In October 27, The Los Angeles City Council voted to outsource their email system to Google, here some highlights about this move

• Will support 30,000 users including the Los Angeles Police Department
• Migration will be completed by June 2010. A pilot will be conducted first to stress the security - reliability of the Service
• Main competitor of Google's was Microsoft
• Main Microsoft's concern is a cascade event of other smaller cities following this approach if successful

This decision is interesting because of the following points

• Was the "non-IT" people who made the decision. This was a decision voted by the City's council.... no stuff or comments about "functionality", "features", "capabilities"... nothing about that. Why ? Perhaps because for them, email is "a commodity"
• They are very concerned about what could happen, and they have more questions that answers now... nevertheless they choose to move !!!
  
• Will be real cost savings ?
• Will it meet law enforcements and security standards ?
• Since they will be early adopters... is the service "proven" to support them ?
• They want an amendment requiring Google to compensate the city in the event that the Google system was breached and data exposed and stolen... No such clause existed in the contract

As in many cases, only time will tell if this was an bright decision or a complete failure.... In the while it does bring to me the following thoughts

• Discussion about "technical features" is dismissing as something became a "commodity" (and business people is more active in decision making)
  
• Future decisions on email platform switch will look beyond the typical Lotus Notes vs. Exchange dichotomy: it will consider Google
• Will Innovation came from "migrating" to latest Lotus version or "switching" to Exchange ? I don't think so. But what about "shifting" the way the service is delivered... is that Innovation ? I'm not sure
  

What are your thoughts ?

Yesterday Google announced the availability of its new experiment Google Social Search here some interesting things I found about it


FIRST: Before talking about how to use it, you must know how does it work.


I. Google Social Search will bring results from your Social Network Circle this is composed by

• People you are connected to (direct circle)
  
• Those who are connected to the people you are connected to (extended circle)

II. Google Social Search brings information from three places

• Public services listed in your Google profile, for example your Twitter account
  
• Your Google Talk buddies
• Your subscriptions in Google Reader, to take information from the feeds you are following to
  

III. Google Social Search only searches for "public" stuff, and you can turn on/off this at any time in your Google Account Settings.

So if your twitter follow list is private, or if the people you are connected to have their follow list private, that information will not be added to Google Social Search

If you want the full explanation, take a look to this video




TWO: Now you know the basis, how can you access it ?

Google has a place where new experimental projects are listed and you are welcome to join =>http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html go to this link and subscribe to the Google Social Search experiment. Once you subscribe it you will see something like this

  Then because you are now part of a Google Experiment, when you hit www.google.com and log with your Google Account, the google search page will be different, should look like this. Since then your search results will take your preferences. If you dont want to use it, just sign out and you will get the traditional Google Search page

THREE: Don't be disappointed, first time you try to search, your search results will not bring nothing

That's because you must configure your Social Circle properly. So make sure of going to your Google Account Settings and configure your social circle settings, see how can you exploit your network and enjoy it !!

 

Not all Social Networks are created equal.

Two months ago, I embraced a very interesting project in CEMEX that required the use of a Social Network platform. The first thing I was requested for was to answer the question: Why we just don't use FaceBook or LinkedIN to support our internal social network?

You know, is very funny to receive that question, because for example, from a user perspective everyone knows that Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail are very strong offers and in some cases offers more capabilities that your corporate mail (storage and everywhere access just to mention two) but almost everyone knows that they are for PUBLIC use, that means: you create your account, with your name, you own your password and you are open to do whatever you want with them…. So why is so hard to understand that something similar should occur with social networks?

Don't get me wrong, I truly believe in the power of public social networks for business purposes (Luis Benitez, one of the brightest minds I have met in the social networks domain has powerful arguments around that) the potential opportunities are infinitum… But when you want to create a "corporate" network where the company needs some kind of control (for example feel comfortable of discussing topics that could became competitive advantage, as well as identify and promote key talent) you should not rely on a public service. This is like sending your sales information by Gmail. (I know some people do this, but they do this even for ignorance or malicious purposes; not because organizations doesn't care about it)

But sometimes is just hard to let people understand this kind of points (mostly when something is hot and fancy)… so how did I answer that question? With consulting terms: with a functional evaluation.

I proposed a set of "functional requirements" expected in a Social Network and divide them in the following "evaluation domains": Profile (to get people information), Network (how to let people connect with others), Communities / Groups (how let people create and join interest groups) , Blogs, Bookmarks, the capability of sharing (files, wikis) the capability of collaborate on specific thinks (social to-dos) and the capability to create a social analysis of the interactions. If you are familiar with IBM Lotus Connections you could say: "Ah this guy just make a copy paste of the Lotus Connections functionality" but believe me: I did not do so. Actually I asked IBM for some "evaluation criteria" and was very interesting to find that they didn't have something to share (at least the people I asked for).

Well in my evaluation matrix put several kind of "social networks" options: the corporate suite (IBM, since from my perspective SharePoint 2007 from Microsoft is far …far away of being a real social network platform) the best niche player (SocialText, amazing product around wiki collaboration), the best leisure network (Facebook), the best professional network (LinkedIN), and the best Open Source solution portal & collaboration (LifeRay)… interesting combination don't you think?

I will not discuss details here, just share a picture of the functional gap with a minor disclaimer: this is my perspective of how these tools could perform vs. a list of functional requirements I found useful for corporations. This picture doesn't say that something is better than other, it just present a forecasted performance vs. what we are expecting from these kind of tools.

Last Friday the Time Magazine released the Top 50 Internet Sites of 2009

Flickr is leading the list and that is good because with Flickr we can learn the use of some "Web 2.0" capabilities

1) "Media sharing": a way to let anybody share "heavy" but richer content

2) "Collaborative Tagging" that have created a "human-undersandable" way to consume the pictures

3) "Integration Capabilities" Flickr could become the "standard" for consuming photographic content.
Here an example of how its content can be exploited by completely independent sites
http://www.taggalaxy.de/
Hint: play with the following tags and see its relationships: "Politics", "Jackson", "Party", "Girls",


Awesome isn't ?