socialtext.
Parkinson derived the dollar savings by counting things that the company deferred from buying. He observed that brainstorming ideas across departments and groups had significantly reduced demand for new technology and outside consulting services. The need for new software tools, processing capacity and hardware dropped dramatically.

Parkinson made the decision to introduce an enterprise social network because of internal demand. TransUnion employees were requesting a Facebook site for the company. His surveys showed that more than 2/3s of TransUnion’s 2,700 employees were already on sites like Facebook and MySpace. Parkinson was concerned that sensitive data such as highly confidential credit reports might end up on these sites where it could easily be compromised. An inside-the-firewall solution seemed like the best way to go. He launched Socialtext, a platform with personal profiles, a wiki, instant messaging, a forum for posting questions and answers with ratings and polling by employees on which answers were the best.

As employees started using the network, Parkinson studied usage and soon discovered who among the employees were best at problem solving. The result - the company is experimenting by creating new roles for forum experts. “It was never very clear to us, looking in, who the authoritative sources were, who was good at solving problems,” Parkinson states. Now it is. The benefits are incalculable and Parkinson forecasts that the investment in enterprise social networking will yield between $5 and $8 million in savings in 2009.
TransUnion has just started down the path of enterprise social networking and they are realizing a significant ROI. Other companies like Dell are also just getting started. More and more businesses, not-for-profit organizations, educators and charities are realizing that private social networking brings the potential of so many benefits. Here are just a few.

1. Private social networks give organizations a ROI in all their people. Every organization has people that do not talk in meetings. They may feel intimidated or defer to more forceful personalities within the company. These are people who never put up their hand in school. But these people can be hidden gems, and although they lack the “chutzpa” to talk aloud, they have ideas and expertise. In a private social network that encourages and rewards online contributions these people can feel liberated and make contributions. Once out they can begin to be appreciated on a whole new level as they contribute their “two cents,” helping the organization to achieve its goals.

2. Many large organizations develop silos, departments that are self contained. Organizations that suffer from silos lose so much. Connections across the organziation don't happen. With private social networks organizations can break down silos. They can let interaction, knowledge sharing, and collective problem solving become the normal communication pattern throughout the organization.

3. Sales is such a competitive occupation. Traditionally compensation plans reward individual sales achievement. Cross fertilization of successful strategies through the deployment of CRM tools runs counter to this “all-for-one” sales reality. A private social network that encourages mentorship and rewards such behaviour can create winning sales teams where sales strategies are shared, and top salespeople are compensated for helping the “newbies.” This represents a significant cultural shift for the normal sales organization. It means new compensation plans that reward both individual sales achievement and collective knowledge sharing contributions to develop overall team success.

4. It is clear that with the advent of Web 2.0 applications, the relationship between customers and suppliers is changing. One can describe the new model as being “customer web-centered.” It has always been true that it is easier to sell to an existing customer than it is to recruit a new one. Hence the relationship with existing customers is something that private social networking can address. Through a private social network, customers can be invited into online communities. These communities may include other customers with similar challenges. Communities can become great listening posts for organizations to learn about common customer problems. They can be great places to do collective sales pitches.

5. Private social networks begin with individuals creating profiles. Profiles are great ways to discover hidden talents. We tend to pigeonhole people by job title but most of us are much more than our jobs. For example I write music and do orchestration when I am not working with clients. People in the accounting department or in shipping may also enjoy music or play instruments. This type of discovery can pay huge dividends in improving morale within an organization. It can even impact the bottom line when you find out that someone is experimenting with open source software application development at home and has come up with a new widget or gadget that can be shared with others in the organization with similar interests, leading to who knows what.

Collaboration, discovery, knowledge sharing, collective success, communication, fun and individual recognition are what social networking is all about. Whether for profit or not, private social networks can give an organization a distinct competitive advantage in both bad and good economic times.

A pilot project is an inexpensive way to test the waters. As John Parkinson noted in his implementation at TransUnion, $50,000 spent on a social networking platform, yielded a $2.5 million saving in less than 5 months and an estimated $5 to $8 million in total savings just in the first year. That’s a lot of savings for such a small investment.

Email Tools that Make You Want to Pull Out Your Hair – Seen My Picture?

Recently one of my clients faced a challenge with his email application. He saves everything in Microsoft Outlook folders. This is a potential source of problems and a very common practice. Do you do this as well?

My client further compounded this practice by using two different versions of Outlook at his two work locations. At one he was using Outlook 2002 and at the other Outlook 2003.

In Microsoft Outlook 2002 and earlier versions the file folder size limit is 2 Gigabytes. These files use a format called PST. When you reach the 2 Gigabyte limit Outlook stops allowing you to send and receive email. If you use the Outlook archive feature to offload older email files and attachments, 2002 limits the size of each archive folder to 2 Gigabytes. What many users of Outlook 2002 and earlier versions going back to Outlook 97 do not know is that they can create multiple archive folders, each under 2 Gigabytes.

That solves the problem but doesn’t address the common practice of using Outlook as a primary filing system on your computer. This is not a practice I recommend. There are better ways to structure and secure your file folders and the data inside them.

When my client first encountered the 2 Gigabyte folder size limit he was able to create multiple archives. He then did a backup and took the archived materials with him to his other office location where his Outlook 2003 system resided. The geography that separates these two offices requires a 3-hour plane ride and my client did not realize he was using two different versions of Outlook.

Outlook 2003 uses PST file formats that support a standard that can represent most printed language alphabets. This standard is called Unicode. There is no theoretical limit to the size of a file folder in Outlook 2003 although the practical limit is 20 Gigabytes, 10 times the size of Outlook 2002 and earlier versions. Outlook 2003 had no problem reading the archived files from Outlook 2002. Everything worked as required. Then my client did his back up and got on a plane to fly back to his other office. When he tried to open his Outlook archives using 2002, his computer would not display the file folders.

Talk about a painful lesson. There is no workaround for this problem. What my client had to do was buy Outlook 2003 for his other office and install it. Only then would he be able to view his archival record.

I like to experiment with email systems. I use Outlook 2002. I use Gmail online. My service provider offers an online Outlook utility. I use the mail system in Windows Live Messenger. I route all my email through Gmail to take advantage of its superb spam filtering capability.

I had Office 2007 with Outlook 2007 running on my computer last year but I had to remove it from my laptop running Windows XP Service Pack 2 because it made my system grind. So I went back to my Office XP/2002 running Outlook 2002.
Mozilla Thunderbird Has A Lot of Similarities to Outlook Interface

But I have also looked at other desktop email applications. One of these is Thunderbird, the open source Mozilla product. Thunderbird is easy to download and during the installation it can extract archives and current email records from Outlook. I was able to make it my default email receiver without doing any account setup although later I went back in to create a signature for my emails. This doesn’t work as well as it does in Outlook but it was adequate.

Like all of the Mozilla products the best thing about Thunderbird is it’s free. You get functionality that is similar enough to Outlook with the ability to create and view email threads similar to Gmail.



Viewing Mail and Sending Replies Can Be Counter Intuitive When Using Gmail

The interface is far less busy than Gmail as well which makes it more intuitive to new users. So take a look at how you manage your email and recognize that email products are not meant to be robust file folder management systems for all of your documents. If you are challenged by developing a logical filing system then install Google Desktop on your system and use its search capability when you need to find information on your system.

SEO: How Your Small Business Can Attract Potential Customers On The Web

There has been a lot written about search engine optimization (SEO), that process of improving your website’s visibility when someone enters a search engine query on Google or Yahoo or MSN. SEO ensures that your website pages produce higher search result listings, getting you onto the first page ideally, if not within the first few pages. To optimize your website for queries it is important to know how search engines work and how people use them.

Crawling the Web

Have you ever used Google Alerts? This free application from Google allows you to create a web crawler based on you entering a phrase or descriptor on a subject of interest to you. Based on the search frequency you choose your Google Alert goes out and finds suitable information and reports back to you in your email.

The crawlers that web search engines use are very similar. They are robot collectors that examine websites, finding information and storing it. Crawlers look at HTML pages. They look at PDFs. They look at file names and the names of URL links. They have more trouble with images, video, Flash and Javascripts.

When a crawler looks at a page it extracts word information from the page header. it looks a key word tags. When it is finished it creates a data index which the search engine stores in a database. Every search engine query accesses that information database.

Searching Results

A query in Google or another search engine creates an online report listing relevant pages. Every search engine has different criteria for determining what results should appear. Google, for example, uses over 200 criteria in its search engine. Search engines rank results based on what is considered most relevant first and less relevant last. The positioning of search results is what SEO is designed to assist.

Some Tips for Improving Search Ranking Results There is so much written about SEO on the web and so many companies providing SEO services that for small businesses the whole subject can become very confusing. What to do? What to do? Well here are some very simple rules for you to follow to improve rankings.

1. Create clear and accurately named page titles. This helps web crawlers immensely and makes it easy to display relevant search query results. Make sure that your homepage contains the name of your business in the title. Make sure that you put the name of your products and services on relevant pages in the title position.

2. Use URLs that describe page content. Here are two URL names: http://rosen.len.googlepages.com/services and http://rosen.len.googlepages.com/page112 A crawler can do very little with the latter. There is no relevant word in the URL to indicate the nature of the page content.

3. Create headers that reflect what's on the web page. If you do tradeshows like I do then you may understand this analogy. Unstructured content is like the booth you walk by that has lots of information but you cannot tell what the exhibitor does. Structured content is the booth that features clear, intuitive messages. When you construct a website you have to make sure that each page has a clear message that starts with the header and goes on from there.

4. Use relevant words and phrases when creating page links. Take a look at the following example:

(Click on image to enlarge)

The links specifically describe the content of the pages they link to. If at all possible avoid ambiguous expressions for links such as "click here."

5. Give image files names that describe image content. As we stated before search engines have trouble indexing image content. A description of the image in the file name, however, is easy to index. So instead of calling an image file "image1," give it a descriptor "NewJerseyshorefall08."

Remember that this blog is dedicated to finding you resources that are free or very reasonably priced so that your small business can succeed. For free SEO tools and resources I recommend you visit SEO Tool Land.

As always please feel free to send me your comments and questions.

Innovation is Key to Success in Recessionary Times

I didn't write what you are about to read. It is an article by Jeremy Miller of LEAPJob, a Toronto, Canada, based sales and marketing recruiting firm. Jeremy has been kind enough to allow me to reprint his thoughts. As I read the article it struck me that the advice provided did not just apply to bad economic times but to almost any time. Companies often divest themselves of marketing and sales when facing tough times. It seems to be the easy way to cut costs but it often further reinforces the downward revenue cycle. There is no doubt that controlling costs is an important part of managing a business successfully, but examining where to manage those costs strategically so that revenue is not impacted is a critical skill.

Please enjoy this article and let me know what you think by your comments.

Turtles & Innovators

It's hard to stay positive in the midst of a recession. Every time you turn on the news you're barraged with negativity: plant closures, layoffs, bankruptcies and more. It's enough to make the most optimistic entrepreneur turtle up and hope for better days. Resist that urge. Turtling up is the last thing you should do. This recession will ravage the Turtles, and reward the Innovators. So rise up, and innovate, innovate, innovate.

Slow Down, Listen and Learn

Purchasing behavior changes dramatically in a recession. Companies become far more cautious with their investments, and many defer any major decision as long as they can. You see it in their behavior. Companies increasingly opt for trimmed-down options or do-it-yourself projects to maximize cash flow. Each spending decision is agonized over, and even small purchases require executive sign-off. The organization becomes hyper aware of their spending habits.

Frugal spending is an opportunity for Innovators, because companies are more receptive to new ideas. They still have needs, but they don't have the same budgets. Can you offer a better way? If so, this is a golden opportunity. While executives are scrutinizing their budgets, you can gain their attention. These buyers are fantastic to work with, because they see the big picture and know where the company can take risks.

Now is the time to be listening. Tune your organization to be hyper alert. Train your sales force to start asking probing questions, and teach them how to look for new opportunities. Sales people are focused on winning business in the here and now, but they can also be leveraged for reconnaissance. Their customer interactions are invaluable.

As you gather information, management needs a way to capture and disseminate that knowledge inside the organization. Are the customer service reps hearing the same things? What is marketing finding? Can marketing tweak the messaging to speak to these customer challenges? What about operations? Can they develop new products or services to solve these challenges, or adapt current solutions to be more effective for the economic times? The whole organization can accomplish a lot with the right information and a can-do attitude.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee

Muhammad Ali had an uncanny ability to spot weaknesses, move quickly, and strike. This is exactly the same skills we need for innovation.

The first thing a Turtle cuts is marketing. They view it as discretionary spending, and something that can be cut for short term gain. Bad idea. Rhodes and Stettler write in the February 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review, "Companies that injudiciously slash marketing spending often find that they later must spend far more than they saved in order to recover."

As the Turtles cut their marketing, the Innovators should strike. Companies want to work with vendors that are secure and stable. They don't want to invest money in a risky vendor; they will seek out the companies that offer sure-bets. Actively marketing your firm is a sign of strength. When customers see you on the Web, in the media and at the tradeshows they will take notice. It shows that you are upbeat and optimistic for the future, and that you are here to stay.

Share Your Point of View

Market visibility is not enough. What makes you remarkable?

Customers are looking for your X factor. They want to see how you are different, and what your company is doing to innovate and stay ahead in this market. So tell them. Show them. Educate them.

The neatest ally you have in this recession is the Internet. At any given time only 3% of your market is buying. This means 97% soon will be. If you are only focused on sales, then the non-buyers will tune you out. To engage the non-buying audience share information and advice that companies can use right now.

You have so many options to contribute value to your market. You can post how-to videos on YouTube, write articles or blog, comment in social networking sites, or simply put great content on your website. All of these activities count. By sharing your videos and value-add content you can build relationships with your customers even when they aren't buying. These relationships will offer you powerful opportunities, because as these customers enter a buying state you will be their first call. They will know you, have experienced your value proposition, and will be ready to do business with you when the time is right.

The Innovators Advantage

No matter how you cut it, Innovators will always beat the Turtles. Look at the giant companies today. Many of them, like Apple and Microsoft, were founded in recessionary times. They achieved their stature by being innovative, aggressive and committed to success. You too have this opportunity in this recession. Grab hold of it, and enjoy the ride.

Taking 21st Century Steps: How to Make the Internet a Two-Way Street

Recently I was challenged to respond to a news item that had some profound social implications and I went to a well known religious site to make a comment. What amazed me when I toured the site, was how much the information was top down: rulings, opinions, news, commentary – it all flowed in one direction. There was no invitation to provide feedback. I could give them money or buy religious items through their ecommerce secured shopping application. That was the sum extent of the interaction.

I compared that to the recent experience I have had in engaging Barack Obama's websites where, despite being Canadian, I joined and even responded to survey requests. The Obama sites invited dialogue, asked for feedback, asked me to get involved, sponsor neighbourhood events, make my opinions and concerns known. It also asked me for money but wouldn't accept a donation because I was from outside the U.S.

I began to wonder how many other websites were like the one I described in the first paragraph. I tried Google searching for statistics to see if anyone was tracking this kind of data. My search results came up empty. Maybe nobody writes or comments on these types of websites because they certainly appear to be dead end web marketing strategies.

With over 1 billion of us on the Internet these days, a little interaction can go a very long way. A lot of interaction can make your web presence stand out from the crowd.

The tools of interaction are many and the key to being successful through interactivity lies in the underlying data that you can collect on members or visitors to your website. The illustration below, courtesy of Enable Consultants, lists the many functional features that can be added to make a website interactive. When site visitors comment on web content, participate in a poll, enlist in your loyalty program, request a document or view a video clip, these transactions can be captured in user profiles.

If you ever bought with any frequency as I have on Amazon.com, you know how transactions are turned into focused marketing opportunities. I regularly buy books at that site. Many are about history. So when I bought the complete “West Wing,” my favorite political drama on TV, two weeks later I received an e-mail suggesting that I might find “Band of Brothers” or “From Earth to the Moon” to be of interest. And they were. Amazon knew my buying preferences and specifically targeted their selling messages to me.

You would think that loyalty programs such as those run by airlines would pick up on Amazon’s cue. But so far I have yet to experience any e-mail marketing campaigns from them that remotely suggests that they know what I buy, where I go, and what types of reward merchandise interests me.

If your business has already invested in Internet presence then make that presence give something back to you in return. Static pages and one-way communication are just like throw away ad flyers. Today your web presence needs to be totally interactive.

Interactivity can start with simple tools such as giving something away of value in return for capturing the demographics of those who request that item. It could be information. It could be a promotional item with your brand. It could be a free service you offer that leads to a face-to-face meeting.

In the interest of getting your feedback, let me know how you have made your websites interactive. Post your comments and let's begin a dialogue.

What is TV today and what does it mean to your small business future?

I have been watching the announcements coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show this January in Las Vegas and many have been about the changing face of TV technology. If you have been watching the news about TV recently the announcements about “going digital” have pervaded the airwaves. At the same time companies like LG, Samsung, Sony, Comcast, Cox, and Time-Warner have all been making product and service announcements. Meanwhile the major networks like CBS and NBC have reported write downs or losses in the billions of dollars. Advertising revenues are flat or down. Even the Super Bowl advertising slots have not sold out. So lots of changes are happening to TV and the impact is profound.

The TV of "Christmas" Past

To put a little Dickens into this blog let's explore where TV was, where it is today and where it will be in the future. When I was a youth in the 1950s, TV was a standalone cabinet with a picture tube that received black and white signals from broadcasters over the air. These signals were captured by an antenna on the roof or by rabbit ears on top of the set. We settled in front of the set to watch the Ed Sullivan show or the Cisco Kid and the Lone Ranger. Broadcasters included the big three in the US. In Canada we had the CBC and a few independent stations providing local programming content. That TV of the past, like other media, was a one way communicator. The TV signals were free, the infrastructure to deliver them was not, and advertisers paid through the nose to reach the viewing audience. For the next 50 years nothing much changed about the business model while the technology evolved.

Colour television arrived on mass in the 1960s. By 1967 most TV broadcasters’ signals were in colour. The first communication satellite was Telstar launched in 1962. By the 1970s the evolution of communication satellites created a new way of delivering TV signals. The cable TV industry was born. Cable TV providers took satellite signals and broadcast them over copper wire directly into homes. The first satellite dish manufacturers and service providers started making satellite-to-home TV accessible to the few. For the first time the TV over-the-air broadcasters had competition for audiences.

The TV of "Christmas" Present

Cable evolved from copper to fibre optics, delivering 65,000 times more information to TV viewers producing better quality pictures, more opportunity for programming and more competition for viewers. Satellite dishes got smaller and satellite service got cheaper making it more affordable for the average home viewer. Satellite meant even more competition for the broadcasters and the burgeoning cable TV providers. At the same time TV went from low-definition to high-definition (HDTV). TV sets went from small tubes to huge flat screens.

By 2007 the US consumer could choose to receive TV content many ways: through over 1,200 cable and satellite operators as well as the old way over the airways to an antenna or rabbit ears. By 2007 more than 50% of US consumers were receiving their TV signals in digital format. TV viewers could choose what they watched and how they watched it using the latest Digital Video Recorders (DVR). A few channels became thousands of channels. By the end of 2007 video-on-demand (VoD) had reached volumes of 3.3 billion program downloads, competing with movie theatres and video rental stores.

With the arrival of ever faster and more powerful personal computers TV came to the desktop with the arrival of Internet Protocol TV (IPTV). Users could access services like YouTube or Joost or one of many other online TV viewing sites to get a personalized viewing experience. The Internet brought another dimension to TV watching – interactivity, the ability to point and click and alter the viewing experience.

When compared to the traditional TV viewing experience, the Internet provided for personal preference even though the screen was smaller. The best you could do for interactivity with a TV was use a DVR, do a video download, or use the remote to surf the hundreds of channels that were now available. As an alternative the viewer could experience interactivity by hooking up a Nintendo Wii, Playstation or Xbox 360 and playing games.

The TV of "Christmas" Future

This is where we are going and very, very soon. The announced move from analog to digital TV beginning February 17, 2009 in the US (in Canada, August 31, 2011) will make it possible for TV to become fully interactive rather than the one-way passive medium that it has largely been. What this means is TV will open the door to a personalized experience for viewers.

Interactive TV means a 2-way street. New standards for creating content such as OCAP (now called Tru2way), and ACAP will allow software developers to build Internet-like applications for TV. These applications will run on new technology already being delivered to set-top boxes and TVs today. This new technology supports 2-way interaction, allows for viewer personalization, and provides secure e-commerce.

What does this TV revolution mean for small businesses trying to reach potential consumers?

Traditionally TV has been a very expensive way to reach an audience. We always read about the cost of 30-second advertisement at the Super Bowl with the number in the millions of dollars. Big dollar advertising has been the lifeblood of TV broadcasters, but that is about to change too.

With thousands of channels to view, and interactive TV becoming ubiquitous in the US and elsewhere, TV service providers and broadcasters can no longer demand advertising fees for 30-second slots in the millions or even the thousands of dollars. In fact, TV advertising can no longer be built around the 30-second slot. Instead it must become more Internet-like with “select” on the remote becoming just like a mouse click. This represents an entirely different advertising business model for TV, much more like the click-through, banner and sideboard advertising that we have become familiar with on computers. Suddenly TV can be an accessible medium on which to advertise even for a small business serving a local market.

Recently I started working with a company that is delivering on the promise of much lower costs for companies to advertise and market themselves on TV. The company is OrderTV and they have created 3 products for the new emerging interactive TV market:

• a comprehensive information guide called iCityGuide, where a company can get a directory listing and small ad just like the Yellow Pages, and at Yellow Pages pricing
• an interactive online shopping information channel, iShoppingTV, that lets the viewer watch MPEG videos and click through menus to learn about products and services and even connect to sellers
• a dedicated fully interactive shopping channel called OrderTV featuring the ability for a business to interact live with a viewing audience
  

What is even more exciting about this interactive capability is the data gathering that can occur giving advertisers an accurate profile of the viewer. And because the interactive experience on the TV is Internet-like, it is no surprise that companies such as OrderTV plan to combine their TV presence with Internet websites that have a similar look and feel, adding social networking capability as part of the total interactive experience. TV viewers can go on the Internet to enhance their experience staying connected with a local distributor or the company itself, sharing information with other viewers, reviewing past purchases or checking on the status of new orders.

For small businesses this represents a new way of doing marketing and selling. They can reach TV audiences at a fraction of what it would have cost in the past. And they can learn more about those who view their ads than ever before, creating stickier viewers that can become sticky customers, an exciting future for small business advertisers on TV.

The Virtual Community Revolution – How this type of Internet Usage Will Change Our World

I have had an epiphany in 2008, a year that has witnessed a market meltdown, contracting Western economies, people losing their homes, their jobs, and probably a bit of their confidence in the future. That epiphany came about because of so many circumstances, both local and international.

The market meltdown exposed the weaknesses of “unfettered greed,” capitalism without regulatory oversight. It also illustrated how interconnected this planet is, as the economic disaster of sub-prime mortgages in the U.S. impacted countries around the world, like watching falling dominos. In this Internet age there was no way to escape the news, no way to bury your head in the sand, no way to retreat to an isolated place where you could not be aware of the economic impact.

The year 2008 witnessed further remarkable change, a tipping point. Politically Americans elected, to the highest office in their land, a dynamic new leader, firmly planted in the digital generation. As a Canadian watching the unfolding of political events south of the border, it was fascinating to watch the Internet campaign of Barack Obama. Using existing public social network spaces like Facebook, providing video messaging through YouTube, building a cell phone communication network to send out short messages, the Obama campaign created a custom Internet presence that embraced, engaged, and empowered the electorate. It played a considerable part in the campaign strategy. In his article, Obama Election Ushering in First Internet Presidency, posted November 5, 2008, Mitch Wagner, of Information Week, posted the statistics associated with the Internet campaign. Millions contributed to the campaign, all through the Internet. Millions more volunteered, organizing themselves through the Internet.

Post-election, the Internet continues to play a substantial role in this new Presidency even before he has taken office. The site http://change.gov has become an online expression of direct democracy in action. The implications of this new virtual community presence are enormous. Today the President Elect has the means to appeal daily, directly to every citizen, informing them, gathering feedback, and engaging them in policy creation and implementation at the grassroots level. For the Congress of the United States, this virtual community and direct democracy relationship poses enormous challenges. Suddenly the President can develop a one-on-one relationship with every citizen who chooses to join the site, bypassing Congress unless the Representatives and Senators start building their own virtual community presence.

Here in Toronto where I live, I got involved in this change phenomenon at a more personal level. I started publishing this small business blog and wrote an article on my experiences participating and using social networks. Little did I know that I was soon attracting a number of readers who liked what they read and wanted to talk to me more about the subject.

One of those readers was Faith Exeter, President of an Internet software development company, Enable Consultants. For a decade Enable had been building Internet sites for clients in the Caribbean and Canadian markets. They had been recognized by the UN for work in building digital community connections among expatriate Caribbeans and their home islands. Now they were into trying to solve the disengagement problem of marginalized youth that was rearing its head in Toronto district schools, and they were doing this by creating a private social network.

This version of social networking isn’t Facebook or MySpace. It protects youth from cyberbullying and inappropriate content. It has a code of conduct. It is policed by all members of the community and monitored by a super user who determines whether flagged content is inappropriate or not. It is built around the school as a community hub. It focuses on students, teachers, classrooms, parents, school and community partners.

The product is called Recess and its website is www.meetatrecess.com. Recess was tested in the spring of 2008 at a Toronto middle school that was considered by many principals and teachers to be one of the toughest in the City. Known more for students being out of class and expelled, than in class and learning, Recess was introduced to this school as part of an overall strategy for redefining student engagement. The test was one Grade 7 class of 30 students. When first deployed, during class orientation, a number of students appeared disengaged. When approached and through discussion their interests were identified. When told about blogging as a way of expressing their interests the students got excited and involved. Within a few days all 30 students in the class were visiting the site at least once a day. Students created their own profiles, posted photographs, videos, music, wrote blogs, contributed to news, did homework, asked for help, and interacted with their classroom and classmates. During the first month of the test the students viewed 21,364 pages. And when the test was over and the school year ended, those same students continued to view the site at volumes as high as 14,000 pages per month.

Some students published articles online and made them available to be viewed by their classmates. In many cases these postings were not homework assignments, but personal expressions about subjects that were of particular interest to them. One student, who created a discussion paper on child abuse, when asked if Recess had changed her, responded “Yes, I now know what I want to do when I leave school. I want to write.”

Giving youth a vision of their future and the tools to achieve it – that is the goal of Recess. And that is revolutionary. It is a revolution that can be applied to any organization that seeks to use the Internet to effect change. A charity can enhance its programs and efforts by using a virtual community approach to fund raising, education, program support and delivery, and more. A business can reach out to its employees, suppliers, and customers through the virtual community experience to empower employees to enhance the business, to work with suppliers to improve processes and profitability, and to engage customers in ways never dreamed before.

I call this a revolution, not evolution, because that is what the rise of virtual communities online is. With public social networks we have stepped through an Internet door that has led to all types of new engagement. With virtual community we will move beyond engagement. Virtual community is about empowerment of the individual. It is about breaking down communication barriers, creating new solutions to intractable problems. It is about changing the world.