Winning by Sharing

Ki work: A platform for fractional work

Michael Wolff has been explaining what ki work is for many years.  This is perhaps one of the best explanations because he's set it in context so well. In a recent email thread written in response to a query from an interim management firm Michael says;

people4business.com is a neatly structured freelance marketplace, primarily serving buyers and professionals in the UK. it is one of about a hundred “me-too” businesses that have followed the original models developed by elance and guru. apart from UK focus, it has very little to differentiate itself from the other 100 service providers in this market.

The underlying assumption of all elance look-alikes is that the fundamental organisational principle in all business is that demonstrated by the “firm”* or modern corporation. buyers are some kind of corporation, however small, and sellers are employed contractors to these corporations. the underlying reason is that hitherto it has been more sustainable and cost effective for businesses to be organised in this way, rather than a situation where the economy consisting exclusively of a multitude of independent, self-employed people who contract with one another. this model of business was classically explained by ronald coase in 1937 in his famous article: the nature of the firm.

However ki work is truly part of the online work revolution. we see the emergence of a new organisational model that is structured in such a way that “a multitude of independent, self-employed people who contract with one another” are able to complete transactions as reliably, but more cost-effectively, than the conventional firm. this organisational model has been pioneered within the open source development environment (http://sourceforce.org) and described in Yochai Benkler’s seminal work: coase’s penguin, or linux and the nature of the firm.

ki work takes the organisational concepts of sourceforge (where open source projects are organised on a free basis) and translates them into a model where multiple online work projects can be executed with remuneration for the suppliers. just as sourceforge is a utility enabling virtual open projects, so is ki work the utility for paid virtual projects.

Hence ki work’s main differentiator from the elance model: an organisational structure comprised of category marketplaces, which are  co-ordinated by category leaders and experts. this forms the basis for the creation of virtually outsourced projects, executed by “a multitude of independent, self-employed people who contract with one another”.

What relevance does this have in the interim management market? until you surfaced we did not include “interim management” as a category. our perception is that interim managers focus primarily on getting work in conventional businesses as a form of temporary employment (rather like elance), and as such, are not generally attuned to becoming leading players in the emergent virtual outsourcing market. however, I suspect that a small percentage (maybe 20%) of interim managers would be interested in the emergent opportunities, and I see our “interim management” category as being an alternative to “project management”.

So regarding people4business.com and all the other ones like them, I do not see these as a threat but as a valuable channel for creating awareness in the marketplace. the elance model, now 10 years old, is due to be superseded by the virtual organisational model. ki work is leading the way.

These models are starting to emerge in the creative industries.  Andy Law of St Luke's has created a worldwide network of partners at The LAW Firm, Citizen Agency started as a network of advertising, marketing and web 2,0 professionals, and John Caswell's GroupPartners' expert network delivers most of the value to its clients.  So when will we see Agency.com, AKQA, BBH and others adopt these fractional models of work and start leveraging these platforms to make their biggest cost (people) variable rather than fixed?

Generation Y

There's been a lot of debate about the way enterprises are preparing for Generation Y employees.  These people were born between 1982-1997 having enjoyed the luxuries of digital technology their entire lives, so called digital residents or digital natives. 

Two years ago when web 2.0 was entering mainstream media and culture I remember reading an article arguing for an overhaul of the user experience provided by enterprise applications.  It predicted that companies will only be able to attract the best people by providing devices and applications that are as well designed as iPods and Facebook.

The Journal of Quebec has a different view, as it were!

Attention as a product

Image via Wikipedia

Ronald Woperis invented the idea of attention as a product.  A Twitter account is on sale at eBay from a guy who has amassed over 1500 followers. Is this the first indication of the monetary value of one's network of relationships?  Can attention be bought by individuals in the same way advertisers buy eyeballs?

Blog deflation

There's a meme emerging on the commoditisation of blog content.  The central thrust is that blogs now only have value when aggregated for search and discovery.  In the same way music downloads have cannibalised record label profits, bloggers' carefully nurtured content is being  devalued.   How can bloggers respond?

I agree with this trend suggest that blogs can only become destinations when functionality rather than content is syndicated.  So if I'm a travel writer with an audience I can embed Expedia's booking engine on my blog, such that the booking experience resides entirely within my blog pages.  I get a commission for sales (and I'm transparent about this).

Actually,  when you think about it anyone can be an intermediary (or agent, or broker). By combining services (or widgets, as they are called) from Cloud operators and web service brokers, they can build entirely new businesses, albeit with niche audiences.  Wine buffs with mass followings can sign up new members to Virgin Wine Club - take a a margin.  You get the point.  Incalculable number of permutations and combinations of services and intermediaries.

The academics were right several years ago when they said that far from the web dis-intermediating it will actually  create hypermediation giving rise to what they call cybermediaries.  In the social network space groups will be syndicated and embedded on the web sites and blogs of the members.  A 2,000 member group could be on 200 different web sites with a join button. Many brands don't get the point.  It isn't about creating destinations.  It's about 'being everywhere'.

"A word to the wise.  Decentralise".

Workstreamr. Fractional work for corporations

Stowe Boyd has started talking about his new venture, WorkStreamr. If this platform, especially when used by corporations, can "tell me something or somebody, I didn't think I needed to know", then it could quite easily become a de facto means by which companies execute all their projects.  Furthermore, if it's able to identify available resources to work on projects both inside an outside the company, then it can enable fractional work or the next small thing!  That is, people on demand. The value to companies of all sizes is almost incalculable because it can dramatically reduce the salary bill - making it kind of 'just in time" - a variable cost, rather than a fixed cost.

Zemanta: A digital biographer's dream?

After attending the Next Web 2008 event, I've had a chance to use Zemanta.  It's essentially a blog writing assistant delivered as FireFox plugin.  It analyses the text of your post using proprietary natural language algorithms and then provides selections of images, links (articles, wiki references) and tags to use in your post. 

The algorithms attempt to accurately match these references to the text of the post, in a highly relevant way.  I met the principals in London a few weeks ago, and again at the NextWeb conference.  It's actually quite useful, mainly by reducing the time to add tags and copy/paste links. 

The software works by parsing around 900 'A' list blog feeds and 300 news and information sources but hasn't quite got the breadth of content to support more specialist subjects.  My guess is that more sources will be added over time and the algorithms will become more semantically sound.  But even now this is a useful tool particularly for new bloggers and even digital biographers.   David Pretherick is an emerging class of writer/service provider that manages his clients' online profiles in a number of different ways, and he does it rather well.  For example, optimising LinkedIn profiles by making them easier to read, ensuring consistency and accurate provenance across other platform profiles, teaching people how to use and exploit the information and connections in social networks.  So I wonder if Zemanta could be his dream tool for enriching clients' online presence?  Zemanta currently supports the three major blogging platforms, WordPress, Typepad, and Blogger. 

Custom versions can be created for other platforms via an API and so even smaller  communities would find this tool useful for their members.  It is at this time completely free.

The business model is a little unclear (maybe like SnapShots with ads?).  But hey, critical mass first, and work out the angles later!

NextWeb 2008: Quick roundup

  next web poster 
  Originally uploaded by ixtlan

NextWeb 2008 Event   Don't have time for a full write up, so here are some trends that caught my eye;

Aggregation.  There seems to be a trend in aggregation.  Lots of talk about FriendFeed and a couple of start ups planning either content and/or profile aggregation.  UberVu hasn't launched yet but will be a space where conversations (community) can be started around your content.  Postmachina's social hardware will synchronise and aggregate social network profiles on the web.

VC.  Venture capital is looking for BIG ideas, new approaches (to old problems) and growth sectors (e.g. mobile) - according to the founder of TheFunded - a social network for funded CEOs.

Business models.  At last! A social network that extracts value from member data.  Wakoopa is network for serious software developers and end users (.Net, Adobe, Mozilla, etc) that gathers statistics about people's usage and opinions of end user software tools.  It sells this data on to the software vendors. NetLog founder reported over 30m users and a revenue stream that is 80% advertisement and 20% premium services.  They also report massive demand for Group Pages and plan to launch a mobile, location based social network. Not bad for a company of only 43 people.

Other points to note;

Zilok seems to have gained a lot of traction.  A place to rent anything.  Proper contracts and insurance and a decent web experience for monetising everything from lawnmowers to saxophones.  Very localised (because people have to meet) so some potential social benefit by enabling relationships between parties that are previously unknown to each other.

eBuddy is bigger than I thought.  A meebo clone with tools that enable advertisers to reach the IM community.  Love the way eBuddy hosts all their press and media info on Flickr!

Adoption of Cloud Services is very high amongst west coast start ups.  The founder of Lookery, a Facebook advertsing tool says that he and most of his entrepreneur friends consider it the only way to go.

BIG hat tip to Nova Spivack of Twine who gave a "semantic web for dummies" master class. By far the most informative, insightful and profound speaker over the two days.  His entire approach to the semantic web, and indeed his entire ethos, is coincidentally very Winning by Sharing.

I missed the talk by one of the founders of Dataportability.org but wanted to enjoy Friday afternoon in Amsterdam with my wonderful wife!  Lunch at Gaucho followed by shopping and an afternoon nap back at The Grand hotel.  Nice!

Overall an excellent experience and very well organised by Patrick de Laive and his team.  Well done!

Social hardware for the masses

  Postmachina connect device 
  Originally uploaded by ixtlan

Postmachina; Fascinating exhibitor at the NextWeb 2008 conference last week, is planning to manufacture a solid state device that stores your network and personal profile. Instead of exchanging business cards or contact details via Bluetooth and SMS, users 'touch in' by briefly making contact with each other's device. Postmachina is a Dutch design studio and describes this new venture, called Project E;

"Project E is a set of integrated products consisting of wearable/mobile brandable devices. They have the ability to connect users to each other, as well as new or existing services, like social networks. The products create a bridge between the virtual and physical world, and are designed for natural, gesture-based operation."  Not sure why it's called Project E, but the product does remind one of that well known party drug, Ecstasy!

Renato Valdes Olmos, Postmachina director, told me that after experimenting with some early prototypes that used Bluetooth, they've had to design their own set of protocols to make the devices more robust.  It can be connected to a PC and its contents managed and synchronised with multiple networks (LinkedIn, Plaxo, Twitter, and hopefully Ecademy & Xing)

It's too early to tell, but this device has great potential because it solves a lot of real world problems for networkers of all types.  Speed dating and speed networking users (night clubbers, event organisers, etc) would readily adopt this device particularly if it is cheap and preposterously easy to use.

Can you imagine how desirable these devices could be if someone like Apple got behind this venture?  Apple is probably the only company in the world that can make social hardware for the masses a consumer success story.

Robert Scoble poses with Leon Benjamin?

  Leon Benjamin and Robert Scoble 
  Originally uploaded by ixtlan

Or should that be the other way round?  In any case, Robert Scoble delivered a key note speech on day two of the NextWeb 2008 event.  It was short and to the point;  Have you noticed how social software really sucks if you don't have any friends?  When you sign up for Twitter, Pownce and other social software services your initial experience is so poor you wonder what the point is until of course, you add your friends.   Robert described this as the Friend Divide.  This is in stark contrast to traditional thick client software where everyone has the same experience (Excel, Word, etc), irrespective of the type of computer they use. 

Robert's talk only lasted 30 minutes and was designed to create more time for people to ask him questions.  An area he's investigating right now is mobile video streaming. He conducted a live demo of QIK - a new service that enables mobile phones to stream video to the web in real time.  It's also integrated with Twitter, more details at this Crunchbase article. He's off to Israel to interview the founders of a similar service - possibly more sophisticated.

This is going to seriously change news gathering and distribution because in a few years time, the quality and sophistication of devices will be good enough to deliver news programmes.

The value of social networks

A friend of mine told me in 2006 that an executive he knows at an oil company was willing to pay 20p-50p for instant (over 24 hours) opinions from a demographically suitable population of people.  This is several orders of magnitude greater than the advertising model (with the exception of the usual suspects with billions of page impressions every month).  I've argued for many years that the source of value in social networks is behavioural/opinion data, particularly those arising from digital conversations. Selectricity (Voting machinery for the masses) appears to be a robust tool for implementing it.  SwarmTeams - has similar utility.

Key to creating a movement at scale is figuring out the model of trust (the exchange of value) and the feedback mechanisms back to the community.  Feedback is crucial because prizes and other material incentives won't work (You want me to pay? I want you to pay attention).  They are obviously entirely inappropriate for cause related communities.

The biggest challenge brands face in their attempts to create customer communities and engage/interact with social networks is actually changing some aspect of their product, service or policies as result of the feedback they receive.  They also must communicate and attribute the benefits of that change back to the community.

To do this well they must start from the inside.  That is, create, learn, and experiment with social software. The first step is to discard the company Intranet, a largely one way broadcast medium, and replace it with systems that enable conversations, connectivity and peer-to-peer sharing.  This is probably stating the obvious but to participate in a network, a company must itself be network centric.  Unfortunately this means taking a conscious decision to dismantle hierarchical organisation.  Democratising decision making (crowd sourcing), creating openness and transparency is a big step for large organisations in particular.  For most of them, this is still a step too far.

Some more commentary here in an interview with MyCustomer.com.