Category Archives: Web 2.0

‘Transform Your Conversation!’ – Enter Cluetail

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[While
Cluetail's website is in the making, I'm posting this description of
our company on my blog - because I want to start reaching out :-)

UPDATE, March 31, 2009: I've put up a brief description of Cluetail in English, Finnish and Dutch, at http://www.cluetail.com (or, until the DNS records are updated, at: http://sites.google.com/a/cluetail.com/transform/)- note that http://cluetail.com does not yet redirect here.]

Cluetail Ltd. is an integrated communications services company which deeply appreciates the value of human conversation.

All
transactions – either privately, in business, or in the public domain
and the media – are a function of relationships, built on conversation
between people.

We exist to create value to our customers by enhancing the quality of their conversations, connections and relationships.

The Challenge

"Choice"
is sometimes referred to as the epidemic of the 21st century. During
the foreseeable future, information, choice and competition for
attention will keep growing at an increasing rate.

Without
access to the most relevant information and the right people, no
meaningful transactions can be done and business will suffer.

Our Vision

However,
Cluetail shares a more optimistic vision of the world: one in which
people engage conveniently, instantly and continuously in the
conversations most relevant to them, and connect to the people who
matter most.

Seasoned in journalism, organizational
communications, and participatory intra- and Internet applications, we
at Cluetail build processes and tools which maximize the reach, impact,
visibility and measurability of your communications efforts.

How We Do It

While harnessing enabling technologies in the realm of participatory
media and social software, our objective is to make these
technologies as unobtrusive as possible.

First we help you save money by making your communications practices more efficiently aligned with your strategic objectives.

Then we help you make money
by more effectively engaging your employees, customers, partners,
investors, media, interest groups and the general public in
conversations relevant to you and your brand.

Our Services

Our
consultancy services include current- and desired-state analyses and
road-mapping, process and tool development and implementation.

Our
operational support services include technical process and tool
support, content and channel management, content creation, media
monitoring and business intelligence, training, team building, coaching
and mediation.

Coming up…

Through our ASP (Application Service Provider) services we plan
offer content life-cycle management systems, online conversation
analysis and recommendation systems.

The latter will enable our
customer companies to make tacit communications structures visible; to
extract business intelligence and trend analysis from online
conversations; and to help their people identify the most relevant
conversations and build meaningful relationships with the people
involved.

By detecting tacit structures and weak signals early,
customer companies can faster anticipate a changing business
environment, thus gaining competitive advantage over their peers.

Talk Is Cheap

Drop us a line or give us a call: let's have a conversation about your conversation.

  Jos Schuurmans

  CEO & Sales, Cluetail Ltd. (y: 1747348-8)
  Patteristonkatu 2, 50100 Mikkeli, Finland

  +358 50 59 33 006
  <jos.schuurmans@cluetail.com>
  http://cluetail.josschuurmans.com
  http://josschuurmans.com/contact

P.S.: The name Cluetail is an hommage to the Cluetrain Manifesto and the Long Tail, two concepts which, IMHO, are particularly insightful when we try to understand the Internet and where it will take us.

The Live Web Will Be Federated

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Under the headline 'Blogging 2.0: Moving Toward Conversational "Flows"', Bill French wrote a piece on MyST Blogsite, in which he observes that conversations on the Internet are increasingly moving away from being contained within blogs, towards being distributed among lifestreaming or micro-blogging services (Bill calls them "flow applications") such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

He quotes me by saying:

"(…) Ironically, in this comment, Jos Schuurmans equate sthe emergence of social networks with the end of “channels”. (…)"

I subscribe to the view that online conversations will be less and less contained within channels, while more and more federated among and across different platforms and services. To the extent that channels can be seen as walled gardens, the emergence of the blogosphere itself was the disruption that started taking down those walls.

The point I was trying to make earlier, under 'The End of Channels?' and ''Channels' does not sufficiently describe the dynamics of distributed online conversations', is that conversations take place across and between channels, not just within, and that it is therefore less useful to think of the Web in terms of channels. As David Weinberger and Doc Searls have pointed out: the Internet is a place, not a medium.

Indeed, enablers like Jaiku, Twitter, FriendFeed, Identi.ca, Ping.fm, and Facebook are speeding up the trend of conversations being more distributed. But what these services represent most of all is the shift from a more static Web to the "live Web".

Another application worth mentioning in this context is Disqus, an enabler of blog comments federation. If Dave Winer will have his way, something similar is going to happen to micro-blogging as well… And why wouldn't he?

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Mobile Internet sucks (= conclusion of 3 wks without ADSL)

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I’ve been without broadband Internet at home for about three weeks – I was “between providers”, so to speak.

Must say that, while I was still able to consume some of my daily Internet fix – browsing RSS feeds on my mobile phone -, it was at the same time a sobering experience of how embarrassingly ill adapted the applications on my Nokia N95 are to mobile Web 2.0 participation.

I’ll probably remember this period best as the time when Doc Searls went in and out of hospital and blogged  it all. Good health and happiness to you, Doc!

Data speed is not the bottle neck. It’s the lack of mobile client-side participatory software.

With my Nseries device and 3G coverage I could browse and email, but that was about it. No tagging, no digging, no blogging with any level of convenience.

So what I ended up doing was to bookmark the URLs I would have liked to tag, digg or blog and thus collect them in my mobile phone’s browser for future reference.

I hope to catch up blogging some of those bookmarks over the coming days.

Dugg: Who is Who: Interview with David Weinberger | Ulrike Reinhard

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Via David Weinberger:

"(…) Ulrike
Reinhard, of WhoIsWho, video-interviewed me on our back porch last
week. She asked me about the need for serendipity, what an “open”
Internet means, the costs of social networks, the new sense of privacy,
user-controlled identity systems, Web 3.0, market conversations,
categorization and control, Twitter, Obama… (…)"

http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwhoistv%2Eblip%2Etv%2Frss&file=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Frss%2Fflash%2F954559%3Freferrer%3Dblip%2Etv%26source%3D1&showplayerpath=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Fscripts%2Fflash%2Fshowplayer%2Eswf

Serendipity is a fascinating concept. I strongly believe that the way we learn new things and expand our horizons is through serendipity. In order to discover and, if you will, accept something new, this "news" needs to be presented to us in a familiar, trusted, i.e. "old" context.

We hardly ever buy into something entirely unfamiliar. For example, if we don't know the source, we are less prone to trust the news. In conversations, I am more likely to learn something new from people with whom I have, say, 80 percent in common, than from people with whom I have, say, 10 percent in common. If you get my drift…

read more | digg story

Dugg: The Internet Organizes Itself: Here Comes Everybody | Glenn Fleishman

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"(…) Clay Shirky's (…) book "Here Comes Everybody" (The Penguin Press, 2008) explains his views on the power of individuals to organize into groups without companies, hierarchies, or outside efforts. (…)"

Glenn Fleishman writes:

"(…) I sat down with Clay on 14-Mar-08 to talk about the book for a short article that appeared in the Seattle Times, focused on the business side of his book. However, the Seattle Times allowed me to publish a podcast of our roughly 40-minute conversation. (…)"

The 40-minute podcast is indeed worth the listen. Clay talks about a lot of stuff, including the notion that we don't yet understand where the Internet will be taking us. And another thing I found quite interesting was his reference to "more is different", i.e. scale changes the nature of things (such as the Internet).

(via Charlie Schick, who adds on a personal note:

"(…) My tongue is bleeding, I am biting it so hard. Though a beer can
loosen it, in case you are interesting in a tale of enlightenment,
abandonment, discovery, creativity, stealing, cluelessness, and
dissapointment. (…)"

Charlie, what's your favorite beer? Come visit and I'll put it cold for you.

read more | digg story

Dugg: Dan Gillmor: Principles of a New Media Literacy | Publius Project

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[UPDATE, April 30, 2009: Dan Gillmor's essay on the Publius website appears to have moved. The new, correct link is: http://publius.cc/principles_new_media_literacy]

"(…) In this emergent global conversation, which has created a tsunami of information, what can we trust?

How we govern ourselves on the Web depends in significant ways on
the answers. To get this right, we’ll have to re-think, or at least
re-apply, some older cultural norms in distinctly modern ways.

It comes down, in significant ways, to some principles, both for
media consumers and creators. They add up to a 21st Century notion of
what we once called “media literacy.” But media literacy has generally
lacked the kind of participatory piece that is so essentially a part of
digital media. (…)

  • Be skeptical of absolutely everything.
  • But don’t be equally skeptical of everything.
  • Understand and learn media techniques.
  • Ask more questions.

(…)"

read more | digg story

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Dugg: Gin, Television, and Social Surplus – Here Comes Everybody | Clay Shirky

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(Via Jay Rosen / PressThink: ‘Looking for the Mouse in Media: Clay Shirky on Deploying the Cognitive Surplus for Public Good’)

Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008 | blip.tv:

http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fweb2expo%2Eblip%2Etv%2Frss&file=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Frss%2Fflash%2F862384%3Freferrer%3Dblip%2Etv%26source%3D1&showplayerpath=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Fscripts%2Fflash%2Fshowplayer%2Eswf

"(…) And it’s
only now, as we’re waking up from that collective bender, that we’re
starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a
crisis. We’re seeing things being designed to take
advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody’s basement.

(…) "Where do people find the time?" That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, "No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you’ve been masking for 50 years."

(…) This
is something that people in the media world don’t understand.  Media
in the 20th century was run as a single race–consumption.  How
much can we produce?  How much can you consume?  Can we produce more
and you’ll consume more?  And the answer to that question has
generally been yes.  But media is actually a triathlon, it ‘s three
different events.  People like to consume, but they also like to
produce, and they like to share.

(…) Here’s something four-year-olds know:  A screen that ships without a mouse ships
broken.  Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not
be worth sitting still for.

(…) "If we carve out a little
bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we
make a good thing happen?"  And I’m betting the answer is yes. (…)"

read more | digg story

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Blood from stone: Don’t focus on ad revenue from social networking services | Charlie Schick

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Charlie writes: "(…) Your core service drives the interaction with the customer, but the money can come from some other area.

But, be careful where you _think_ you can get the money. (…) Online social networking services thrive because they are a form of social lubrication. (…) Yes, social network is the concentrator, but what the folks end up doing is where the money’s at. (…)"

Interesting comment from Stefan Constantinescu: "(…) recommendation engine may sound unsexy now, but they will LEAD the next generation of corporate buy outs and be the foundation for the services we use in the upcoming decade. (…)"

read more | digg story

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Dugg: Blogging as a Form of Journalism | J.D. Lasica / OJR

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"(…) Weblogs offer a vital, creative outlet for alternative voices (…)"

When cleaning up my paper (sic!) archive the other day, I came across a printed article in two parts, by J.D. Lasica for the Online Journalism Review (OJR), published on May 24 and 31, 2001. Just before I’m throwing this away for the benefit of the paperless office, I’ll quote what I highlighted back then:

From: ‘Blogging as a Form of Journalism‘, May 24, 2001:

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Dugg: Becoming 2.0: all startpages, the comprehensive review. startpages part 2 | Justin Fenwick

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Justin Fenwick: "(…) I looked through 20 different options, which exhausts the lists of other older comprehensive reviews I found. (…) Netvibes is without question the one to beat. (…)"

read more | digg story

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