Inside the Google Walled Garden

ian — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:40:19 +0000

I admit I am a big Google advocate, I have spent a fair amount of time at their cool European HQ In London, at partner events and I even coded the first shipped iteration of our Google Search Appliance Connector (thankfully now looked after by proper developers!). Also, I admit I’ve only spent a few hours with Google’s latest offerings, SideWiki and Wave, but I have the feeling of being in a privileged walled garden, rather than on the crest of a mainstream wave. Why does is it feel like that?

Sidewiki first, I’ve claimed this blog (our own Connie Benson blogged about that), but in order to use it, you need to download a browser plug-in (not available for Google Chrome, but I am not exactly in the majority with using Chrome as default browser) and the comments that folks make are then locked away in the Sidewiki, only available to others with the plug-in – and a Google account.

There is plenty written about the contribution of comments to a blog, I don’t have the audience (or possibly subject matter) to attract a lot of comments – but the big blogging guns out there like Chris Brogan and Social Media commentators like Jeremiah Owyang – freely admit that the conversation that their blog posts attract is a big part of the value to their readers – of forming the engaged community around them. This is important and why I choose to blog about these technologies here, community = engagement.

Anyone who has a blog has to give careful consideration to providing the ability to comment, I’ve gone in a few different directions on this blog – experimenting with some excellent tools like Disqus – before finally settling on what comes out of the box with Worpress, unmoderated with a bit of spam filtering. I did this, as it was easy, familiar and open for the reader, providing the fewest barriers to a hoped for conversation.

In order to share the SideWiki contribution to folks without the plug-in, a Google account or are using Chrome I have experimented with the supposed RSS functionality with little success, but even then I wouldn’t be able to slot this into a comment conversation.

I therefore don’t yet see how Sidewiki benefits the blogger or the community they are trying to form, it’s kind of stuck to one side, out of context of the discussion that is being had (who would force their reader to use SideWiki only?) and only open to the few. There is also no capability for the author to be notified if someone does pen a SideWiki entry – not conducive to a conversation.

Perhaps I am missing the point – this isn’t about conversation, but of folks freely adding to the subject at hand. But, it’s only slightly less anonymous than an anonymous comment as you do need to sign in with something. (An absolutely marvellous example of how being anonymous attracts the brightest and most articulate here). I have also focused on blogging, whereas it’s an even bigger issue for brands (being variously described around the web as graffiti, an example in this blog post) – and another reason why brands need to reach for social media monitoring tools such as our own.

Maybe it’s called “wiki” for a reason, but whilst you can report abuse, it doesn’t seem to have the community authoring features – the crowd sourced truth. If someone was to write a Sidewiki entry on our product website that said our product only ran on AS400′s, me or the community couldn’t correct that – only add another entry disproving it.

So, I am not quite feeling Sidewiki – what about Google Wave then?

There is lots and lots being written about Google Wave as the interweb struggles to comprehend it. I don’t pretend I do and after a couple of hours of playing I have very little to add, but firstly note, I am using Google docs to create this post, not my shiny new Wave account.

The first obvious reason why – is that I am not collaborating, I am writing this alone – but secondly there doesn’t seem to be a publish button – in fact there is no button for extracting the contents of a wave into a different shareable form, like a document.

CMSWire talk about Google Wave and the future of Content Management – something two of their authors collaborated on in real time using Wave – but I am hazarding a guess that some cut and paste lay in that process. In addition noodling through the API documentation it would seem it’s structured for sharing content between Wave users – for inserting into a web page a Wave – not collaboratively generated content.

I am in complete agreement that this is theoretically a great opportunity for content collaboration, helping during that stage that takes place prior to the formal content approval/publishing process. But, it doesn’t seem that this is what it was built for, it seems to be built as a communication and collaboration tool for Wave users only – now admittedly that’s an artificially small community right now and presumably it’ll open up for all folks with Google accounts (hmm… what does it mean for paid for apps? An Enterprise version?) – but that’s still a walled garden, described by Microsoft as the anti-web.

The Waves themselves are not just about content, they are platform for applications and gadgets, it’s really early for that stuff – with very little available. I was using it with my colleague Keith Tsang and we were almost using it like Instant Messenger.

So rather than the future of Content Management, maybe this is the future of Social Media platforms, maybe it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and those guys that need to look out. Maybe as a content authors we should think of this as a publishing platform, rather than content publishing collaboration.

None the less, are we looking at a Google account becoming a passport to the Internet?

Image of walled garden courtesy of recursion_see_recursion.

Engaging through Content or just Filing it?

ian — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:17:02 +0000

More thoughts on Vignette and OpenText.

The news of OpenText planning to gobble up Vignette and the recent Interwoven acquisition by Autonomy sees a new chapter for these grandees of content management and I think is further evidence in the shifts that have been occurring in this market around Enterprise Content Management and what organisations really want to do.

I’ve often described ECM as turning your organisation into a filing system, a necessary activity that keeps everything neat, ordered and regulatory compliant. It brings operational efficiencies and it can even help save the planet as you de-dupe and remove all that redundant server room kit.

The functionality and products of an ECM suite are all about that business function of keeping stuff ordered, records management, document management, asset management etc. Over the past 5 years this is the path that both Interwoven and Vignette set themselves strategically on, mainly through acquisition.

This was the path to becoming the new SAP or IBM and to becoming the System Integrators friend through alignment with big business change and major IT projects. Documentum, arguably the ECM pioneer was swallowed up by a storage company EMC (which kinda emphasises the point).

In the meantime, specialised Web Content Management vendors had stuck to their knitting, detected the shift toward agile solutions for business users and away from big IT projects. Technically organisations started to go “small IT” to bet their on-line business on Open Source, SaaS, Microsoft and away from the traditional platform of the web (Sun/Oracle).

Many vendors have prospered in a vibrant space that Vignette and Interwoven originally helped shape, driven by new business focused mantras of “ease of use” and “quick time to value” – of engaging the marketer, the communicator or anyone outside IT who has a message to deliver over the web.

These are things that I have always considered as delivering on the promise of content management software – yes you need the IT stuff to work, yes you need governance, but to truly deliver it’s about democratizing the contribution and user adoption. The web site as a business tool.

To put it very simply, you have a divergence of ECM and WCM – but I don’t identify myself with you as a brand because you have a neat and tidy warehouse or you are Sarbanes-Oxley complaint – it’s good to know, but it’s not what I like about you.

The challenge to the marketer is not about simply publishing content, it’s about what our websites are for – the audience – or more specifically the websites role in persuading, encouraging, educating, communicating – engaging the audience to act.

This is a trend that really came through at Internet World this year in London, with vendors and speakers talking engagement (some based solely on a screenshot of Google Analytics).

So, what interests me about the two acquisitions (so far, it’s still early) is that the OpenText path appears to be doggedly ECM (with a bit of social media), whilst Autonomy is talking the language of engaging with the visitor making the Interwoven acquisition look far more interesting.

Also published on our corporate blog.

Hovering Over The Back Button » Microsoft;

Inside the Google Walled Garden

Engaging through Content or just Filing it?