Here is the eleventh in a new series of posts that provide
access to my favorite tweets that contain links to useful information. 
Some of these I did to link to things I found useful and others are RTs that I want
to save for the same reason. Since Twitter archiving is an oxymoron, I am now
going to post my favorite links for the month so they can be easily accessed
later. I will repeat this once or twice a month depending on volume.

The Center for
Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth conducted a
study on social media by Nora Barnes and Eric Mattson on the usage of social
media in fast-growing corporations. All interviews took place in October and
November of 2009. The 2009 study looks again at the Inc. Magazine 500 social
media usage for the third consecutive year, allowing for a longitudinal study
of corporate use of social media.

In 2007, the study
found that the Inc. 500 was outpacing the more traditional and larger Fortune
500 companies in their use of social media. For example, with blogs, the 2007
some research showed that 8% of the Fortune 500 companies were blogging compared
to 19% of the Inc. 500. This difference continued in 2008 with 16% of the
Fortune 500 blogging vs. 39% of the Inc. 500. And it appears the Inc. 500’s
lead in blogging will continue in 2009 with the Inc. 500 now blogging at a rate
of 45%.

This research shows that
social media continues to penetrate parts of the business world at a fast rate.
In all three studies, questions looked at with six prominent social media
(blogging, podcasting, online video, social networking, message boards and
wikis).  In 2009, several new tools
were added including Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, and MySpace.

Social networking continues
to be the most familiar social media tool to the Inc. 500 with 75% of
respondents in 2009 claiming to be “very familiar with it” (compared to 57% in
2008). Twitter’s has captured “share of mind” in the first year of being
studied with sixty-two percent of executives reported being familiar with it.

Looking across the three
years, social networking and blogging have have continued to grow in adoption,
the use of message boards, online video, wikis and podcasting has leveled off
or declined. The addition of Twitter (considered by respondents to be both a
microblogging site and a social networking site) in the latest study shows that
52% of the Inc. 500 companies are already using this tool for their business.

Forty-three percent of the
2009 Inc. 500 reported social media was “very important” to their
business/marketing strategy and 91% of the Inc. 500 is using at least one
social media tool in 2009 (up from 77% in 2008). In addition, as they ramp up
their usage, the Inc. 500 companies are also seeking to protect themselves
legally, with 36% having implemented a formal policy concerning blogging by
their employees.

This is consistent with
other studies I have seen in the past two years. It is nice to see the
continued increase in social media use by business. It also makes sense. 

There has been a lot of debate of late on Twitter about whether or not WordPress is a CMS (ignoring the “WCM v CMS v ???” issue for now).  Peter Monks is an proponent against the concept [Edit: He isn't, see comments], as is Irina Guseva, a senior editor for CMS Wire.  Ron Miller over at Fierce Content Management says that WordPress is a CMS and Tony Byrne at CMS Watch says it is for a simple reason: Many organizations are using WordPress as a CMS. That makes it a CMS.

That is a fallacious argument.  I’ll explain why in a second, but some important facts.  This blog, Word of Pie, is hosted by WordPress.com and I love it.  If I decided to host the blog personally, I would use WordPress.  For my blogging needs, it is perfect.

So do not read into any of this as an indictment against WordPress.

Why the Argument is Flawed

Let’s look at the statement.  If people use it as an X, it is an X.  I can tell you right now, through my years of creating fun solutions while out camping, traveling, and owning a house, that is not a valid argument.

• I once used a towel to fix my car.  That doesn’t make it a car part, even though without it I wouldn’t have gotten home that day.
• I recently bought some instant oatmeal to eat in my hotel room. I didn’t have a bowl, so I made it in one of the glasses provided by the hotel.  That doesn’t mean that the glass is a bowl. Don’t ask me what I used as a spoon.
• I can’t tell you how many times a mouse (mostly the older mechanical models) didn’t work on a table until I put a piece of paper under it.  That didn’t make that piece of paper a mouse pad.

Those are a few examples that I had on the tip of my tongue.  The point is that using something to solve a problem doesn’t make it designed to solve the problem.

Quick Thoughts

Looking at all of the comments, here is one that sums up my opinion.

From Irina: WP is a publishing/blogging tool. It is not a #CMS, people…

To prove to me that WordPress is a CMS, the community needs to finish working on all of the definitions out there and get terms with which people agree.  Then classify the systems because they vary quite a bit.

The fact that there is debate just reinforces that there is a lack of clarity.

Microblogging service Yammer was introduced in 2008 and today claims that over 60,000 businesses use it worldwide. Despite the rapid uptake in adoption, most organisations we interviewed for this summary reported mixed experiences and some internal resistance.

What justifies yet another internal communication tool alongside existing tools such as e-mail, intranets, wikis, SharePoint and instant messaging? Does Yammer enable us to work smarter and potentially even reduce e-mail? Currently it seems like Yammer has a key strength among departments or small organisations as a cheap way to introduce microblogging.

Clearly the adoption of Yammer is still at a very early level, in particular among our large, complex and global members, among whom most still  only use it within less than 10% of their total workforce.

Yammer front page for a sample organisation

What’s the value?
While Twitter and Facebook might be the most popular microblogging services available, Yammer has so far set itself out by focusing exclusively on the environment behind the firewall; internal company usage only. This is changing with their recently released Communities feature.

Yammer is strong when used to share links, ask questions and make useful connections between employees in different locations. Some report that Yammer has helped reduce e-mail overload as some communication now flows via Yammer rather than via inboxes. Beyond these soft benefits, there is still little or no experience with actually measuring a monetary value from the usage of Yammer.

Several reported that they’ve configured Yammer to send a summary, typically daily, of all messages via e-mail. This is quite helpful on busy days as an easy way to follow the discussions. Chicago-based Tony Bailey of Acquity Group recommends limiting the use of upload and instead encouraging users to link back to an official repository. This is solid advice in terms of avoiding the establishment of yet another repository. Bailey also suggested publishing the Yammer feed directly on the intranet; something which we’ve not heard from the adopters we talked to, but which could be worth considering in order to make Yammer the pulse of the department or potentially entire organisation.

What’s the interface?
Similar to Twitter and Facebook, Yammer offers a web interface, where you can post and read messages. Similar to Twitter, many don’t actually use the web interface, but other apps to interact with Yammer. Firefox has a popular plug-in called YammerFox, which enables you to type a message directly within Firefox and also provides real-time notification when new messages are added. Yammer has a dedicated app, which you can download and install, but several has reported that this is flaky and rather dissapointing, at least on Windows machines.

How do you increase adoption?
According to UK-based Carolyn Clarke at EDF Energy, Yammer was the quiet discovery of one division. As a company without appetite for instant messaging or chat rooms, EDF Energy is using Yammer at departmental level alongside e-mail and telephone. Only a few use it and as Carolyn said “In a big organisation, a ‘side channel’ has a certain rebel appeal.”

At the Danish National Board for Social Services, they did not get a public endorsement by senior management. Instead they started it at a department level and let it grow. This seems similar to what happened at EDF Energy and several others we talked to.

You’ll get most mileage out of Yammer if your audience is relatively tech-savvy and willing to experiment with what some might call “yet another tool.”

What does it cost?
Yammer has a free of charge Basic plan and then offers additional administrative services starting at $3 per user per month.

If you transfer to the paid version you get services like custom branding, security tools, directory integration and keyword monitoring.

Learn more
For more information on Yammer see:

• Real Story Group: Yammer’s microblogging branches out (Mar 2, 2010)
• TechCrunch: Yammer Communities Open The Door To B2B Microblog Collaboration And Much More (Feb 25, 2010)
• Wikipedia: Yammer
• Zendesk: How Yammer Supports 50,000+ Networks and Collects Customer Feedback (Feb 22, 2010)

Thanks to @BrianBentzen, Carolyn Clarke at EDF Energy and @tony_bailey and several others for sharing their emerging practices.

Social Media is moving
into television on an increasing basis as I have covered a bit on this blog.
This is the theme of a post by Tim Dillard on TheNextWeb: Will 2010 be the Year
of Social TV?  For example, fans of
certain TV shows from different time zones are saving the latest episodes of
their favorite shows and then arranging common viewing times with their friends
to watch the shows whilst discussing the action together on Skype,

The shows themselves are
also launching efforts, sometimes with mixed results. In the UK, high profile
post-apocalypse drama, BBC's 'Survivors', launched with stream of tweets from
'survivors'. They were supposedly trying to get messages out to a world in
which most of the population had been wiped out by a mystery virus. However,
the effort did not last. In another failed case, Fox tired integrating Twitter
during reruns of sci-fi series 'Fringe' in the US. It got criticism almost
immediately from the show's fans by swamping the screen with tweets from the
cast and crew of the show, thus obscuring much of the action. Sounds like those
tweets do blast you with multiple tweets in a row, except even worse.

It seems the most
successful efforts so far are user generated. For example, with Twitter,
real-time conversations about TV shows at the shows are broadcast live are
linked together through the use of hashtags.  This is the same with online communities. The television
shows will need to move better in this direction by listening to their viewers
and being creative. 

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism is out with fresh survey data on how Americans consume their news.

The findings have big implications for any organization for which content management and content strategy play a role in supporting, interacting with and delivering information to customers. Read: this has tentacles that reach far beyond news organizations and news consumers, deep into the evolving behaviors of all consumers in the age of iPhone and Twitter.

First, the key findings: the Internet, according to Pew’s research, is now the third most popular news platform, behind only local and national TV news. It’s ahead of newspapers and radio – no surprise there.

But the more compelling info relates to the Three P’s of the research study’s findings. According to Pew:

‘The internet and mobile technologies are at the center of the story of how people’s relationship to news is changing. In today’s new multi-platform media environment, news is becoming portable, personalized, and participatory:

• Portable: 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.
• Personalized: 28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.
• Participatory: 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.’

For news and non-news organizations, the Three P’s pose many questions around content (and content management) that beg answers and point to opportunities:

• Do you have an effective strategy for delivering mobile content to your diverse audiences? With the rise of the iPhone, iPad and other phone and reader devices, what is your plan, and will you get left behind as your readers/customers move their experience to these platforms? Content management platforms are part of the solution here, but require extensive planning and prioritization to prepare to roll out effective content experiences tailored to these platforms.

• Do you have an effective strategy for personalizing the online content experience? This question also goes far beyond the personalized news feeds or news content tailored to your preferences – if you’re a corporation, or a brand, or a college, or a non-profit: are you prepared for this inexorable shift to more personalized content experiences? The good news is CMS platforms are working overtime to deliver on the promise of if not personalized then (at least) lightly customized content experiences.

• Do you have an effective strategy for utilizing social networks for connecting your information to readers/customers? Implicit in Pew’s research is that social networks have fast become not just platforms for dissemination of information, but also effective filters on the river of news and information that flows toward us all. Your trusted friends (even the 1,000 people you follow on Twitter) serve as unofficial editors delivering their ‘best of’ links and news and content they think you should know about. It’s a stark wake up call to traditional publishers and communicators whose branded influence (hello, networks and newspapers) are waning perhaps even faster than they think. The opportunity if you’re a corporation or brand is to determine how best to harness social networks and turn these trusted sources of information into active distribution channels for your content.

Related posts:

1. Shifting from Content Management to Content Delivery
2. The increasing importance of global content accessibility
3. The sweet spot for WCM services

So, here’s a question…is WordPress a CMS?

And be careful how you respond.

The debate hit Twitter tonight triggered by a relatively harmless Tweet from Dirk Shaw:

I’ve been a part of similar discussions on how WordPress can or can’t scale to support larger sites. It wasn’t until another vendor and a CMS evangelist piled on in unanimous agreement that I felt the need to offer a brief reply in disagreement:

I’m not one to defend any one vendor, but it’s a silly argument.

Of course WordPress is a content management system. It’s technology that manages website content. And it manages quite a few websites I may add. I know plenty of fairly robust sites that get along just fine with WordPress. There’s of course a legitimate debate on what types of sites are best suited for WordPress.

But apparently I hit a third rail in the CMS world, because the comments kept flowing.

A number of other folks weighed in, including several that agreed that WordPress should be considered a CMS.

In the grand scheme, this is a relatively trivial debate. Even the folks siding against WordPress as a CMS were for the most part arguing for a different label or pointing out that it wasn’t “enterprise” enough to be considered a true CMS. Toss in a few open source fans and the debate can get religious in a hurry.

This is where the CMS world goes sideways. It’s insider baseball at the expense of the end user trying to make heads and tails of their web publishing strategy.

It still remains a vendor and consultant dominated landscape of folks trying to frame the space based on the tools and put up artificial walls based on product price points or analyst quadrants/waves. And yes, I lump myself into that bucket, although I try my hardest to stay on the outside.

Don’t even get us started on what to call our space (ECM, WCM, CMS, CM).

So, should WordPress be called a content management system? Absolutely.

Does it matter? Not really.

Related posts:

1. Is Your CMS Project a Dead Monkey?
2. CMS Myth at Alfresco Road Show
3. What’s happening with mid-market CMS vendors in 2009?

Here is the tenth in a new series of posts that provide
access to my favorite tweets that contain links to useful information. 
Some of these I did to link to things I found useful and others are RTs that I
want to save for the same reason. Since Twitter archiving is an oxymoron, I am
now going to post my favorite links for the month so they can be easily
accessed later. I will repeat this once or twice a month depending on volume.

Here is an interesting post
that I can certainly agree with. Aaron Kahlow writes about the information curation potential of
social media in his post, 2010: Social Media Removes the Dam of
Gutenberg-Google.

Aaron begins with the effect
of the printing press. It certainly opened up content distribution way beyond
what the monks doing hand written work could accomplish. However, it
established new controls over what content got out. You still needed to have
the resources to set up a printing press, print and distribute works.

Now there is the Web and you
might think the dam is broken. In one sense it has, as there are very few
barriers to getting content out on the Web. In 2008 there was more content
created than in the entire prior history. 
The trick is finding this content, especially the quality stuff. This is
where Google has both helped and created a new bottleneck. As Aaron writes, “With
only 10+ organic results and a similar number of paid results, consumers will
only find content they seek in those 20 places — with less than 20 percent
being relevant as it relates to information they seek.” For example a search on
“green card” will get you a lot of services that want to charge you money for
what the US government does for free.

Aaron goes on to comment
that social media can help break this new dam. Now we can “get good information
through tweets of those we follow, Facebook Sharing, and from others within our
networks who are usually connected online. We have a new discovery outlet and a
new way to find stories, whether mainstream or from an unknown blogger. We find
things based on recommendations of trusted colleagues, friends, etc.”  This is how I found Aaron’s post.

Peter Cashmore raises a
similar point in his predictions for 2010 than I commented on earlier (see Reflecting on Peter Cashmore's Web Trends to Watch in 2010). Peter
wrote that, “The Web's biggest challenge of recent years is that content
creation is outpacing our ability to consume it:
"Information overload" has become an increasingly common complaint…
In 2008, the answer revealed itself: Your friends are your filter…
Increasingly, your friends are becoming the curators of your
consumption.”  I certainly agree here and Twitter has served this role for
me.  Much of what I write about on my blogs comes from my Twitter friends,
including the link to Peter Cashmore’s predictions.

Aaron
offers some good points to make effective use fo social media to get your
content out. Instead of having to
contact a prominent journalist to write a story about your company, you can use
your own channels such as blogs to consistently write good content worth
tweeting and sharing.
 You can also leverage your own social networks to start
sharing content. 
These are all reasons that we write this blog and participate
in Twitter and other social media.

Darwin
Ecosystem Awareness Engine™ is designed to address this issue of finding
relevant quality content without having to go through the filter of Google or
other search engines. Unlike Google, it does not decide what content is most
relevant but rather lays out the content related to your topic of interest in
clusters of themes and lets you explore what themes interest you. (see: A Comparison of Google Web Search and the Darwin Awareness Engine™). 

Darwin
allows you to become your own curator for topics of your interest. You can also
go beyond this to act as a curator for friend or colleagues You can set
attractors on your topics of interest: people, places, concepts, and more. Then
you can see what emerges. This can be especially valuable for niche areas. You
can create your own online magazine. It can cover a much greater array of
source than Google News and it will show the relationships between news items
that emerge rather than simply displaying them. You can adjust your filters to
further focus you’re your curation efforts. We see content curation as one of
the major applications for the Darwin Awareness Engine™.

Janus Boye recently provoked an indignant response from the Twitterati when he proclaimed that he unfollows anyone with more tweets than followers. You should read the comments to gauge the general feelings about that view. It provoked some reflection on my part — which I guess Janus will say was his aim — and I went back to look at how my use of Twitter has evolved over the last two years. And it went something like this: Bewilderment » Discovery » Catharsis » Promotion » Engagement

Bewilderment

Like most people first dipping their toes into a new service, I came to Twitter slightly perplexed. What do you tweet if you have no followers? The thing that first drew me was trying to find out how micro-blogging might be used in a business collaboration context. I’d already used SharePoint and Ning and I was intrigued by the broadcast nature of theses services. It was so Enterprise 2.0! It reminded me of how J.P. Rangaswami had made his emails public to all employees in the organisations he was working and I wondered what effect that had on an even more public scale.

Discovery

So I kept relatively schtum and decided to follow some people I know: @draml, @izahoor, @mcboof and see what they were saying. And they were talking about web content management and I thought, that’s cool: I can find out some new stuff. It’s quick to scan tweets and I’ll read up on a daily basis.

Then I followed the people they were following — which was easier then because Twitter used to show all replies. And I discovered CMS people well worth following, like @sggottlieb and @piewords, as well as people I knew about already like @irina_guseva and @TonyByrne.

So Twitter effectively became a recommendation engine for blogs, of which I amassed quite a few and continue to add to. That gave me plenty to read to keep me on the bleeding edge of the industry.

Catharsis

But then I realised I was saying nothing myself. Resolutely ignoring the adage that it’s better to stay silent and be thought the fool than to speak and remove all doubt, I started to tweet my frustrations at various projects. It was these tweets that put me in jeopardy of Janus’ Law. I was re-living Joachim du Bellay:

Je me plains à mes vers, si j’ay quelque regret,
Je me ris avec eulx, je leur dy mon secret,
Comme estans de mon coeur les plus seurs secretaires.

That was a mistake. Fortunately I never resorted to telling people I was on public transport or making toast.

Promotion

So I just started retweeting links to useful CMS resources and that got me some followers. And it dawned on me that there was a whole world of business leads out there, so I started searching for key CMS terms and following people who tweeted on the subject, trying to engage with them and see what they were after. It was a bit rough but drew some small successes. So then I just promoting my blogging instead.

Engagement

That was a turning point, because I could engage more with people on Twitter than through my website. And because I was following other people’s blogs, I could engage with them on Twitter more easily and involve other people through broadcast messaging, just like JP Rangaswami! Twitter has become a sounding board for my thoughts: I can test things out on the Twitterati and get feedback before I have to let my ideas loose on clients. I hope that it’s actually improved the quality of my work.

I had one big #unfollowfriday when it all got a bit too much, but I won’t generally unfollow unless you annoy me, and I’ve a pretty passive character. I also find some kind of moral obligation to follow people who’re following me and can’t bring myself to unfollow people I’ve known for a long time in the real world, no matter how much rubbish they spout. Those that I really like to follow are those who know stuff and are funny; although having now met @adriaanbloem I’m convinced he uses some kind of ghost tweeter.

But the best things are seeing people get involved in real conversations. Take a look at @jameshoskins‘ Paxman-esque interrogation of @iantruscott about the Alterian roadmap. Or the discussions around #cmshaiku. Twitter can be fun and informative.

So how do I use Twitter for work? I still haven’t figured out if Twitter has a place in the enterprise, but it does allow me to keep engaged with a continually-evolving industry whose ideas appear online in less than 140 characters.