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« Convergence on People rather than Devices | Main | Further implications of APEG, Automatic Patch-based Exploit Generation - Guest piece by Jesper Krakhede, Security Practice. »
Yahoo comes up with a new twist to Social Networks
I have been noticing that Facebook, the social network that I have been using most, seems to be getting a little ‘tired’, there are some missing friends, some communities are slowing down, and even some of the social apps I like to use such as Blogfriends are packing up. I guess it’s a mix of too many social networks, fashion change, or maybe a move towards using smaller better focused networks through using Ning.
All of this makes the introduction of the Yahoo! Open Strategy, apparently called Y!OS, for short, all the more welcome. This is apparently the ‘big bet’ for Yahoo, and follows some soul searching by Jerry Yang, their CEO, that he outlined in his Blog in October 2007. Y!OS is described as a major rewiring of Yahoo to create ‘a single social connective tissue’, I would describe it more as a single set of my social services that I can use in any social networking site. Now that gives me total portability to select what ever social network I want, or even to be in multiple social networks.
The best explanation of this comes from a Blog on the Yahoo developer network so I will not duplicate the explanation here; instead I want to consider this in terms of the capabilities. Interestingly these same capabilities are exactly what are required inside the enterprise, as well, and this leads to the question as to whether the enterprise will move fast enough to provision these for their users, or whether users will quickly recognise the value of Y!OS and create their own user centric version.
Does this matter? I am seriously asking this question these days, especially as I am finding more enterprises running selected activities ‘externally’ by choice. As an example we at Capgemini use Facebook for onboarding graduates, the external, and personal, nature is ideal for finding and getting Capgemini mentors that are aligned to the personalities of the graduates to help their transition into a work environment. Would this work as well internally? Well, it could in a ‘technical’ sense meaning both technically and in terms of the requirements, but I think it would defeat the objective, which is to provide a distinctly personal environment around individuals.
So though my first automatic reaction was to say how wonderful, but that we need to set up a safe internal version of Y!OS, or at least something similar, but the more I reflect on what people need to have in some aspects of the employee / employer relationship the more I believe we need to consider a ‘shared’ model with the employee holding this personalised information externally under their ownership and we need to provide the internal social network for them to bring some of this too.
It’s time to really start to think differently about these issues, and accept that there has been a ‘sea change’ in the way of the world in most countries.
Posted by Andy Mulholland on May 19, 2008 | 
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Comments
# on May 19, 2008 2:11 PM, Aleister Kronos said:
So is this a response to Google's Friends Connect? Or is it totally unrelated?
As the consumer of a number of (now) Yahoo! owned services,like Flickr and MyBlogLog, I have found their approach to user management, "in the interests of a fully joined-up Yahoo! experience", to be painfully laborious. Furthermore, there is no get-out. If you want to continue to use services now acquired by Yahoo! you seemingly have to participate in the "single Yahoo! account, shared everywhere" - whether you want to, or not. It has thus far felt more like a constraint than a liberation.
# on May 19, 2008 3:07 PM, Claudio Lobos said:
In Capgemini Spain we are developing some Facebook applications for our clients and a little project using NING networks.
# on May 19, 2008 3:08 PM, Claudio Lobos said:
In Capgemini Spain we are developing some Facebook applications for our clients and a little project using NING networks.
# on May 20, 2008 9:27 AM, Lee Provoost said:
and don't forget the adoption of Facebook by Capgemini's Global Java Community!
Wouldn't it be interesting to have a single portal like Facebook that can be used for staffing (you actually see the person behind who you are hiring for a project), self-promotion (blogs etc). Big question is to what extend can you do this internally and externally?
There is a company that build software that you can use Facebook both internally and externally. The company sensitive are only visible to people who are for instance logged in through VPN or something like that. So you share the profile with the public, but not for instance on what client assignment the person is working on etc.
# on May 20, 2008 3:38 PM, andy mulholland said:
You can of course use Ning as a closed 'social network' provider but the real challenge is the portability of your profile. this is where Open Social was supposed to help with the ability to maintain the one profle for any social network, but i don't see any real signs of this catching on.
# on May 20, 2008 4:49 PM, Aleister Kronos said:
Ning is another environment that effectively compels you to have a common profile across all your Ning networks. While this might be just the ticket for the 'connected generation', I would still prefer the option to opt out of the common profile.
Lee, FB has been adopted - to varying degrees of depth - by a quite a range of Capgemini SIGs and communities. Personally, I'm still trying to decide whether to dig my way out, rather then dig myself further into it. My sentiment is with the former, not the latter.
# on May 20, 2008 5:55 PM, andy mulholland said:
interesting how the challenge is profiles and not the social network