Telligent Community is on the move!

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Stuart Hall

Telligent has announced the availability of Telligent Community 5.5 and Telligent Enterprise 2.5.

The new releases include enhancements around extensibility, performance, flexibility and ease of adoption and represent the company’s ongoing commitment to innovation in the areas of community and collaboration software.

Telligent Community is an external-facing community application that enables organizations to listen to, learn from and improve conversations with customers, partners and prospects.

Telligent Enterprise is an internal collaboration software application that promotes a productive and efficient corporate culture. Collaboration between employees is kept private and secure

Both products are built on Telligent Evolution, an award-winning collaboration and community platform that enhances integration and allows organizations to create applications to meet specific business needs.

In addition, the following will be released in March 2010:

Telligent Analytics 3.5 provides dramatic improvements in performance and ease of use to our comprehensive analytics software that allows organizations to quantify user engagement both inside and outside of their communities.
Telligent Evolution Platform SDK provides development capabilities to extend the existing applications and build new applications on the Telligent Evolution platform. It enables customers and partners to easily integrate the Telligent Evolution platform with enterprise systems, such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (SharePoint), which organizations already depend on for content management, document management, customer relationship management and other specialized functions.

Telligent will host a FREE live webinar and product demonstration featuring Telligent founder and chief technology officer Rob Howard on: Thursday, February 18, at 11 a.m. Central US time (5pm GMT).

You can register for the event here: http://tinyurl.com/telligent-webinar

On another note I am also pleased to let you know that Telligent was recently named an InfoWorld 2010 Technology of the Year Award winner!

Each year, the InfoWorld Test Center picks the year’s best hardware and software for business and IT professionals. The winners represent the best and most innovative products to meet the test bench each year, leading the way in the data center, in the cloud, on the desktop, or in software development, security, collaboration, or mobile computing.

InfoWorld named Telligent Enterprise 2.0 ahead of both Jive and Socialtext, praising Telligent’s integration with SharePoint and ability to meld collaboration features with community sites both internal and external. Another high point according to InfoWorld was Telligent’s social analytics capabilities. In addition, InfoWorld predicts big things for Telligent in 2010.

You can read the full article here: http://www.infoworld.com/d/infoworld/infoworlds-2010-technology-year-awards-458?page=0,8

Measuring E2.0: evolution of Hello.bah.com

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Stuart Hall

I’ve just had a good start to the week listening to the Virtual Enterprise 2.0 Conference presentation regarding Booz Allen Hamilton’s internal collaboration tool, hello.bah.com. The one thing that struck me was the conversation around how to measure its value. Though they demonstrated this through the significant reduction in time it took to find the right people for a project, especially useful for a company with a lot of off-site employees as community manager Megan Murray said, the need to prove ROI is ongoing.

To paraphrase the discussion, the metric for value was arrived at as a result of a benchmarking as a consulting firm the challenge was to see how long it tool to find the right people to staff a project. Comparing the E2.o tool against Outlook and the phone it took an average of 1.5 hours less time to find individuals you required for a specific project. So as senior associate Walton Smith said that over 23k people you quickly see a positive return; but he added he was still looking for a great answer to the question of proving ROI.

I’m sure the 2.0 Adoption Council has plenty of possible answers to that question. I have a few ideas of my own too which I shared with the good folks at Webjam the other day. I was thinking of Vanessa DiMauro of Leader Networks White Paper (pdf) on the subject of creating professional peer-to-peer communities and measuring usage by the majority of ‘readers’ as opposed to active ‘contributors’. The point being that enabling this method to measure E2.0 could be part of the answer, IMHO.

In the 90s, a colleague and I
did a really interesting study3 to answer the research
question “What do people, who don’t actively post
in an online community, do with
the information in the commu-
nity?” We so commonly use the
term “lurker,” which has nega-
tive connotations. But if you
look at the statistics of online
community behaviors, only one
to four percent of all community
participants actually post a mes-
sage, and only about 20 to 30
percent of all private community members make
themselves visible by taking a poll, posting a mes-
sage, being interviewed, or showing some sign of
active presence, so that leaves a really large percent-
age of people who repeatedly visit. They have use
patterns that are sustained and predictable. What the
heck are they doing, and why do they keep coming
back?

So my colleague Gloria Jacobs and I decided to
study what people do who aren’t actively and visibly
participating. Are they just reading and lurking, as
that negative word connotes? What are they doing with
their repeated logons?

What we found was a really robust usage of the
information and connections that people make in
professional online communities, even if they never
make themselves visible. They actually have a ten-
dency to use the information that they learn in their
real life, in some cases more actively than the active
posters or participants.

We were able to track behaviors such as printing
out information or emailing it to others (when it was
appropriate); using information in meetings; con-
necting with colleagues or people that they met in
the online community via phone or at conferences or
through email. So the silent readers are very active
members of the community. They just make deci-
sions not to make themselves visible in the perma-
nent online space.

That was a really interesting finding for us, be-
cause it rounded out the great question “Why are
these people coming if they’re
not doing anything?” But they
are. They are choosing to mani-
fest their connections in the real
world, in the public-facing world just not online.

Download the presentation slides (pdf, 3mb) here: The Evolution of Hello.bah.com

Three essential questions about community management

Posted on January 27, 2010 by Stuart Hall

Try your hand at these three questions about community management. My answers are below to give you some inspiration!

Q1. What has been the biggest surprise you’ve had while community manager, during the process of building your community?

The degree of difference there is between growing a conventional website and an online community, where the success depends so much on engaging people and sustaining that engagement. While it’s true that ‘build it and they will come’ doesn’t apply to any website, this is particularly true for communities where you need to attract not just readers but contributors who are willing to take time and effort to provide their ideas and feedback.

Q2. In your opinion, what are the top 3 ingredients for building a great community?

1. The community should have a clear audience with a clear purpose with which to serve them in mind.

2. The community manager must know how to nuture an online culture based on reasoned debate and knowledge sharing, from implementing a clear and consistent use of community guidelines on the one hand, to an effective strategy for balancing the needs of both top contributors and the majority of readers on the other.

3. The community manager must know to capture metrics of success, and be able to convey these at all levels of the business to demonstrate the value of the community especially in terms of ROI.

Q3. In your opinion, what are the top 3 skills required to be an effective community manager?

1. Know how to create the conditions which optimise the emergence of valuable conversations between members, so-called ‘golden nuggets’ of information, so that quality as well as quantity of participation is clearly demonstrated, balancing the needs of the organisation with the needs of the community.

2. Excellent organisational skills as so much of good community development involves successful co-ordination of a wide range of tasks, from listening to community feedback and raising that with technical developers through to implementation, to promoting the benefits of the community through online and offline marketing.

3. A passionate ability to see the value of the community in every aspect whether it’s valuing contributions from the smallest comment to the most in-depth blog post, or balancing the value of individual top contributors with the importance of aggregate indicators of value such as content views, so that they all can harnessed to contribute to meeting the business objectives of the community.

A brief visit to AuntMinnie

Posted on December 22, 2009 by Stuart Hall

AuntMinnie, which has 148,000 members worldwide, is celebrating ten years of radiology journalism with a terrific giveaway of gifts depending on how long you’ve been a member.

On a smaller scale it’s worth noting that since I captured the vital statistics for its forum membership in mid-November (29604 Registered users have made 223898 posts in 13 forums. There are currently 27278 topics) that by 22 Dec it reads: 29827 Registered users have made 230030 posts in 13 forums. There are currently 27949 topics. That’s over 6,000 posts in just over a month. OK, fair enough. But remember the well-established 90-9-1 rule of thumb that around 5 to 10% of members contribute all the posts. So say around 200 people have created those 6,000 posts?

Lets remember what drives advertisers which are the lifeblood of these sites is the number of members, the reach. So the emphasis is not surprisingly on rewarding this aspect. And to be positive this has the benefit of rewarding the majority of readers of the site, rather than just the contributors. That said if Aunt Minnie is going to sustain its success for another ten years then how is it going to live up to billing in its meta description tag (the description you see under its Google listing) as the following:

“AuntMinnie.com is the largest and most comprehensive community Web site for medical imaging professionals worldwide. Radiologists, technologists, administrators, and industry professionals can find information and conduct e-commerce in MRI, mammography, ultrasound, x-ray, CT, nuclear medicine, PACS, and other imaging disciplines.”

So there, they see themselves as a community site. So how far are they to achieving that goal? From a community consultant view, the first thing to point out is that what they call community is the forum section, fair enough; not to be confused with ‘Communities’ which is where the separate specialties/technologies such as CT fall. By the way one thing about that, when you select one of these communities, you are presented with a series of news items that are clearly specific to that topic. Each of them clearly has a ‘Discuss’ link to respond to the content and post in the forums. What would help though is the forum post which opens to give you the option to either post a new thread (as it currently defaults), or to post in an existing thread. That way you are designing it with the needs of the contributor foremost.

Anyhow, looking at it from the top level of the forum there’s a few things that jump out at me (bearing in mind I don’t have access to community metrics for any of the sites I’m looking at). And the first is as you can see is the sheer volume of topics and posts which appears kind of daunting. So in the ‘Residents Digital Community’ discussion forum, leading the numbers, there are currently over 55,000 posts and nearly 8,000 topics! Phew. At the other end of the scale the ‘How to use these Forums’ discussion forum there are just 3 topics and 3 posts. That said at least the number of discussion forums, limited to 10, provides a kind of order. One small note is that the community stats say there are 13 forums, while just 10 are listed, so I assume 3 are private.

But what could be improved if not the information architecture, by placing the topic and post count in a less prominent position, is the display of contributor’s content which currently due to lack of space appears in a truncated format, while space is allowed for the individual moderator which is surplus at that level. Obviously AM staff are constrained by the software to some extent but surely a re-skin based on an information architecture review, even if it’s just at the top level, would be a worthwhile investment for its 10th birthday?

Comparing b2b communities from the medical imaging industry

Posted on November 10, 2009 by Stuart Hall

It’s interesting to see the comparative growth of rival online communities in the multi-billion dollar medical imaging industry. Especially in the run up to RSNA 2009, when the use of so-called social media tools like Twitter is much more in evidence than a couple of years ago. This is backed up by analysis through online traffic tools, which shows both Twitter and Facebook among the top referral and destination sites for these radiology communities. Indeed tweets tagged #rsna appear automatically on the RSNA official site, and many companies like Barco now have their own Twitter profiles and custom lists you can follow.

The players in chronological order

The established player is AuntMinnie, originally set up by started by Dr. Phillip Berman, CEO of Lumisys, in 1999 and for a time owned by Eastman Kodak (Kodak having invested in the plethora of social media tools, using Facebook to good effect in reaching out to ‘consumers’ for example). Currently owned by IMV with a popular old style forum, it’s a tried and tested model which is obviously successful with the following key fact:

29604 Registered users have made 223898 posts in 13 forums. There are currently 27278 topics.

Then in 2006 came along MedicExchange backed by Medicsight (which itself IPO’d in 2007 for around £30m).Originally launched with a similar old style forum it’s improved its community offering, and reached out to the wider community with a presence in the three staple social media tools of Twitter, Facebook , and LinkedIn.

Then in 2007 from the medical imaging community itself came the radRounds community, founded by Dr Steven Chan, based on the ning-based software platform.

I was fortunate to link up with Dr Sumer Sethi, a long time radiology blogger, who’s himself written a nice roundup of the social networking sites for radiologists on Medscape blogs (note: you’ll have to register to read this post).

Along with the three I’m focusing on he also draws attention toFilmjacket.com, and more recently the impressive looking Radiolopolis site created by Dr Roland Talanow which launched in early 2009 which is the fourth site I’m going to focus on.

Social networks or communities of practice?

Clearly I’m not alone in realising the potential of social networks as this online presentation slide from Len Starnes at Bayer Schering Pharma makes clear. So as the former content manager at Medicexchange.com where I evangelised about the value of social media for medial imaging professionals, and which is now billed as a “social network for healthcare professionals to exchange knowledge”, what lessons can I glean from these rival developments?

Especially now that I’ve been working in the community management sphere for a couple of years, settting up an award-winning b2b community at the UK chartered accountants ICAEW, and currently in a consultant-type role at SiftGroups? My approach is to score the sites on their effectiveness as online communities, and in reaching connecting with their wider audience using the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

A point before I get started though, that we are really talking about here are really online communities, not social networks. Communities are specific to common interests, while social network sites are more about developing personal communities around the profile and connections of an individual. You can find micro-communities within social networks, such as the radRounds fan page within Facebook, and you can have social networking type directories within communities. Basically communities are about a place where like-minded people gather to share experiences and knowledge. Indeed, within that definition there are four basic different types of online communities set up to meet different needs; these four from medical imaging belong to communities of practice’.

Congratulations to RSNA

Before I get to that task however, now that RSNA (the Radiological Society of North America Scientific Assembly & Annual Meeting) is over as the best point to judge how much the online communities fared in response, it’s worth noting how the organisers of RSNA have embraced the likes of Twitter. Indeed a great case in point for anyone studying the use of online and offline social media at an event.

I wanted to quote Jim Donovan’s events blog ‘Show Insights’ and borrow his picture to explain what I mean:

I follow a lot of medical meetings and tradeshows, but most of them are still figuring out how to use Twitter before and during their events. But RSNA clearly had a plan going into their meeting and they have done an incredible job of engaging their members, attendees, and exhibitors. Since I did not attend the meeting, they have also effectively reached non-attendees too!

What impressed me about their tweets is that they really conveyed a sense of enthusiasm and excitement from the show. They really made you wish you were there.

There were all kinds of fun programs, contests, and communications each day. Here are a few that I observed:

* A “Hide and Tweet” contest where clues were tweeted and the first person to find the “Twitter Team” won a prize. The Twitter Team even wore fun T-shirts further promoting the
* Ongoing contests in which the first person visit a certain booth or location won a gift card.
* Helpful tips on things to see and do at the meeting.
* Updates and program changes were effectively communicated.
* And lot’s of great Twit Pics of attendees having a great time.

Another thing that I liked about this effort is that the promotion was not limited to just the 960+ people who were following RSNA on Twitter. For example:

* RSNA also printed the “five best tweets of the day” in the convention Daily Bulletin.
* They built this huge video wall at the convention which had the twitter feed, important RSNA messages, and some advertising.
* You can view the the
Twitter Feed on their website.

Congratulations to the RSNA TWITTER TEAM on a program well executed!

One way Twittering at RSNA 2009?

A different take on how effective the use of Twitter was at RSNA is provided by Dr Guy Shechter, who analysed the degree to which the social media tool of choice was used for simply broadcasting messages as opposed to engaging people in conversation [underlining added by me]:

“A lexical analysis showed that 141/857 (16%) of the #RSNA09 tweets were re-tweets, indicating that one person thought it worthy to repeat what another person had said. An additional 80/857 (11%) of the #RSNA09 tweets were directed at, or explicitly mentioned, another Twitterer. Using the re-tweets and referential/conversational tweets as a measure of social interaction among conference attendees and vendors, this analysis shows that there was only a moderate amount of Twitter-mediated social interaction at RSNA 2009 (27% of all tweets).”

Apart from noticing that I made the Twitter RSNA rankings myself (though not physically present) was struck me about this analysis is that it’s not unexpected. For one thing most people will be readers of tweets, rather than re-tweeters. Secondly, it takes time and effort to understand how to use Twitter for conversation and get RPI from that, as opposed to using it as a new broadcast platform.

It would certainly be interesting to hear from the likes of Carestream Health who feature in the analysis as to what their RSNA social media metrics, both qualitative and quantative, told them about the effectiveness of their campaign over the period.

It would also be useful to see how the medical imaging communities such as AuntMinnie found from their referral stats the extent to which Twitter delivered visitors to their site, which for them is no doubt the aim rather than engaging in conversation?

One swallow does not make a summer

Posted on September 16, 2009 by Stuart Hall

Coming out of the Bannatyne’s Gym this evening a news piece on Sky News caught my eye about social networks. It was the news indeed (published on Facebook yesterday) that they were cash flow positive: “Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.”

No doubt plenty of wise folk will say this is a good sign but maybe Facebook are the exception in a recession?

I’d probably agree except that I’ve noticed some other encouraging signs, both at the very large (Facebook) end of the business spectrum and the not so large, in comparison, from the UK. For starters the news on 2 September that European social software specialists Headshift, had been bought by the Dachis Group based in Austin, Texas, in a move described by the Guardian as the ‘Facebookification of business’: “The London-based social media firm Headshift is the first acquisition of Jeffrey Dachis’s newly formed Dachis Group. Dachis’s former agency, Razorfish, was a huge success with a value of $5.5 billion at the height of the 2000 bubble. With his new company, the entrepreneur plans to invest in the corporate social networking area and will focus on making customer participation a big business: “Social business is the new way of working, not just new technology.”

Thirdly, that London-based social media agency FreshNetworks, doubled in size in 2008, are doubling in size again this year and moving to new offices, by all accounts.

So perhaps a trend? Prediction is, as I think they say, an uncertain science, but with online community specialist company SiftGroups in Bristol, who I work for, also moving into new offices things look brighter for sure. For me personally I have one further indicator, which is my own private confirmation of this upward trend, and for sure there remains the lack of cash for investment in the system at large. But finger’s crossed that while ‘one swallow does not make a summer’ that enough swallows can make something happen. Chaos theory anyone?

Photo by Cherry On Fire

PS: And even as I sit here watching French Wednesday evening football at 21:02 news rolls in from TechCrunch: “Twitter Closing New Venture Round With $1 Billion Valuation”.

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