Blogs

• 15 Apr 2014
  Emerging niche social networks and the bond of community

  Facebook has always been bad at building communities outside of your existing friends and family. It’s an online tool to build and maintain your existing community of relations. In fact, social networks in general have been bad at bringing together people with a shared interest to create new communities. Whereas forums have always been particularly good at it. Look at Mumsnet, The Student Room and Gamespot for some incredibly successful examples of forums used to build powerful, long-lasting communities. Now is the time to revisit what I believe is the greatest use of the internet: online community sites and their evolution into niche social networks. The resurrection of the niche community Despite the attention the big social networks have been receiving in recent years, community forums have remained popular and they’re evolving, adopting more ‘social network’ like features. There are hundreds of thousands, probably millions of these sites that have a combined audience comparable to Facebook. Perhaps online communities have been overlooked slightly in recent years because they are so niche. You would only visit these forums if you had a particularly strong interest, and it’s this extreme and shared interest that unites people within them. A fantastic example is the Transformer toys collector websites like TFormers and Seibertron. Why would you know about these if you weren’t interested in Transformers? You wouldn’t. These sites are insanely popular and extremely resilient because of their community bond. For every interest there is an online community to accommodate, be it for films, fishing, cooking and so on. They live and grow every day even if you know nothing about them. I run a small local site called Love Clapham that brings together my local community online. During 2011’s London riots, where Clapham Junction became centre of attention, Love Clapham’s community played a pivotal role as residents confirmed to one another what was and wasn’t actually happening. Almost all local communities now have an online community site to accommodate. They’re incredibly powerful within each area. Search for the one in your area to see for yourself. Long-term relationships Back in the late 90′s early 00′s I ran a number of sites for pop artists and TV shows which were particularly good at bringing people together to chat about common interests. Building friendships and even marriages(!) that last to this day. I’m followed on Twitter and still chat online with many people I met on these forums but have never actually met – over a decade later. I’ve always been fascinated by this use of online and the untouchable strength of community. Will community behaviour ever follow the technology? Social networks are a natural progression from forums – forums 2.0! After all, much of the functionality is similar, only much better (posting images, messaging, discussions etc). Yet the community behaviour never followed the technology. So I recently discovered a games social network called Playfire with great interest. Playfire is a new, currently limited but quickly developing social network that brings video game players together, cleverly linking to games consoles to display your game play activity from the Xbox 360 and PS3. As a video gamer this is exciting and I’ve already been using it in similar ways to how I would use a forum (e.g. asking the collective community questions). The big games websites Gamespot and IGN both have communities built around forums that have existed for over ten years and they’re both integrating more and more social network like features too. Zeebox, a new iPad app and website built as a companion to broadcast TV demonstrates similar characteristics by bringing people together who like shows in real time to chat about them. This uses Twitter to form the community interaction. Twitter is particularly interesting because it can mould itself around other technology in ways Facebook cannot. I’m keen to see how this grows but also how existing communities like Mumsnet evolve from what we know as forums into more advanced social networks (aka forums 2.0, or as I like to call them, mega forums… joke). Niche social networks are the next big thing I was discussing this very subject of niche social networks and the dominance of Facebook with my colleague Guy Phillipson earlier in the year. We came to the conclusion that niche social networks will begin to have their heyday and, from the little evidence I’ve just written about, this appears to be happening right now. Thanks to the wider availability of simple social network technology, niche social networks are cropping up every day. Open source platforms like JomSocial for Joomla and BuddyPres for WordPress mean almost every interest has its own niche social network. Take a look at Tasty Kitchen, Fellow Fishermen, New York City Runners and this fantastic Greek pet social network. Currently Google+ even feels like a niche social network for early adopting media/technology experts – I love it! It won’t stay like that forever of course. In fact, if you look, some niche social networks have existed for a long time and other communities are playing catch-up. Dating sites like Match, MySingleFriend, Gaydar and PlentyofFish are a prime example of niche social network; in fact they were probably the first niche social network. Often they offer more than just a match making service, they build friendships around a common situation and generate wider discussion among the people that use them. And yes, they create new relationships. This post is more about sharing some thoughts to generate discussion instead of drawing a conclusion. I will however finish on the thought that some social networks, predominantly Facebook, have distracted from something the internet is particularly good at: bringing people together online to form community. A lot of these communities already exist as forums which I’d argue are a form of social network in their own right and these are morphing into something more advanced and ‘social network’ like. Let’s not simply focus on the scale of large social networks, as important as this scale and their influence is. Let’s also concentrate on the bond of community and the way in which the internet can create and strengthen this. (source: http://wallblog.co.uk)

  1556 Posted by I Lyn
• By I Lyn

  Emerging niche social networks and the bond of community

  Facebook has always been bad at building communities outside of your existing friends and family. It’s an online tool to build and maintain your existing community of relations. In fact, social networks in general have been bad at bringing together people with a shared interest to create new communities. Whereas forums have always been particularly good at it. Look at Mumsnet, The Student Room and Gamespot for some incredibly successful examples of forums used to build powerful, long-lasting communities. Now is the time to revisit what I believe is the greatest use of the internet: online community sites and their evolution into niche social networks. The resurrection of the niche community Despite the attention the big social networks have been receiving in recent years, community forums have remained popular and they’re evolving, adopting more ‘social network’ like features. There are hundreds of thousands, probably millions of these sites that have a combined audience comparable to Facebook. Perhaps online communities have been overlooked slightly in recent years because they are so niche. You would only visit these forums if you had a particularly strong interest, and it’s this extreme and shared interest that unites people within them. A fantastic example is the Transformer toys collector websites like TFormers and Seibertron. Why would you know about these if you weren’t interested in Transformers? You wouldn’t. These sites are insanely popular and extremely resilient because of their community bond. For every interest there is an online community to accommodate, be it for films, fishing, cooking and so on. They live and grow every day even if you know nothing about them. I run a small local site called Love Clapham that brings together my local community online. During 2011’s London riots, where Clapham Junction became centre of attention, Love Clapham’s community played a pivotal role as residents confirmed to one another what was and wasn’t actually happening. Almost all local communities now have an online community site to accommodate. They’re incredibly powerful within each area. Search for the one in your area to see for yourself. Long-term relationships Back in the late 90′s early 00′s I ran a number of sites for pop artists and TV shows which were particularly good at bringing people together to chat about common interests. Building friendships and even marriages(!) that last to this day. I’m followed on Twitter and still chat online with many people I met on these forums but have never actually met – over a decade later. I’ve always been fascinated by this use of online and the untouchable strength of community. Will community behaviour ever follow the technology? Social networks are a natural progression from forums – forums 2.0! After all, much of the functionality is similar, only much better (posting images, messaging, discussions etc). Yet the community behaviour never followed the technology. So I recently discovered a games social network called Playfire with great interest. Playfire is a new, currently limited but quickly developing social network that brings video game players together, cleverly linking to games consoles to display your game play activity from the Xbox 360 and PS3. As a video gamer this is exciting and I’ve already been using it in similar ways to how I would use a forum (e.g. asking the collective community questions). The big games websites Gamespot and IGN both have communities built around forums that have existed for over ten years and they’re both integrating more and more social network like features too. Zeebox, a new iPad app and website built as a companion to broadcast TV demonstrates similar characteristics by bringing people together who like shows in real time to chat about them. This uses Twitter to form the community interaction. Twitter is particularly interesting because it can mould itself around other technology in ways Facebook cannot. I’m keen to see how this grows but also how existing communities like Mumsnet evolve from what we know as forums into more advanced social networks (aka forums 2.0, or as I like to call them, mega forums… joke). Niche social networks are the next big thing I was discussing this very subject of niche social networks and the dominance of Facebook with my colleague Guy Phillipson earlier in the year. We came to the conclusion that niche social networks will begin to have their heyday and, from the little evidence I’ve just written about, this appears to be happening right now. Thanks to the wider availability of simple social network technology, niche social networks are cropping up every day. Open source platforms like JomSocial for Joomla and BuddyPres for WordPress mean almost every interest has its own niche social network. Take a look at Tasty Kitchen, Fellow Fishermen, New York City Runners and this fantastic Greek pet social network. Currently Google+ even feels like a niche social network for early adopting media/technology experts – I love it! It won’t stay like that forever of course. In fact, if you look, some niche social networks have existed for a long time and other communities are playing catch-up. Dating sites like Match, MySingleFriend, Gaydar and PlentyofFish are a prime example of niche social network; in fact they were probably the first niche social network. Often they offer more than just a match making service, they build friendships around a common situation and generate wider discussion among the people that use them. And yes, they create new relationships. This post is more about sharing some thoughts to generate discussion instead of drawing a conclusion. I will however finish on the thought that some social networks, predominantly Facebook, have distracted from something the internet is particularly good at: bringing people together online to form community. A lot of these communities already exist as forums which I’d argue are a form of social network in their own right and these are morphing into something more advanced and ‘social network’ like. Let’s not simply focus on the scale of large social networks, as important as this scale and their influence is. Let’s also concentrate on the bond of community and the way in which the internet can create and strengthen this. (source: http://wallblog.co.uk)

  Apr 15, 2014 1556
• 09 Apr 2014
  Are Intranets Becoming Irrelevant?

  Let’s dispense with the hype and marketing speak; an intranet is an internally focused, private website. And like all websites they’re meant to hand out information like a Pez dispenser. They are corporate brochureware and their time has come and gone. There was a time when an intranet was the best possible solution for internal communication. Most companies have events, announcements, files, forms, presentations, workflows and general information that needs to be accessible to the employees or groups within the organization. This content is the stuff of the intranet. It’s not that intranets aren’t useful; it’s just that they’re obsolete. They are like Windows XP — lots of people still use them, they can do a lot of useful things, but better technology has supplanted it. In this case, the intranet is heading toward extinction because of enterprise social networks and other social collaboration software. The Intranet Replacements Enterprise social networks and similar collaboration platforms have distinct advantages for disseminating corporate information. First, they allow employees to share useful information. Just because someone puts some content up on an intranet and sends a “look at this” email doesn’t mean that busy employees will bother to look at it. Employees don’t purposefully ignore corporate communications; they just don’t get around to it. Enterprise social networks allow other employees who have looked at the content and found it useful to share it with others, raising awareness of the content in ways the official company channels cannot. And let’s be honest, companies push out a lot of information to employees that is generally meaningless to them. Enterprise social networks’ sharing mechanisms along with the ability to follow people or groups that are of interest help curate information so that employees know that what they see is probably important to them. The second advantage that enterprise social networks have over intranets is the ability to facilitate meaningful conversations around content. Social content is designed to link the online conversation to the content. In effect, the content becomes richer as employees discuss the content, often sharing additional information to supplement the original content. The Key Differentiator Intranet software vendors will be quick to point out that they have added many of these social features, including microblogging and activity streams, to their products. That’s true but a key difference still exists between enterprise social networks and intranets and it isn’t features. It’s how they are used. Intranets are still designed to be a one way communication — company to employee. Enterprise social networks are meant to facilitate sharing and communication amongst everyone in the company. The corporate intranet assumes that the company wants to spew information to employees without response while the enterprise social network assumes that employees have valuable content to share with each other. Ultimately, the goals and usefulness of an intranet can be achieved by the enterprise social network but not the other way around. That’s one of the reasons that many of the top intranet vendors have effectively become enterprise social network vendors. Intranets are disappearing, subsumed into the enterprise social network. It’s time to let them go extinct. http://www.cmswire.com

  1585 Posted by I Lyn
• By I Lyn

  Are Intranets Becoming Irrelevant?

  Let’s dispense with the hype and marketing speak; an intranet is an internally focused, private website. And like all websites they’re meant to hand out information like a Pez dispenser. They are corporate brochureware and their time has come and gone. There was a time when an intranet was the best possible solution for internal communication. Most companies have events, announcements, files, forms, presentations, workflows and general information that needs to be accessible to the employees or groups within the organization. This content is the stuff of the intranet. It’s not that intranets aren’t useful; it’s just that they’re obsolete. They are like Windows XP — lots of people still use them, they can do a lot of useful things, but better technology has supplanted it. In this case, the intranet is heading toward extinction because of enterprise social networks and other social collaboration software. The Intranet Replacements Enterprise social networks and similar collaboration platforms have distinct advantages for disseminating corporate information. First, they allow employees to share useful information. Just because someone puts some content up on an intranet and sends a “look at this” email doesn’t mean that busy employees will bother to look at it. Employees don’t purposefully ignore corporate communications; they just don’t get around to it. Enterprise social networks allow other employees who have looked at the content and found it useful to share it with others, raising awareness of the content in ways the official company channels cannot. And let’s be honest, companies push out a lot of information to employees that is generally meaningless to them. Enterprise social networks’ sharing mechanisms along with the ability to follow people or groups that are of interest help curate information so that employees know that what they see is probably important to them. The second advantage that enterprise social networks have over intranets is the ability to facilitate meaningful conversations around content. Social content is designed to link the online conversation to the content. In effect, the content becomes richer as employees discuss the content, often sharing additional information to supplement the original content. The Key Differentiator Intranet software vendors will be quick to point out that they have added many of these social features, including microblogging and activity streams, to their products. That’s true but a key difference still exists between enterprise social networks and intranets and it isn’t features. It’s how they are used. Intranets are still designed to be a one way communication — company to employee. Enterprise social networks are meant to facilitate sharing and communication amongst everyone in the company. The corporate intranet assumes that the company wants to spew information to employees without response while the enterprise social network assumes that employees have valuable content to share with each other. Ultimately, the goals and usefulness of an intranet can be achieved by the enterprise social network but not the other way around. That’s one of the reasons that many of the top intranet vendors have effectively become enterprise social network vendors. Intranets are disappearing, subsumed into the enterprise social network. It’s time to let them go extinct. http://www.cmswire.com

  Apr 09, 2014 1585
• 07 Apr 2014
  Paper flower tutorial

  I thought some of you would enjoy a quick tutorial on how to make those little paper flowers I used as part of my table setting a couple weeks ago. The credit for these go to Martha Stewart (I saw this idea nearly 10 years ago in her magazine, but haven't been able to find it on her website). So here I go.. Step 1: Draw a spiral on a 4x4" square sheet of paper Step 2: Cut out spiral along lines you have drawn Step 3: Begin rolling up the spiral from the outside Step 4: Keep on rolling until there's no more left to roll Step 5: You're done! I used a slightly heavier weight paper for this one, but you can use normal paper as well. You can use squares of various sizes to have different sized flowers. Besides sticking them on branches, they would be great scattered on the table as well. Heck, you can even make a little bouquet of them. Have fun!  Note: You may use a bit of glue or double-stick tape to keep the flower from unrolling and loosening up with time. I didn't glue the ends for these specific flowers and they held up alright.

  1327 Posted by I Lyn
• By I Lyn

  Paper flower tutorial

  I thought some of you would enjoy a quick tutorial on how to make those little paper flowers I used as part of my table setting a couple weeks ago. The credit for these go to Martha Stewart (I saw this idea nearly 10 years ago in her magazine, but haven't been able to find it on her website). So here I go.. Step 1: Draw a spiral on a 4x4" square sheet of paper Step 2: Cut out spiral along lines you have drawn Step 3: Begin rolling up the spiral from the outside Step 4: Keep on rolling until there's no more left to roll Step 5: You're done! I used a slightly heavier weight paper for this one, but you can use normal paper as well. You can use squares of various sizes to have different sized flowers. Besides sticking them on branches, they would be great scattered on the table as well. Heck, you can even make a little bouquet of them. Have fun!  Note: You may use a bit of glue or double-stick tape to keep the flower from unrolling and loosening up with time. I didn't glue the ends for these specific flowers and they held up alright.

  Apr 07, 2014 1327
• 31 Mar 2014
  [SocialEngine.Net]- Introducing Add-on Highlights

  Introducing Add-on Highlights By Matt on Mar 23rd, 2012 1:40pm in Misc SocialEngine users develop hundreds of modules for our platform. They may be powering your communities right now. Need a custom feature not available out of the box? There’s a good chance it’s already developed and for sale thanks to these developers. From video chat services, to ecommerce, to full-featured Android/iOS applications, these innovative add-ons help make SocialEngine the best community builder on the market. We’ll be highlighting some regularly on our blog, so stay tuned. Visit our Customize section to browse all of the newest add-ons and stay up to date (we receive add-on submissions daily!). Here’s some from this week. Theme: Shane Barcinas bundled his four beautiful themes into one $50 package. Unfortunately, he is closing shop, so don’t miss the opportunity to score his work while it’s available! His domain, yousocialengine.com, is for sale as well! Add-on: Integration4us developed a simple widget that adds profile privacy settings directly into the signup process, so new members can select their profile privacy during registration. Add-on: Modules2Buy/YouNet developed an Affiliate System that tracks referrals to your website and integrates with our invitation system, member subscriptions, and their e-commerce modules. Have any questions? Send an email our way. Also, don’t forget to upgrade to 4.2.2!   Source: http://www.socialengine.net/blog/article?id=209&article=Introducing-Add-on-Highlights    

  1200 Posted by I Lyn
• By I Lyn

  [SocialEngine.Net]- Introducing Add-on Highlights

  Introducing Add-on Highlights By Matt on Mar 23rd, 2012 1:40pm in Misc SocialEngine users develop hundreds of modules for our platform. They may be powering your communities right now. Need a custom feature not available out of the box? There’s a good chance it’s already developed and for sale thanks to these developers. From video chat services, to ecommerce, to full-featured Android/iOS applications, these innovative add-ons help make SocialEngine the best community builder on the market. We’ll be highlighting some regularly on our blog, so stay tuned. Visit our Customize section to browse all of the newest add-ons and stay up to date (we receive add-on submissions daily!). Here’s some from this week. Theme: Shane Barcinas bundled his four beautiful themes into one $50 package. Unfortunately, he is closing shop, so don’t miss the opportunity to score his work while it’s available! His domain, yousocialengine.com, is for sale as well! Add-on: Integration4us developed a simple widget that adds profile privacy settings directly into the signup process, so new members can select their profile privacy during registration. Add-on: Modules2Buy/YouNet developed an Affiliate System that tracks referrals to your website and integrates with our invitation system, member subscriptions, and their e-commerce modules. Have any questions? Send an email our way. Also, don’t forget to upgrade to 4.2.2!   Source: http://www.socialengine.net/blog/article?id=209&article=Introducing-Add-on-Highlights    

  Mar 31, 2014 1200
• 10 Mar 2014
  Responsive – New Era For Your Social Site

  After Responsive Clean  and Advanced Album Upgrade were released, many questions were sent to us. Their concerns are mainly about “What is responsive?”, “How to get my sites responsive?”, “What are the differences between mobile view and responsive?”, etc. Therefore, we write blog entry where you can get answers to these questions. This blog entry focuses on: Differences between default Template and Responsive One How to get Full Features of Responsive: Template and Plug-ins Compatibility of SocialEngine default templates How to check whether sites and plugins are responsive Responsive and Mobile View YouNet Products: upgrade timeline Non-responsive, SE Fluid Style and Fully Responsive  With the default of SocialEngine, your site display is fixed regardless of device screen size. In order to get cooler site display on Mobile, you have to switch to Mobile View with fairly limited functions. Fluid Style: the width of block/column may be different based on screen size, but style can’t be changed. Particularly on tablet or mobile, layout can’t be adjusted. Fully Responsive: layout adjustment is based on screen size. Display style is optimized for devices:Desktop, Tablet, Mobile and even more for different device sizes. Checking our demo using Responsive Clean. How to get fully responsive Firstly, it requires your site to use Responsive Template – you could check our Responsive Clean Template. With this one, any plug-in which is developed based on SocialEngine product standard will auto adjust its display for at least different styles: Desktop, Tablet, Mobile. Check out our demo forSocialEngine Poll, and SocialEngine Classified. For particular plug-ins, they require special layouts or widgets, then they need upgrading to adjust layout reflective to Responsive. For example, our Advanced Plug-in Family: Advanced Album, Advanced Blog,Advanced Event, have just been upgraded, from now on, they are not only displayed perfectly on default SocialEngine templates but also support fully responsive – Visit our demo and experience yourself! Compatibility with default SocialEngine templates As we said above, plug-ins with responsive feature are perfectly compatible with default SocialEngine templates. Now we are using their demo at – http://socialengine4.demo.younetco.com/ How to check responsive features Step 1: Resize screen size of your Internet Browser to size of Tablet and Mobile to see if the site itself supports responsive, then to go product details and repeat the previous steps. Step 2:  Use any tablet or mobile phone to access and see if layout is automatically adjusted accordingly. From our demo, you could see: Plug-ins are installed on default SocialEngine template – ex. http://socialengine4.demo.younetco.com/albums Plug-ins are installed on Responsive template – ex. http://se4templates.demo.younetco.com/responsive-clean/albums For each product, you can find information related to: Detail information about product features Links to default template and responsive Screenshot tabs: default SE template and Responsive template Feature List DescriptionScreenshot TabsDemo Links Then Mobile View? Responsive Template does not overweight Mobile View, it is just another option. Mobile View: totally structured your site layout for Mobile View. Style and theme color might be very different from your full site. It brings your member experience as they are using Mobile Native Application but in Internet Browser. Cost of layout adjustment is quite high. Responsive Template: similar to full site but layout looks more attractive. It is optimized for a particular size of device screen. Style can be changed easily via template editor. Both of them can support 3rd party modules which require custom work. Cost of mobile view depends on how many features you want to be supported and designed. Cost of Responsive feature is mainly based on number of pages and testing. It is slightly lower than Mobile View. Last but not least, we are working on upgrading our plug-ins to fully support Responsive. First release isAdvanced Plugin Family, next is Social Plug-ins, Utility etc. , along with their further update as well.

  1686 Posted by I Lyn
• By I Lyn

  Responsive – New Era For Your Social Site

  After Responsive Clean  and Advanced Album Upgrade were released, many questions were sent to us. Their concerns are mainly about “What is responsive?”, “How to get my sites responsive?”, “What are the differences between mobile view and responsive?”, etc. Therefore, we write blog entry where you can get answers to these questions. This blog entry focuses on: Differences between default Template and Responsive One How to get Full Features of Responsive: Template and Plug-ins Compatibility of SocialEngine default templates How to check whether sites and plugins are responsive Responsive and Mobile View YouNet Products: upgrade timeline Non-responsive, SE Fluid Style and Fully Responsive  With the default of SocialEngine, your site display is fixed regardless of device screen size. In order to get cooler site display on Mobile, you have to switch to Mobile View with fairly limited functions. Fluid Style: the width of block/column may be different based on screen size, but style can’t be changed. Particularly on tablet or mobile, layout can’t be adjusted. Fully Responsive: layout adjustment is based on screen size. Display style is optimized for devices:Desktop, Tablet, Mobile and even more for different device sizes. Checking our demo using Responsive Clean. How to get fully responsive Firstly, it requires your site to use Responsive Template – you could check our Responsive Clean Template. With this one, any plug-in which is developed based on SocialEngine product standard will auto adjust its display for at least different styles: Desktop, Tablet, Mobile. Check out our demo forSocialEngine Poll, and SocialEngine Classified. For particular plug-ins, they require special layouts or widgets, then they need upgrading to adjust layout reflective to Responsive. For example, our Advanced Plug-in Family: Advanced Album, Advanced Blog,Advanced Event, have just been upgraded, from now on, they are not only displayed perfectly on default SocialEngine templates but also support fully responsive – Visit our demo and experience yourself! Compatibility with default SocialEngine templates As we said above, plug-ins with responsive feature are perfectly compatible with default SocialEngine templates. Now we are using their demo at – http://socialengine4.demo.younetco.com/ How to check responsive features Step 1: Resize screen size of your Internet Browser to size of Tablet and Mobile to see if the site itself supports responsive, then to go product details and repeat the previous steps. Step 2:  Use any tablet or mobile phone to access and see if layout is automatically adjusted accordingly. From our demo, you could see: Plug-ins are installed on default SocialEngine template – ex. http://socialengine4.demo.younetco.com/albums Plug-ins are installed on Responsive template – ex. http://se4templates.demo.younetco.com/responsive-clean/albums For each product, you can find information related to: Detail information about product features Links to default template and responsive Screenshot tabs: default SE template and Responsive template Feature List DescriptionScreenshot TabsDemo Links Then Mobile View? Responsive Template does not overweight Mobile View, it is just another option. Mobile View: totally structured your site layout for Mobile View. Style and theme color might be very different from your full site. It brings your member experience as they are using Mobile Native Application but in Internet Browser. Cost of layout adjustment is quite high. Responsive Template: similar to full site but layout looks more attractive. It is optimized for a particular size of device screen. Style can be changed easily via template editor. Both of them can support 3rd party modules which require custom work. Cost of mobile view depends on how many features you want to be supported and designed. Cost of Responsive feature is mainly based on number of pages and testing. It is slightly lower than Mobile View. Last but not least, we are working on upgrading our plug-ins to fully support Responsive. First release isAdvanced Plugin Family, next is Social Plug-ins, Utility etc. , along with their further update as well.

  Mar 10, 2014 1686
• 28 Feb 2014
  How Do You Define a Modern Intranet? It’s Simple

  It’s possible to dress up intranets with a lot of bells and whistles, but at the end of the day an intranet should do three high level things and do them well. A modern intranet is a smart and integrated system with an intuitive user experience that focuses on three high level things your employees care about most: News and information — The official corporate and onboarding stuff from HR, Executives, Corp Communications Finding stuff — i.e., people, experts, information, knowledge and ideas that help people do their job Getting work done — You know, the “project” and “process” type stuff that actually drives your business, builds product or services your customers.   The Modern Intranet is an Integrated ‘Hub’ It’s really that simple. I’m sure some will have their own view of things and add all kinds of complexity. Sure, you can throw in all kinds of buzzwords like crowdsourcing, talent management and operational efficiency. Yet a modern intranet needs to be ONE system that addresses all three things in an integrated, engaging and convenient (aka mobile), user friendly experience. It’s one system that actually delivers on the vision and promise of becoming a true hub for global communication and collaboration within the enterprise.   I Want That ‘Easy Button’ on Everything!!!! I don’t know about you, but I want that “easy button” placed all over my modern intranet, on every page, every UI and every device. It’s not because I’m lazy, it’s simply because the fast pace of business today has accelerated and the scale of information both inside and outside the enterprise has grown exponentially insane. When you think about that in terms of your intranet and what it represents to your organization, you begin to view the modern mobile intranet as a: Reflection of organizational culture Representation of the corporate brand Way to build community and connect people Digital representation of people and their reputation within the organization Way to align and engage a distributed workforce and service customers Hub for both communication and collaboration Central place where work gets done While I could on and on about all the wonderments and attributes of a mobile modern intranet, it’s better to address the things I don’t want in an intranet followed by the stuff that I do want. So here goes …   I Don’t Want … My intranet to be a “dumb directory” where people constantly dig and inefficiently hunt for information. An intranet that is disconnected to the various other systems I need to get my work done. No, I don’t want another system alongside the wiki tool over there, the SharePoint document library over here, a dropbox folder, email, a web meeting and IMs all over the place. To fill out a stupid form to submit a document into a document library with all kinds of “structured metadata nonsense” and with nested folder structures. One place where I have to find an expert and another place I search for information. An intranet that I can’t access on my mobile device. A tool that only allow me to microblog at work in 140 characters or less. “Facebook for the enterprise” with single activity stream full of more noise than most people’s email inbox. That good ole’ corporate intranet home page with all kinds of web parts neatly placed on a web page with sanitized information that someone else thinks I should know. Sorry, I’m just going to change my home page to something else anyway. Connect, contribute, share and learn from my colleagues anywhere from any device. Watch video blogs and get work done on my phone or tablet. Filter out the noise and subscribe to what matters most — the people, places and content that are MOST relevant to me and the job I am hired to do. ASK A QUESTION so I can get an answer to help a customer as quickly as possible. Search results to be personalized to ME and find people, places and content that are most relevant to ME! Receive smart recommendations so I discover things I didn’t know before. Easily target my communication to specific groups of people without emailing them. Track activity, actions, decisions and understand the CONTEXT of the work that was done later when I search for it. Have the system track the reach and sentiment of the messages I’m communicating. Relate content I create or consume or act on to KPIs and show my executives dashboards so they can see the effectiveness of strategic initiatives.   I Do Want To … Connect, contribute, share and learn from my colleagues anywhere from any device. Watch video blogs and get work done on my phone or tablet. Filter out the noise and subscribe to what matters most — the people, places and content that are MOST relevant to me and the job I am hired to do. ASK A QUESTION so I can get an answer to help a customer as quickly as possible. Search results to be personalized to ME and find people, places and content that are most relevant to ME! Receive smart recommendations so I discover things I didn’t know before. Easily target my communication to specific groups of people without emailing them. Track activity, actions, decisions and understand the CONTEXT of the work that was done later when I search for it. Have the system track the reach and sentiment of the messages I’m communicating. Relate content I create or consume or act on to KPIs and show my executives dashboards so they can see the effectiveness of strategic initiatives.   The Best UX Is Driven by People and Their Network Users want a simple, easy, frictionless, personalized, and intuitive experience. That’s right…I want EASY because we’re all so busy! The friction and ugliness of legacy intranets have proven no longer effective means for communicating and collaborating. Users don’t care about all wonders of a feature rich platform unless it actually adds value and utility to their day-to-day jobs and helps them create, innovate, market, sell, and service customers. Businesses are complex and change too rapidly for information to be communicated and delivered by pre-determined little parts on a web page or disconnected Facebook-like micro-blogging tools. The best user experience is one that is driven by people and their network within the organization. Source: http://www.cmswire.com

  2013 Posted by I Lyn
• By I Lyn

  How Do You Define a Modern Intranet? It’s Simple

  It’s possible to dress up intranets with a lot of bells and whistles, but at the end of the day an intranet should do three high level things and do them well. A modern intranet is a smart and integrated system with an intuitive user experience that focuses on three high level things your employees care about most: News and information — The official corporate and onboarding stuff from HR, Executives, Corp Communications Finding stuff — i.e., people, experts, information, knowledge and ideas that help people do their job Getting work done — You know, the “project” and “process” type stuff that actually drives your business, builds product or services your customers.   The Modern Intranet is an Integrated ‘Hub’ It’s really that simple. I’m sure some will have their own view of things and add all kinds of complexity. Sure, you can throw in all kinds of buzzwords like crowdsourcing, talent management and operational efficiency. Yet a modern intranet needs to be ONE system that addresses all three things in an integrated, engaging and convenient (aka mobile), user friendly experience. It’s one system that actually delivers on the vision and promise of becoming a true hub for global communication and collaboration within the enterprise.   I Want That ‘Easy Button’ on Everything!!!! I don’t know about you, but I want that “easy button” placed all over my modern intranet, on every page, every UI and every device. It’s not because I’m lazy, it’s simply because the fast pace of business today has accelerated and the scale of information both inside and outside the enterprise has grown exponentially insane. When you think about that in terms of your intranet and what it represents to your organization, you begin to view the modern mobile intranet as a: Reflection of organizational culture Representation of the corporate brand Way to build community and connect people Digital representation of people and their reputation within the organization Way to align and engage a distributed workforce and service customers Hub for both communication and collaboration Central place where work gets done While I could on and on about all the wonderments and attributes of a mobile modern intranet, it’s better to address the things I don’t want in an intranet followed by the stuff that I do want. So here goes …   I Don’t Want … My intranet to be a “dumb directory” where people constantly dig and inefficiently hunt for information. An intranet that is disconnected to the various other systems I need to get my work done. No, I don’t want another system alongside the wiki tool over there, the SharePoint document library over here, a dropbox folder, email, a web meeting and IMs all over the place. To fill out a stupid form to submit a document into a document library with all kinds of “structured metadata nonsense” and with nested folder structures. One place where I have to find an expert and another place I search for information. An intranet that I can’t access on my mobile device. A tool that only allow me to microblog at work in 140 characters or less. “Facebook for the enterprise” with single activity stream full of more noise than most people’s email inbox. That good ole’ corporate intranet home page with all kinds of web parts neatly placed on a web page with sanitized information that someone else thinks I should know. Sorry, I’m just going to change my home page to something else anyway. Connect, contribute, share and learn from my colleagues anywhere from any device. Watch video blogs and get work done on my phone or tablet. Filter out the noise and subscribe to what matters most — the people, places and content that are MOST relevant to me and the job I am hired to do. ASK A QUESTION so I can get an answer to help a customer as quickly as possible. Search results to be personalized to ME and find people, places and content that are most relevant to ME! Receive smart recommendations so I discover things I didn’t know before. Easily target my communication to specific groups of people without emailing them. Track activity, actions, decisions and understand the CONTEXT of the work that was done later when I search for it. Have the system track the reach and sentiment of the messages I’m communicating. Relate content I create or consume or act on to KPIs and show my executives dashboards so they can see the effectiveness of strategic initiatives.   I Do Want To … Connect, contribute, share and learn from my colleagues anywhere from any device. Watch video blogs and get work done on my phone or tablet. Filter out the noise and subscribe to what matters most — the people, places and content that are MOST relevant to me and the job I am hired to do. ASK A QUESTION so I can get an answer to help a customer as quickly as possible. Search results to be personalized to ME and find people, places and content that are most relevant to ME! Receive smart recommendations so I discover things I didn’t know before. Easily target my communication to specific groups of people without emailing them. Track activity, actions, decisions and understand the CONTEXT of the work that was done later when I search for it. Have the system track the reach and sentiment of the messages I’m communicating. Relate content I create or consume or act on to KPIs and show my executives dashboards so they can see the effectiveness of strategic initiatives.   The Best UX Is Driven by People and Their Network Users want a simple, easy, frictionless, personalized, and intuitive experience. That’s right…I want EASY because we’re all so busy! The friction and ugliness of legacy intranets have proven no longer effective means for communicating and collaborating. Users don’t care about all wonders of a feature rich platform unless it actually adds value and utility to their day-to-day jobs and helps them create, innovate, market, sell, and service customers. Businesses are complex and change too rapidly for information to be communicated and delivered by pre-determined little parts on a web page or disconnected Facebook-like micro-blogging tools. The best user experience is one that is driven by people and their network within the organization. Source: http://www.cmswire.com

  Feb 28, 2014 2013
• 23 Feb 2014
  Instagram Platform Ripe for Marketers Shows New Research

  Are you wondering how the social media landscape is changing for users? Wondering where you should focus your social media activities? Pew Research has released a brand-new study, which shows how American users have diversified their social media use. Here are four noteworthy ways social media use is changing for American users: #1: Facebook—Still Popular, but not Always “Platform of Choice” The Pew study indicates that overall, Facebook continues to be a favorite, but 42% of online adults use two or more social networks. Among those who use just one social platform, 8% use LinkedIn, 4% use Pinterest and 2% use Twitter or Instagram as their platform of choice. Facebook still popular, but the grass is getting greener on the other side.

  1135 Posted by I Lyn
• By I Lyn

  Instagram Platform Ripe for Marketers Shows New Research

  Are you wondering how the social media landscape is changing for users? Wondering where you should focus your social media activities? Pew Research has released a brand-new study, which shows how American users have diversified their social media use. Here are four noteworthy ways social media use is changing for American users: #1: Facebook—Still Popular, but not Always “Platform of Choice” The Pew study indicates that overall, Facebook continues to be a favorite, but 42% of online adults use two or more social networks. Among those who use just one social platform, 8% use LinkedIn, 4% use Pinterest and 2% use Twitter or Instagram as their platform of choice. Facebook still popular, but the grass is getting greener on the other side.

  Feb 23, 2014 1135
• 10 Dec 2013
  How Do You Define a Modern Intranet? It’s Simple

  It’s possible to dress up intranets with a lot of bells and whistles, but at the end of the day an intranet should do three high level things and do them well. A modern intranet is a smart and integrated system with an intuitive user experience that focuses on three high level things your employees care about most: — The official corporate and onboarding stuff from HR, Executives, Corp CommunicationsNews and information  Finding stuff — i.e., people, experts, information, knowledge and ideas that help people do their job  — You know, the “project” and “process” type stuff that actually drives your business, builds product or services your customers.Getting work done   The Modern Intranet is an Integrated ‘Hub’ It’s really that simple. I’m sure some will have their own view of things and add all kinds of complexity. Sure, you can throw in all kinds of buzzwords like crowdsourcing, talent management and operational efficiency. Yet a modern intranet needs to be ONE system that addresses all three things in an integrated, engaging and convenient (aka mobile), user friendly experience. It’s one system that actually delivers on the vision and promise of becoming a true hub for global communication and collaboration within the enterprise.   I Want That ‘Easy Button’ on Everything!!!! I don’t know about you, but I want that “easy button” placed all over my modern intranet, on every page, every UI and every device. It’s not because I’m lazy, it’s simply because the fast pace of business today has accelerated and the scale of information both inside and outside the enterprise has grown exponentially insane. When you think about that in terms of your intranet and what it represents to your organization, you begin to view the modern mobile intranet as a: Reflection of organizational culture Representation of the corporate brand Way to build community and connect people Digital representation of people and their reputation within the organization Way to align and engage a distributed workforce and service customers Hub for both communication and collaboration Central place where work gets done While I could on and on about all the wonderments and attributes of a mobile modern intranet, it’s better to address the things I don’t want in an intranet followed by the stuff that I do want. So here goes …   I Don’t Want … My intranet to be a “dumb directory” where people constantly dig and inefficiently hunt for information. An intranet that is disconnected to the various other systems I need to get my work done. No, I don’t want another system alongside the wiki tool over there, the SharePoint document library over here, a dropbox folder, email, a web meeting and IMs all over the place. To fill out a stupid form to submit a document into a document library with all kinds of “structured metadata nonsense” and with nested folder structures. One place where I have to find an expert and another place I search for information. An intranet that I can’t access on my mobile device. A tool that only allow me to microblog at work in 140 characters or less. “Facebook for the enterprise” with single activity stream full of more noise than most people’s email inbox. That good ole’ corporate intranet home page with all kinds of web parts neatly placed on a web page with sanitized information that someone else thinks I should know. Sorry, I’m just going to change my home page to something else anyway. Connect, contribute, share and learn from my colleagues anywhere from any device. Watch video blogs and get work done on my phone or tablet. Filter out the noise and subscribe to what matters most — the people, places and content that are MOST relevant to me and the job I am hired to do. ASK A QUESTION so I can get an answer to help a customer as quickly as possible. Search results to be personalized to ME and find people, places and content that are most relevant to ME! Receive smart recommendations so I discover things I didn’t know before. Easily target my communication to specific groups of people without emailing them. Track activity, actions, decisions and understand the CONTEXT of the work that was done later when I search for it. Have the system track the reach and sentiment of the messages I’m communicating. Relate content I create or consume or act on to KPIs and show my executives dashboards so they can see the effectiveness of strategic initiatives.   I Do Want To … Connect, contribute, share and learn from my colleagues anywhere from any device. Watch video blogs and get work done on my phone or tablet. Filter out the noise and subscribe to what matters most — the people, places and content that are MOST relevant to me and the job I am hired to do. ASK A QUESTION so I can get an answer to help a customer as quickly as possible. Search results to be personalized to ME and find people, places and content that are most relevant to ME! Receive smart recommendations so I discover things I didn’t know before. Easily target my communication to specific groups of people without emailing them. Track activity, actions, decisions and understand the CONTEXT of the work that was done later when I search for it. Have the system track the reach and sentiment of the messages I’m communicating. Relate content I create or consume or act on to KPIs and show my executives dashboards so they can see the effectiveness of strategic initiatives.   The Best UX Is Driven by People and Their Network Users want a simple, easy, frictionless, personalized, and intuitive experience. That’s right…I want EASY because we’re all so busy! The friction and ugliness of legacy intranets have proven no longer effective means for communicating and collaborating. Users don’t care about all wonders of a feature rich platform unless it actually adds value and utility to their day-to-day jobs and helps them create, innovate, market, sell, and service customers. Businesses are complex and change too rapidly for information to be communicated and delivered by pre-determined little parts on a web page or disconnected Facebook-like micro-blogging tools. The best user experience is one that is driven by people and their network within the organization. Source: http://www.cmswire.com

  2174 Posted by I Lyn
• By I Lyn

  How Do You Define a Modern Intranet? It’s Simple

  It’s possible to dress up intranets with a lot of bells and whistles, but at the end of the day an intranet should do three high level things and do them well. A modern intranet is a smart and integrated system with an intuitive user experience that focuses on three high level things your employees care about most: — The official corporate and onboarding stuff from HR, Executives, Corp CommunicationsNews and information  Finding stuff — i.e., people, experts, information, knowledge and ideas that help people do their job  — You know, the “project” and “process” type stuff that actually drives your business, builds product or services your customers.Getting work done   The Modern Intranet is an Integrated ‘Hub’ It’s really that simple. I’m sure some will have their own view of things and add all kinds of complexity. Sure, you can throw in all kinds of buzzwords like crowdsourcing, talent management and operational efficiency. Yet a modern intranet needs to be ONE system that addresses all three things in an integrated, engaging and convenient (aka mobile), user friendly experience. It’s one system that actually delivers on the vision and promise of becoming a true hub for global communication and collaboration within the enterprise.   I Want That ‘Easy Button’ on Everything!!!! I don’t know about you, but I want that “easy button” placed all over my modern intranet, on every page, every UI and every device. It’s not because I’m lazy, it’s simply because the fast pace of business today has accelerated and the scale of information both inside and outside the enterprise has grown exponentially insane. When you think about that in terms of your intranet and what it represents to your organization, you begin to view the modern mobile intranet as a: Reflection of organizational culture Representation of the corporate brand Way to build community and connect people Digital representation of people and their reputation within the organization Way to align and engage a distributed workforce and service customers Hub for both communication and collaboration Central place where work gets done While I could on and on about all the wonderments and attributes of a mobile modern intranet, it’s better to address the things I don’t want in an intranet followed by the stuff that I do want. So here goes …   I Don’t Want … My intranet to be a “dumb directory” where people constantly dig and inefficiently hunt for information. An intranet that is disconnected to the various other systems I need to get my work done. No, I don’t want another system alongside the wiki tool over there, the SharePoint document library over here, a dropbox folder, email, a web meeting and IMs all over the place. To fill out a stupid form to submit a document into a document library with all kinds of “structured metadata nonsense” and with nested folder structures. One place where I have to find an expert and another place I search for information. An intranet that I can’t access on my mobile device. A tool that only allow me to microblog at work in 140 characters or less. “Facebook for the enterprise” with single activity stream full of more noise than most people’s email inbox. That good ole’ corporate intranet home page with all kinds of web parts neatly placed on a web page with sanitized information that someone else thinks I should know. Sorry, I’m just going to change my home page to something else anyway. Connect, contribute, share and learn from my colleagues anywhere from any device. Watch video blogs and get work done on my phone or tablet. Filter out the noise and subscribe to what matters most — the people, places and content that are MOST relevant to me and the job I am hired to do. ASK A QUESTION so I can get an answer to help a customer as quickly as possible. Search results to be personalized to ME and find people, places and content that are most relevant to ME! Receive smart recommendations so I discover things I didn’t know before. Easily target my communication to specific groups of people without emailing them. Track activity, actions, decisions and understand the CONTEXT of the work that was done later when I search for it. Have the system track the reach and sentiment of the messages I’m communicating. Relate content I create or consume or act on to KPIs and show my executives dashboards so they can see the effectiveness of strategic initiatives.   I Do Want To … Connect, contribute, share and learn from my colleagues anywhere from any device. Watch video blogs and get work done on my phone or tablet. Filter out the noise and subscribe to what matters most — the people, places and content that are MOST relevant to me and the job I am hired to do. ASK A QUESTION so I can get an answer to help a customer as quickly as possible. Search results to be personalized to ME and find people, places and content that are most relevant to ME! Receive smart recommendations so I discover things I didn’t know before. Easily target my communication to specific groups of people without emailing them. Track activity, actions, decisions and understand the CONTEXT of the work that was done later when I search for it. Have the system track the reach and sentiment of the messages I’m communicating. Relate content I create or consume or act on to KPIs and show my executives dashboards so they can see the effectiveness of strategic initiatives.   The Best UX Is Driven by People and Their Network Users want a simple, easy, frictionless, personalized, and intuitive experience. That’s right…I want EASY because we’re all so busy! The friction and ugliness of legacy intranets have proven no longer effective means for communicating and collaborating. Users don’t care about all wonders of a feature rich platform unless it actually adds value and utility to their day-to-day jobs and helps them create, innovate, market, sell, and service customers. Businesses are complex and change too rapidly for information to be communicated and delivered by pre-determined little parts on a web page or disconnected Facebook-like micro-blogging tools. The best user experience is one that is driven by people and their network within the organization. Source: http://www.cmswire.com

  Dec 10, 2013 2174
• 18 Nov 2013
  Star Quotes

  Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it

  3546 Posted by I Lyn
• By I Lyn

  Star Quotes

  Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it

  Nov 18, 2013 3546
• 18 Nov 2013
  YouNet - SocialEngine Demo - View Video - Justin Bieber Baby

  YouNet - SocialEngine Demo - View Video - Justin Bieber Babynice weekend for everyone >;)

  13917 Posted by I Lyn
• By I Lyn

  YouNet - SocialEngine Demo - View Video - Justin Bieber Baby

  YouNet - SocialEngine Demo - View Video - Justin Bieber Babynice weekend for everyone >;)

  Nov 18, 2013 13917