In Should You Make or Buy Your Social Network? I wrote about some of the technology-related decisions that are needed when an organization adopts online social networking.
All in Standards
More Thoughts on Developing a Social Network "Portable Relationship Map" Standard
A couple of days ago I posted Do We Need “Portable Relationship Maps” for Social Networks? There I expressed some skepticism about the feasibility of developing a standard for mapping social and professional relationships, over and above basic personal description or identity data, that could be portable between social networking systems.
In Yet another reason why we need a single, trusted, and protected identity system Jeremiah Owyang voices the common complaint about social networks. At one point he writes:
Communities. Connections. Contacts. Families. Fans. Favorites. Followers. Friends. Groups. Neighbors.
As you jump from one online "social" group to another, these are the categories you need to juggle.
A visit from an appliance repair service this week to my home brought back some pleasant memories.
Earlier this month in my post What is the Minimum Information You Need to Describe Your IT Projects? I mentioned that a “RACI” statement is a useful way to communicate project responsibilities:
* Who has ultimate Responsibility, who has Authority to make decisions, who must be Consulted about major actions or decisions, and who must be Informed about major actions or decisions.
I've been thinking some more about the issues raised in my earlier posting The Inevitablility of "Too Many Gateways".
One of the reasons the situation exists, as Ismael Ghalimi described where he has to maintain many separate accounts to manage different internet gateway services for feeds and data exchange, is that it's becoming increasingly possible to create such services and to make then available on the web.
Given the types of issues that Ghalimi raises in this article, it is interesting to speculate on the role that a corporate IT department might play in "selecting and enforcing" standard for the use of Office 2.0 applications in the real world of business. Is this a role that IT is able to play? Or would users feel "put out" by IT's heavy handed demands for standardization?
Techweb reports on a current effort by a government entity -- this time it's Minnesota -- to open up document format standards. There was a time when such eventualities were addressed by source code escrows that would guarantee a software user access to the tools to recreate and support a product, format, or system should the original vendor or developer go belly up.