OSW: Ross Mayfield - Social Text

CEO of Social Text, who provide hosted wikis for companies.

Talking about how social software is being used in companies.

Talked a bit about the LA Times wiki-newspaper debacle.

Blogs are about individual voice. Wikis are about group voice.

By sharing control you foster trust among the participants. Which is kind of the opposite of the way businesses work at present.

In the past, crossing the chasm, etc. said ignore the hackers and concentrate on the majority. Now we should focus on the hackers ‘cos they’re the ones who’ll talk about everything and do cool interesting stuff with your product.

Email is being stretched to be used as a collaborative, many-to-many system, when it isn’t really very good for it. Wikis, etc. are better.

Social Text will integrate with email - email notifications of things, email posting of new content - so that they can migrate from email discussion lists more easily.

Please read The Only Sustainable Edge by John Seely Brown and John Hagel.

Most people’s time at work is spent dealing with the exceptions to the process, rather than the things which fit into the process.

Quick demo of wikiwyg, the nice “just double-click to start editing” view of websites, in a nice wysiwyg interface.