I first engaged in on-line social networking back in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I spent hours each evening chatting with complete strangers in IRC sessions over a 14.4 modem. I don’t know if I burned out on on-line social networking back then, but the whole “Web 2.0″ thing is unappealing to me today. From my, admittedly jaded, perspective it looks like a rehash of what we pioneered two decades ago, with perhaps a prettier user interface and greater network bandwidth to accommodate the large volumes of garbage that’s transmitted across the wire.

I signed up for LinkedIn a few years ago and since then have accepted close to 100 requests to link to me, but accepting requests is pretty much the limit to my activity on the site.Maybe some people have benefited from their connection to me on LinkedIn, and if so I’d love to hear about it, but I don’t think I’ve seen any benefit from my membership of that site. I’ve also received dozens of requests to link to me from complete strangers, and more bizarrely I’ve received requests for recommendations from folks that I’ve never met. I’ve seen some former colleagues collect recommendations on LinkedIn with the same fervor and zeal that they collected Star Wars figures in their youth and I have to wonder about their motivation; perhaps they’re staging an imaginary popularity contest to make up for social shortcomings in their past. If you’re signed up to LinkedIn and have had success as a result of that membership of that site I’d really love to hear about it. In the mean time I’ll continue to accept invitations to link to me in the hope that someone will land a business deal, or new job, as a result of the connection.The most recent Web 2.0 phenomenon to hit Ingres Corp is FaceBook . Over the past two weeks I’ve watched the Ingres Group on Facebook grow to 20 and my own Facebook network is already at about 30. There’s plenty on Facebook to entertain and I can imagine that some folks could spend hours each day on there. If you’re a member of Facebook and want to join the Ingres Group, I’m sure that Ray and Grant would be delighted to welcome you.There are applications of Web 2.0 technologies that I think will revolutionize certain on-line interactions. For example, the Ingres Service Network (ISN) will bring many of the benefits of social networking to the customer support experience. Subscribers will be able to invite subject matter experts from the community to collaborate with them, and with the Ingres support team, in solving their issues. Our users have told us that they would to have access to well constructed test cases and test harnesses which they can modify for use in their own situations. These are only some of the benefits of ISN but I believe that this kind of application of web 2.0 technologies will be more enduring than MySpace, Bebo, Facebook etc.I have to admit to being more Pub 1.0 than Web 2.0. If I want to chat to someone, catch up with an old friend, talk about my upcoming holidays, check a reference for a potential hire or fake delight at someone’s latest photos of their baby, I’d much rather do it from the comfort of my local pub than from a web site. TTFN WB CUL8R

 

  Posted in Innovation

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 10:00 am and is filed under Innovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.