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Microsoft is joining the race to add social networks to intranets.
Computerworld has reported that Microsoft is prototyping a Face-book style tool for providing employees with feeds and updates about their colleagues.
I'd expect this to be an extension of their SharePoint product, allowing them to leverage their customer base to defend again online-only alternatives, such as Linkedin, who recently announced their own initiative in this area.
read more - Microsoft testing prototype of Facebook-like social network | digg story
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Microsoft testing prototype of intranet social network | Tweet |
Google trends launched for websites | Tweet |
Google Trends is a great tool for tracking the ebb and flow of ideas, products and personalities in the public eye.
I've used it, for example, to track customer awareness of an agency name change - which gave my agency a good handle on the speed at which our communications was shifting perceptions.
This is important for comms people in government bodies changing names due last year's Federal election (such as FAHCSIA vs FACSIA)
Google has now launched Google Website Trends.
In the words of Google, A new layer to Google Trends
Today, we add a new layer to Trends with Google Trends for Websites, a fun tool that gives you a view of how popular your favorite websites are, including your own! It also compares and ranks site visitation across geographies, and related websites and searches.
What does that mean for you?
In other words, communicators can now track the level of community awareness of their brand over time aggregated by all the search terms used in Google to reach their website. The reports also provide insights into the search terms used, and the other sites visited by these people.
For example a trend on Centrelink demonstrates how popular searches on the baby bonus have been in driving traffic to the site.
This can also look at the impact of campaigns on driving traffic (via Google) to a new site over time - such as this trend on the Do Not Call website (looks like ACMA needs to rebuild awareness of this site).
Here's a comparison of searches for the ATO and Centrelink sites as an example of the tool in action.
How do you use Google Trends?
Breaking rules: Build your intranet outside your firewall | Tweet |
It's an established fact that intranets (or internal networks) grow and live within your organisation's firewall.
Or is it?
New approaches and technology are now challenging the concept that intranets must be stored within your organisation's direct structure.
For instance in Australian government there is Govdex. This wiki-based extranet system meets secret level Federal government provisions and is free for government users.
It doesn't stretch this system too far to consider it as suitable as an intranet platform for any small government agencies with no intranet budget.
As it is wiki-based it provides basic content management functionality, including a news tool and discussion board - which is more intranet functionality than most smaller agencies can claim now.
For example I've recently worked with another area to implement a secure Govdex wiki space as a micro intranet for a key community within my agency. This will expand into an extranet over time, but it functions now just like any other intranet platform.
Govdex isn't the only option on the horizon.
LinkedIn, a business networking site, is planning to release a series of work-related tools to support collaboration between staff members. These would sit in secure areas of LinkedIn, but on the intranet.
This was discussed in a recent New York Times article, At Social Site, Only the Businesslike Need Apply
One new product, Company Groups, automatically gathers all the employees from a company who use LinkedIn into a single, private Web forum. Employees can pose questions to each other, and share and discuss news articles about their industry.
Soon, LinkedIn plans to add additional features, like a group calendar, and let independent developers contribute their own programs that will allow employees to collaborate on projects.
The idea is to let firms exploit their employees’ social connections, institutional memories and special skills — knowledge that large, geographically dispersed companies often have a difficult time obtaining.
Behind LinkedIn, other start-ups are also entering this space, providing for significant innovation to best address organsational space needs.
This is very interesting news for anyone with a small budget and need for a significant intranet.
Rather than investing in building or buying a content management system, developing social tools or managing intranet hardware and software, simply use openly available software to facilitate it.
So what would it take to make you consider building your intranet outside the firewall?
Friday, June 20, 2008
Networking Australian government websites | Tweet |
As the business manager of a government website I'm always interested in how much traffic arrives from other government sites.
I can directly engage other agencies, building relationships, sharing content and processes, to the benefit of our mutual customers.
I see a real opportunity for departments and agencies to work together to help ensure that citizens are directed to the right website and can progress seamlessly across departments to complete different tasks with government.
This isn't only at Federal level. Similar transparently should exist at all levels, allowing, for instance, someone registering a company, to then seamlessly obtain all the permits they require to do business in their state.
However what I find from the website I manage is that only a very small proportion of traffic comes from other departments and agencies.
This can be read in a few different ways
- Citizens do not do all their government business in one sitting, therefore do not need to move between departments, or
- Government departments are highly siloed and do not support easy transitions between agencies - or even tell citizens when they need to do this.
Hitwise, using the data they collect on 3 million Australian website users, has produced a visual chart of the connections between the most trafficked Federal agencies. This is a very interesting glimpse of where the government is today.
Chart reproduced with the permission of Hitwise. View the full version.
With the current push towards the Australian Government Online Services Point (AGOSP) it will be interesting to see how this develops over time - whether Australia.gov.au can emerge as a central portal for government; and whether this is what citizens actually want.
What connections does your website have to other sites - and how do you use these to increase awareness of use of your site?
What's relevant to Intranet Managers | Tweet |
What are the top priorities for your intranet?
There's a few interesting surprises in this quick poll by the organiser of the 2008 Global Intranet Strategies Survey, 3 surprises on the "relevancy list" for Intranet managers
If you don't currently participate in this survey I strongly recommend that you consider it for this year.
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