infoarch

I find Mary Meeker's reports on internet trends very interesting. They're packed with interesting data and insights. I've been following her work closely. She recently published an updated overview of 2012 and I thought I'd share my highlights with you at the end of this year. sheet 9: stunning slide showing shipment of iPads, iPhones and iPods over 10 years compared. This slides is old(er), but it just underlines the interesting times we live in sheet 10: You thought the ramp up of Apple products is huge, well Android ramp up is 6 times that of iPhone sheet 12: 30% of US adults own a tablet, less than 3 years ago that was 3% sheet 17: mobile advertising is growing rapidly; $0.7 billion in 2008, $19 billion in 2012 sheet 18: 24% of online shopping was done via tablets on Black Saturday, versus 6% 2 years ago sheet 20: we are in the midst of a huge change powered by new devices + connectivity + UI + beauty . Meeker highlights the effects for the pc, photography, ...

Sometimes I read a post that really gets me thinking. Anil Dashes' recent post 'The web we lost' did it this time. I think reading the full post is well worth your time if you're interested in where the web is headed. Two fragments from the post triggered me the most: We've lost key features that we used to rely on, and worse, we've abandoned core values that used to be fundamental to the web world. To the credit of today's social networks, they've brought in hundreds of millions of new participants to these networks, and they've certainly made a small number of people rich. But they haven't shown the web itself the respect and care it deserves, as a medium which has enabled them to succeed. And they've now narrowed the possibilites of the web for an entire generation of users who don't realize how much more innovative and meaningful their experience could be. (...)  The first step to disabusing them of this notion is for the p...

What social tools are young people using ? As a (internal) social media advisor for several companies I'm very interested in the answer to this question. So, when I get a change to talk for students, I'm honored, but also very curious what they will tell me. Recently I was asked to guest lecture for students at the Radboud University of Nijmegen . It's the university I went to years ago. I was asked to share my experience with using social media concepts and tools inside organizations. I basically used a shorter version of the slides I use for my guest lectures for a college , but spent more time on the conceptual, philosophical if you will, side of 'social'. I also asked them which social tools they use and why they use them. What did they say? Here's what I learned (there were 40+ students attending my lecture): None use Google+. Why? Nobody/none of their friends is there. All except 3 use Facebook. The 3 that didn't use FB, just didn't see t...

You all know +Luis Suarez , right? The guy from IBM, that live on the Canary Islands and has declared war on email . Well recently I wanted to get in touch with him to discuss an opportunity that popped up. Contacting him is easy, right? He’s all over social media. Just DM him on Twitter , send a message via Google+ or Facebook. LinkedIn will do as well. I thought I’d share how it went. Did I seduce Luis to hand over his email address to me?  But what to do if you want to send him a longer piece of text? Do you request for his email address? I was tempted to but refrained to ask because I knew I would be whipped by him. ;-) So I reached out to him via Twitter (direct message) and asked if we could call sometime soon. That was possible and we had a chat. But, still, I had to send him more information about the opportunity, about 10-15 lines of text. And I’m not going to chop this into 140 character messages. LinkedIn could work, but feels like email. I’m not connected to Luis i...

It’s that time of the year again when we look back and evaluate the year that has passed by so quickly. And lots like to make predictions for the year to come. I don’t want to share my predictions and my ponderings on the previous year. It has been an exciting year for me though. Many interesting projects, many interesting interactions with colleagues, customers and you. I moved from being a senior consultant to manager, visited interesting conferences, had discussions about and changes to the company I work for, etc. I’m just happy to have a great job, in times when many are looking for a job. I would like to thank you for the previous year. For reading my blog, thinking about things I’ve shared with you and the interactions we’ve had here and elsewhere. I’m looking forward to 2013 and hope you are to. I wish you and all your loved ones happy holidays!

In the past I’ve written quite a bit about expertise location and knowledge mapping . Expertise location is about supporting people to find people with certain expertise they’re looking for. In larger and multi-nationals organizations this is a big issue. One aspect about expertise location is also finding out where the person is. This can be a static location (e.g. the person works in room 3, building 4). This is difficult enough, but it can be done as I wrote some time ago. However, the workforce is more mobile than ever. Less and less employees have a fixed space they’re working in daily. They work in several rooms in an office during the week, they work from home, in the car, etc. Supporting expertise location in this context is even harder. In theory it can be done. I wrote about this as well. But I never saw a company actually connect the dots and make it work. Until recently. I had the pleasure to visit Qbengo . Qbengo is currently focused on connecting people at larger confer...

Maybe a better question is: why do I share? I was wondering about this while reading +Oscar Berg ’s post ‘ Why do people share? ’. Oscar makes several interesting statements about sharing in his post. Like this one: The act of sharing something tells our colleagues something about us and that we think and care about what they might be interested in. If what we share is relevant and valuable to them, they will understand that we have really tried to understand what their needs and interests are. Their trust in us grows. And, citing from an MIT Sloan article about reputation and knowledge sharing : Reputation also plays a role where rules or systems are unable to spur sharing. Because critical information is often held privately by individuals, workers often can choose to share or withhold such information in their interactions with colleagues without fear of sanction. That leaves reputation as a key motivator in any decision to share or withhold information. Oscar also relates to...