Go Beyond The Database: Get Talking

From the 80′s through to the 90′s, business found competitive advantages in deploying technology to either cut costs or speed up transactions. In the mid-90′s came the move to networking technologies exploded as the Web began to go mainstream. Business slowly embraced the Web by building websites that offered little interaction, were mostly one-way communications and offered purchasing ability.

But as human beings one of our fundamental drives is to connect and communicate. We always form groups; to either share ideas or to complete a task, big or small, short term or long term. The point is, humans always communicate and always form into groups. Always. The more effective a business is at communicating internally, the better it performs.

The newest technologies to improve internal and external communications is social technologies. Tools such as blogs, social networks, microblogging, video and photo sharing. Businesses that recognize these tools go beyond one-way broadcast messaging and can be used to gain competitive edges are ones who will succeed in the future.

More compelling is that spread of the Web. It doesn’t mean being wired into a desktop computer anymore. The Web today is so pervasive and ties into mobile devices.

The first adoption wave of IT in an organization was essentially to build databases with an illogical communication tool thrown over top – email. Companies who figure out how to use social technologies to communicate better, not just internally, but externally with all stakeholders (suppliers, government, customers, partners) are the ones who will gain the next competitive edge.

Social Media is a Meshy Place

It may be that what will technologically enable the next level of the Social Web is “Mesh Networks” as Social Networking evolves. This is mostly due to the fact that well designed Mesh Networks can be “self-healing” and can hop between established nodes while evolving quickly – as one “node” goes down, another can pick up the traffic. In other words, Mesh Networks can adapt as social media adapts and is used – in an ad hoc manner.

This all has to do with the baseline concept of “permission” or Approval/Disapproval. Prior to Social Media tools, groups had a very high transaction cost to enable connectivity, let alone finding people of similar ilk. Additionally, social groups faced the issue of societal approval – a small group of people may not be able to connect because the majority did not “approve” of that group; laws could be made or general discontent with a small group lead to social ostracizing. With the advent of social media services and the ability to “search”, these small groups could quickly connect (the transaction cost became zero) and they didn’t need “approval” from broader society. Using these tools, such as TXT messaging, enabled huge protests in Belarus and in the Ukraine (the “Orange Revolution”) that would not have been achievable before.

Although Social Media is about sociology, not technology, the technology is what “enables” the resulting activities and formations of groups. So Mesh Networks take all this to the next level – the technology is “organic” and draws its operating premise from “Chaos Theory.” Currently, due to the technology, there is still some “gatekeeping” that takes place – someone has to program the routers and network services and can therefore turn on or off the services delivered over what are currently fairly “fixed” networks.

Mesh Networks bring together all kinds of devices. As is seen in the UK where a number of transit buses are connected to a wireless system feeding to fixed terminals – you can instantly see where the bus is and when it will arrive. Now connect that to Smart Phones and you can spend more time shopping or having that coffee before dashing out to the bus stop. So now you can connect cars, fridges, stoves, houses, buses, ambulances, fire trucks and on and on to Mesh Networks.

Look at New Orleans post Katrina – the Mesh Network in place there was the only network still operating post-hurricane Katrina – and remained so for 12 months! The emergency groups coming into the area simply connected to that network in moments and thus coordination of services was enabled.

So Social Media applications such as Facebook, Ning, MySpace, Twitter – could all connect to Mesh Networks, making the devices superfluous. Suddenly the ability to connect randomly via Meetup or dodgeball goes to the next level, adding inherent value. Social Media is going to get a lot meshier in the future…what do you think?

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)