Super Empowered Angry Customers describes the shift in power that has taken place with the popularity of blogs, video sites such as YouTube, and websites such as “______CompanySucks.com” Companies have always claimed to listen to customers, but in practice many companies have routinely ignored many customers — and when this happened customers had little option beyond taking their business elsewhere.

Now they can take their business elsewhere AND cause a public relations disaster for the company that disappointed them. This has completely changed the dynamic between customers and companies, shifting the balance of power toward the customer to a never-before-seen degree.

So how shall we use our power, people? Will we use it for good or for evil? Every customer is not always right, and not every complaint is justified. It can be a very good thing to have more power, yet history is full of lessons about power being abused. Let’s try to use our power for good.

An experimental Web site allows users to upload the data they want to visualize, then try sophisticated tools to generate interactive displays.

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It’s a Wikipedia-like effort, but with experts-only as authors. I don’t see it as a direct competitor to Wikipedia, because Wikipedia can simply reach into Knol to tap into its knowledge, just as it does every other valuable resource. By definition, an encyclopedia encompasses all knowledge available, so there could well develop a symbiotic relationship between Knol and Wikipedia.

And since Knol is part of Google, I have a feeling knols will place pretty well in at least one search engine, don’t you think?

Right now the content in Knol is mostly medical, so there is a great opportunity for experts in all kinds of fields to put themselves on the Knol map, so to speak, by writing for Knol and getting published there. It could be like a gold rush (Google rush?) — stake your claim early!

To reclaim productivity lost to responding to e-mail, an I.B.M. employee shifted his means of communication to other tools.

I like the idea here. It’s not for everybody, but clearly something has to give. Too many of us spend too much time toiling on email — we aren’t controlling our own schedules or task lists, as we’ve let ourselves be sucked into a Faustian bargain that seems hopeless.

It’s not going to be easy (if it were, we’d all have freed ourselves from email’s tyranny, wouldn’t we?). But if we don’t try new ways to break free, we never will break email’s grip. Try something different!
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So I went for it, and happily the hiring manager thought I was a good fit for it, too. It’s with the same company, actually: I’m moving from ICMI, which is a part of United Business Media (UBM), to UBM’s corporate entity, specifically in the People and Culture Group (formerly known as Human Resources, formerly known as Personnel).

So what’s the job? UBM Wiki Community Manager. We’re going to be rolling out wiki software and other collaboration tools across the entire enterprise. My job, in a nutshell, will be to make sure we get value out of this investment by encouraging and helping people to use it.

Lots of ideas are already running through my head — I can’t wait to get started. But I have lots of work still to do in transitioning my responsibilities for ICMI so everything carries on smoothly. But I sure am looking ahead with anticipation!

Social etiquette requires you to make some small talk, inquire about your colleague’s interests, etc. In other words, in person (and on the phone) we should — rightly — interact with peers in a friendly, personal way, because that’s the right way to act. But that’s not terribly efficient, and if you can get the info you need, instead, through a 30-second instant message chat and then get back to work with a quick, “thx so much, ttyl” then I can see why it has been found to be less intrusive.

Employers seeking to decrease interruptions may want to have their workers use instant messaging software. Research shows that when IMs are used as a substitute for other, more disruptive forms of communication such as phone, email, and face-to-face conversations, they lead to more conversations on the computer, but briefer & more productive ones.

And it is respectful to IM someone to say, “got a minute?” because that gives them a much easier “out” if they really don’t want to be interrupted. Instead of feeling they are being rude by telling you on the phone, “hey, could you call back later?” they can accept your gracious inquiry by saying, “can you call me at 1?”

IM certainly does have a place in business. But there’s more work to be done to define just what that place is.

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The Web site of the future may be organized completely in thirds without needing to separate them in a blog, a forum, a customer idea space, and the corporate brochure-ware. Part editorial, part community, and part marketing weaved throughout the site.

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For a recommendation to be useful in a practical way to both the individual recommended and the potential buyer/employer, it needs to answer one main question first: why? Why would you hire him/her instead of someone else? Why would you engage his/her services? It’s because… tell them exactly why.

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Roger Cohen’s NYT column, “The Obama Connection,” starts off with a play on Bill Clinton’s famous line from his first presidential campaign (“It’s the economy, stupid”): “It’s the networks, stupid.” Ironically, it’s Bill’s wife and heir-apparent, Hillary, who is implicitly the “stupid” one this time.

More than any other factor, it has been Barack Obama’s grasp of the central place of Internet-driven social networking that has propelled his campaign for the Democratic nomination into a seemingly unassailable lead over Hillary Clinton. Her campaign has been so 20th-century. His has been of the century we’re in.

I’d already been following Obama’s use of the Internet for fund-raising and organizing and energizing volunteers (see, Adios, Sound Bites & Fat Cats – Obama is Changing Politics and Barack Obama Is Rocking the Youth Vote and Obama Supporters Are Hip and Artistic and Home Agents Calling for Barack Obama). Cohen’s column nicely connects the dots and lets the picture emerge more clearly.

As Joshua Green chronicles in an important piece in The Atlantic, Obama has used social networking and his user-friendly Web site to develop the money machine, and the youthful engagement, that has swept him forward.

So, I found Green’s article, “The Amazing Money Machine,” and read that, too. It’s longer and more in-depth, so if you just want the highlights, Cohen’s column will do the trick, but if you want the full, fascinating story behind Obama’s fund-raising success, don’t miss Green’s account:

Obama is a gifted politician by anyone’s measure, but what distinguishes him from earlier insurgents is his ability to fully harness the excitement that his candidacy has created, in votes and in dollars. Three forces had to come together for this to happen: the effect of campaign-finance laws in broadening the number and types of people who fund the political process; the emergence of Northern California as one of the biggest sources of Democratic money; and the recognition by a few Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that the technology and business practices they had developed in their day jobs could have a transformative effect on national politics.

Obama’s campaign is yet another Silicon Valley start-up. We’ve seen these stories play out before, but never on the political stage.

“They’ve gone from zero to 700 employees in a year and raised $200 million,” Steve Spinner says of the campaign. “That’s a super-high-growth, fast-charging operation.” It’s also one whose growth curve is coming into sharper focus. The Obama campaign has not yet assumed a place in Silicon Valley lore alongside Apple, Google, and Facebook. But a few more months could change that. The hottest start-up in the Valley right now won’t make anybody rich, but it might put the next president in the White House.

If you’re as fascinated by the rapidly changing potential of technology as I am, and as hooked on politics as I admit to being, this is an inspiring story.

Nearly half of US Internet users surveyed for the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future’s “2008 Digital Future Project” report said they belonged to a hobby-oriented online community. A full 41% of respondents belonged to an online social community, and one-third belonged to an online professional community.

I liked this point, too, given my own experience with Multiple Profile Disorder:

“Consumers will eventually need to create only one profile and use it in many places on the Web,” she [Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer] said. “Small applications, or ‘widgets,’ that today work with only one destination site will be designed on an open platform and thereby extend their reach.”

Hurry up, already!
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