Posted in design, technology, work on 05/13/2008 09:10 pm by karen
Social networks aren’t products (and I mean the actual networks, not the applications that enable the networks). As this little blog entry points out:
A social network isn’t a product as such. Rather, the product that a social network provides is access to a large pool of other people.
I imagine people might counter-argue that social networks are a service, in order to make a case that they ARE, in fact, a product.
The notion that a social network is a product gives me a really bad feeling, gut-wise. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about product management or marketing to make a case.
Oh, just found something by Chris Anderson, of Long Tail fame, which refers to social networks as a “tool.” That feels better than “product” to me.
If there are any marketing folk out there, let me know what you think about this. Is a company’s social network a product?
Posted in design, technology, work on 05/13/2008 05:11 pm by karen
Investigate business models around social networking.
If anyone out there has any thoughts/insights/books/resources to suggest, feel free…
Posted in technology, work on 05/13/2008 05:09 pm by karen
NYU professor Clay Shirky recently used the term “cognitive surplus” to refer to the brain power we have left over at the end of the day. When you’re done thinking about the things you have to think about, what’s left is your cognitive surplus.
In the past, turning cognitive surplus into a product involved time, specialized teams and production expense: individual people did not have means to create their own video programming, music products, encyclopedias, published writings, etc. People organized specialized teams to do those things, and the rest of us sat around and consumed them.
Web 2.0 changes all of that. The means of production are available to anyone with a computer, and there are plenty of people out there who want to collaborate and interact and actively create content.
Chances are, if you are reading this blog, you are already keenly aware of all of this.
It’s very fun to see it catch hold as a notion at work.
Posted in climbing on 05/13/2008 05:11 am by karen
Likely another busy day with no time for posting. Instead, a few climbing pictures.
Below is a picture of Neptune, a 5.10a climb in a notch canyon called Atlantis, located just outside of Superior.
The approach to the canyon is, um, interesting. The canyon is just off the highway, so people have thrown (sigh) all kinds of trash in there. Someone wrote on rockclimbing.com:
Scramble down and slightly right past orange paint, trash and an old car. Watch out for broken glass! Scramble is worth it.
This is by far the ugliest approach to a climb that I’ve ever seen. Usually it’s an hour or two of beautiful hiking to a climb. In this case, though, it’s a short, totally trashed walk. But once you get deeper into the canyon, where people who throw things out of car windows are to lazy to go, you are treated to a beautiful canyon.
A bunch of sport routes in there, including one of my all-time favorites: Neptune.
Here’s me on Neptune. Such a great climb: pockets, underclings, roofs (you can see the roof just above my head, which I miraculously managed despite the fact that it involved grabbing a handhold behind me that I couldn’t actually see). There is nothing better than a dihedral in my book. I was never at all mathematical, but give me a bunch of planes in space and I’m a happy person.
