Pieces of me on community... : blogs

Blogging as transformational

b2ix — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 18:49:00 GMT

Gerald Kanapathy's recent post on successful blogging points towards Microsoft as one company that has been transformed by blogging. Specifically he talks about how blogs "opened up Microsoft" and goes on to say how "it's now amazingly open and responsive."

While great as that sounds, I'd have to agree with Yag in that the most interesting part is when Kanaphathy writes:

What did Microsoft do? I don't know if they had it before, but it takes certain organizational cultural values. It's not about process, or rules. In fact, it requires acceptance of uncertainty and ambiguity, tolerance of risk, openness to criticism, and a degree of confidence. These are not things that can be proceduralized, but instead come from how the organization is, uh, organized, and simply the underlying values.

To me, this is key. At the end of the day, blogs are a means by which people communicate. It is a means, not an end. So for all those wanting to start a blog because everyone else is, ultimately it comes down to something more intangible. How open and willing is your group or company to change? To uncertainty? To risk? To criticism? To engage with people in an open an ongoing conversation?

<aside>

At this point, all the marketing types and measurment gurus are probably screaming as this underlying value cannot be adequately captured by a simple measurement such as web views nor time online. There are some intriguing indexes in the works to better capture this space, and there are other ways of measuring the impact however...what is ultimately settled on, if there is such a thing, remains to be seen.

</aside>

While this may come across to some as staying away from blogging if the underlying values are not there, it's not meant to be. I just wanted to call this out by illustrating that blogs are not an end to itself. It's part of a much larger picture, and ultimately it's success (or failure) depends upon so much more than what we can traditionally measure at this time. Should a company, organization or person for that matter get into blogging, I hope they do so with their eyes open to the whole process.

xClaims in beta blogs and forums

b2ix — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:18:00 GMT

You've heard Korby talk a lot about xClaims and how they help not only authors like myself determine the lenses through which people evaluate my content contributions, but also how xClaims help readers like you determine the credibility of folks like me.

Well, enough talk. Let's start putting all of this into action. With this latest refresh of Microsoft beta communities are tied in with blogs and forums. What do you do with them?

Make a claim
Vote on a claim
Evaluate someone's credibility
See your claims
See the claims of others

Making a claim

If you had a chance to create a new thread or a response, you may have noticed this little section below the post editor that says something about adding a new claim or an existing claim. It's really as simple as that. In the space provided, you can enter in a claim such as "this is technically accurate" and it will appear along with your message.

Voting on a claim
Why add a claim? Basically to have people vote on it. Beyond that, you are able to essentially get lots of people to agree (or disagree) with what you have to say. Why might you wish to open yourself up for that? Well, whether or not you apply this to every post you make is up to you but for certain topics, it may be beneficial for you to gain credibility in topics that matter to you. What do I mean by this? Well, let's say I'm an avid forums user, posting on any number of topics from XNA to SQL. While I may know my stuff in XNA (an example really -- lol) I only know basic queries in SQL. As such, I would want a tailored claim saying "I know my XNA" and people can then vote on it. For SQL, I would not apply a comparable claim, because I would not want to be known for my skills (or lack thereof) in that topic.

Evaluating someone's credibility
This is done through voting, seeing the votes of others, and seeing all of the claims of another person. We have some of this now, and more on the way. Specifically, after voting (and commenting if you want) you are able to see the vote tallies of other people. This becomes of value when you compare the content of multiple people that "seem" to be correct. Through a closer look at how others agreed (or not) with that claim, you can better determine how credible that person is with regards to that topic.

Credibility also comes into play when you look at all of the claims of other people. While right now this is limited to a person explicitly making it visible (such as my claims here), we will have the ability to easily discover the claims that others made visible to others.

See your claims
We touched upon this briefly. Basically, if you can see it, others can too. To see your claims, click on your display name (in the upper right corner of your screen) and you will be directed to the profile page. At the bottom of the page, there is a link that says, "View Claims." Clicking on this link will result in your claims being exposed. You can see how folks voted, in addition to any comments they may have left for you. If you share this link out with others, they can then see your claims and can then get a better sense of who you are, what you know, and the like….

See the claims of others
As discussed, this is still a work in progress. The only way to see the claims of others (in total) is if they exposed that link to you by clicking on their profile, viewing their claims, and sharing that link. We will work to make this easier in future versions of our beta communities.

So that in a nutshell is what you can do today with xClaims in blogs and forums. I hope you now understand how xClaims are incredible tools for you to gain recognition on your terms while also determining the credibility of online resources.

(xposted)

Mini-refresh for Microsoft Beta Communities

b2ix — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:14:00 GMT

Woohoo! We just finished up a mini refresh of the beta community offerings including blogs, forums, tagspace and now claimspace. Way to go everyone!

In terms of the specifics of what's new…

New features in the June 2007 refresh of Beta Blogs

xClaim integration
Preview a blog post before posting
Preview changes to how your blog looks
Updated user badges
Improved look and feel
Multiple page support

New features in the June 2007 refresh of Beta Forums

Locked thread
Sticky thread
xClaim integration
Updated user badges
Improved look and feel
Multiple page support

I pointed to a little teaser the other day, and now you get to play around with this some more. We'd love to get your feedback craves, raves, or other…what do you think?

Oh, and if you're wondering about all of the feedback given thus far regarding oh, the posting wizard in forums or the features desired in blogs, we hear you. We are still working off of the today/tomorrow list. I believe I've mentioned that we would be working from that while also working from the feedback from the community. It is indeed a fine balance with getting the new stuff out there while also addressing the concerns voiced by many so far. I appreciate your willingness to take the time to read this, while previewing our community offerings and posting your thoughts. Many thanks!

(xposted)

Looking ahead to a beta communities refresh

b2ix — Tue, 29 May 2007 19:16:00 GMT

A little over a month ago, we pulled the curtain away and invited you to take a look at the work beng done on the next version of Microsoft blogs and forums. Additionally, we showed off a revamped version of tagspace, our social bookmarking and tagging solution. We received a good deal of feedback over the last month, and we are beginning to make an measurable impact.

As we approach June, we are nearing an update to our beta community offerings. Not only that, but we will be unveiling a new piece to this community solution -- claimspace.

I'll let Korby and others talk more about the upcoming new pieces of tagspace and claimspace. As for me, I want to give a little preview of what to expect.

For both blogs and forums, there will be a new user interface that should make it easier to navigate, discover new features, etc. Additionally, we are adding xClaims into both blogs and forums. Getting to the specific solutions...

One of the new features to look for in the updated blogs is the ability to preview any CSS changes you wish to apply to the blog, before you actually save it. If you're anything like me and know little of CSS, this is a great thing to have.

From the forums side of things, one of the features in the June refresh is creation of "sticky threads." For those not familiar with the term, this refers to having one (or several) threads appear a the top of the thread list in the forums view such that it is easy to find later. As we get more and more messages posted in the beta forums, I expect this to be helpful for people visiting the site.

There are plenty of other features in the June refresh, but to learn what those are...you'll just have to wait for my announcement post ;-)

(xposted in beta)

Recent Numbers from Beta Blogs and Forums

b2ix — Tue, 29 May 2007 19:10:00 GMT

This is just a quickie post about some updated numbers (as of May 22, 2007):

56 beta blogs
66 beta blog posts
436 beta forum messages

Way to go team! Live blogs, live forums, live content! Yay :-)

I realize when compared to all the blogs and forum messages out there, this is but a small drop in the bucket. No matter, we have the beginnings of a great social software solution that ultimately helps people create, share and connect.

Oh, and if anyone is curious, I pulled some totals from existing blogs from members of the team. In the past month or so, members of the community team made a total of 23 blog posts about the beta that resulted in at least 73 comments. Way to go!

(xposted on my beta blog)

Blogs -- a look back as we look ahead

b2ix — Thu, 24 May 2007 01:54:00 GMT

I sat down recently with Chris Anderson, one of the early Microsoft bloggers, credited for creating an early blog solution -- BlogX. That was back in the day when a *real* blogger would write their own blog solution, according to Chris.

For me, hearing his stories was very enlightening. Talking about the various aspects of community technology (broadly speaking) from discussion lists, newsgroups, forums, blogs, wikis, podcasts, video logs, etc was great. I wholeheartedly agree that while it's neat to see podcasts and video logs gain traction, they are separate and distinct entities from blogs much like tv news is different than a newspaper or a weekly magazine. By talking about each of those tech solutions, it's also clear to see that community does not happen in one spot. It doesn't happen with one solution. Indeed, additional solutions such as tagspace, or claimspace add other elements to this broader notion of a community involvement in a read/write web.

In addition to talking about technology in general, it was great to hear about the successes of the Microsoft blogging community with getting an internal blog server up and running, as well as having Eric Rudder be an early champion with an external blog. We also discussed how blogging has changed a bit over the years as people's understanding of and familiarity with blogs evolved. How all this plays out as more new hires come to Microsoft with deep experiences around blogs remains to be seen. Not only that, but what happens as the broader community, with a deeper (and perhaps different?) understanding of social technology in general...what happens when they engage with Microsoft? Needless to say, there's a lot of exciting opportunities ahead :-)

Chris' insight was a welcome perspective check as the team gets closer to a refresh of our blogs beta solution. When working on a specific project, it's easy to forget the wider context in which it exists. Blogs at Microsoft -- internal, external, hosted, or built in-house...it's all part of a much larger system that will have a wider impact than any of us could ever imagine.

Thank you, Chris, for helping to place all of this in context of the larger structure in which blogs (an community technology in general) exists and evolves.

(xposted on my beta blog)

Newspapers opening up blogging to the masses?

b2ix — Tue, 01 May 2007 20:53:00 GMT

I read via Influx Insights that The Telegraph is going to be hosting blogs for it's readers. Like Influx, I find this to be a rather interesting development. In many ways, this seems like a natural evolution of people identifying themselves with a particular brand they trust. Of course, there is the flip side of this and it could go down in flames like the LA Times experiment with wiki editorials.

(orig posted on my beta blog)

Beta Blogs and Forums -- post launch notes 070420

b2ix — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 02:14:00 GMT

Just a quick little update on where we stand a few days following our announcement of the beta.

1) beta means different things to different people. this probably goes without saying, but suffice to say, the "beta" messaging has caused confusion

exhibit a
user response -- that's it? what about feature x, y, z? [paraphrased for simplicity]

exhibit b
people are posting questions on the beta forums in manners consistent with those looking for answers in our current communities

as a result, you will soon see gradual (and in some cases sudden) changes in the experience to clearly state the intent of us announcing the existence of these services. in a nutshell, we wanted to show our progress on these services so far, while also beginning to dialogue openly with everyone on the types of experiences they would like to see in the future. while we know where we'd like to go tomorrow, to what extent does that match what you are thinking?

2) there are some random quirks throughout the system. one of my favorites at the moment is that everything on the blog or the forum is sorted by the last active date. so in effect, me commenting on a blog post from five days ago would bump that to to the top. while this may make sense in a forum, it doesn't seem to be as appropriate for a blog.

the development team is working on resolving this and some other quirks, while adding some new features for the next refresh.

3) there is a lot of great discussion about features, bugs, and overall roadmap type things. this is great! this is exactly what we are trying to foster in this grand experiment with this feedback driven development experiment (formerly known as "beta")

i'll be posting these sorts of notes periodically so stay tuned!

(xposted with my beta blog)

What exactly do we mean by "beta"?

b2ix — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 02:43:00 GMT

In light of some of the responses I've been seeing on the forums, I wanted to clarify what exactly we mean by "beta." Admittedly, it is a loaded term.

Depending on your perspective, "beta" might refer to something that is pretty polished but needs some testing to identify basic bugs and such (this bar also seems to be rising by my own personal observation). Another way of looking at beta is something that is not done. How we are using "beta" speaks more to the latter definition -- something not done.

Perhaps though, it may be more appropriate to describe the "beta" forums and other community solutions as collaborative workspaces. That is, we're bringing folks in early with the intention of collaborating with you on what all should be in the various solutions.

Prior to this, we've taken exisiting feedback to help shape the baseline stuff you see today. There are some more baseline scenarios and features to address, but beyond that, what do *you* think should be in here?

Now we have this new collaborative workspace, based in part on what we've heard so far, we ask that you to check it out...play with it, poke at it, kick the tires and all. Most of all, we're interested in how would like to see this shaped in the future. In short, this is only the begininning of what we intend on being a collaborative workspace for shaping the next version of community solutions.

For a slightly more granular look at our features, take a look at today/tomorrow

Introducing beta Microsoft blogs and forums

b2ix — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 01:20:00 GMT

Last night, we announced the beta of several Microsoft community solutions. Thanks to everyone who's helped make this possible!

For information on the new blogging solution:
here's a text overview
here's what's ahead
here's a little tutorial on commenting to a blog post (wvx, soapbox)

As for forums...
a text overview
a screencast overview (wvx, soapbox)
what's ahead
intro to posting a question (wvx, soapbox)
intro to posting a reply (wvx, soapbox)

btw, you can get the rss for my beta pieces of me as well :-)

pit stop on the way to Microsoft.community

b2ix — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 19:45:00 GMT

it seems some folks are pointing to this blog, and this blog for my thoughts on Microsoft.community. what to do, what to do?

as neither of these will likely be my final home, I suppose the logical thing to do at this point is to cross-post relevant messages. When we are ready to role out a new site with a wider release of Microsoft.community, I'll then set up my permanent home (er, work) presence.

thank goodness for livewriter.