November 12, 2007
Oracle CRM Meets Visible Path at OpenWorld
by Lynda Radosevich
Oracle raised the curtain on Oracle OpenWorld San Francisco, Oracle's global business and technology conference that runs today through Thursday, November 15 at Moscone Center.
In one part of the sprawling conference, Anthony Lye, senior vice president of Oracle CRM OnDemand, will unveil a new generation of CRM OnDemand applications designed to bring Web 2.0 into enterprise for practical use.
One of the demos he will show is Visible Path embedeed in CRM OnDemand, enabling sales people to find ranked personal connections through others in the entire company to people and companies tracked in their CRM system.
A lot of people are asking how social networking pertains to work. Lye's Visible Path demo illustrates a powerful example of Web 2.0 at work, from the view of the world's largest enterprise software company. If you're planning to attend OpenWorld, you can check out Lye's session on Tuesday, November 13 at 3:15 pm in Marriott Salon 7, and again on Thurday November 15 at 10:00 am in 103 Moscone South.
Various Visible Path people will be blogging more from the conference, so check back here for more.
November 01, 2007
OpenSocial for Corporate Social Networks
by Jeff Patterson
If you keep tabs on the social networking blogosphere at all, you’ve no doubt been bombarded with news and opinions regarding Google’s OpenSocial project. In case you haven’t heard, OpenSocial is Google’s initiative to create a standard programming interface for building applications that plug in to social networking sites. Contrary to some reports out there, it won’t automatically break down the walls between these networks, but it will make it easier for developers to create applications that run within any OpenSocial-enabled site.
Probably the best description I’ve found so far is from Marc Andreessen. In his article, "Open Social: a new universe of social applications all over the web," he describes it as a "Level 2 platform" -- a plug in platform that allows developers to write applications that run elsewhere but inject functionality into the platform via a plug-in API. All of this is great news for application developers who can now write a single application that can be run within any participating site. It’s also great news for consumer social networks who want to provide as many useful, cool, and/or quirky features for their users as possible (how big is your Ninja army?). But what does it mean for the enterprise and corporate social networking initiatives?
Romuald Restout wonders in his article, "Socially Open," whether or not OpenSocial is compatible with the enterprise and he's posing a valid question. In my talk at the Corporate Social Network Design Council last Monday, I framed Enterprise 2.0 as Web 2.0 for grown-ups. Whereas consumer sites and applications thrive on the sharing of information and open contributions from users, the enterprise has an understandable level of concern regarding privacy, security, and stability. Are these concerns exacerbated by an open platform like OpenSocial? If OpenSocial means a barrage of sophomoric applications like the one’s we’ve been seeing on Facebook, will it turn a corporate tool into a free-for-all? I don’t think so, and here’s why.
OpenSocial, in its current incarnation, is all about flexibility and options. Application developers have the ability to write a single application that can be run in a multitude of environments. And host providers have the flexibility to decide which applications are allowed to be run in their world. With that level of flexibility and control, this can only be a good thing for professional organizations. It means that companies have the ability to offer their employees more personal features on top of their SN platform of choice. It also means that they can customize their SN tools to provide better integration between internal applications. And possibly most important of all, they can offer company tools from directly within the networks their employees choose to adopt. Nicholas Carr describes several scenarios in "OpenSocial and Enterprise 2.0," one where a company could either develop their own base network with a rich feature set provided by OpenSocial apps or even remain network agnostic while providing the same set of tools to all their employees.
For the most part, I share Nicholas’ vision, thinking that the most power comes from a combination of these scenarios. At Visible Path, we believe that there is a separation between the personal and professional. You may have heard us say "Business is Personal" and we think it is. The strength of personal relationships is what drives business today. However, not everyone acts the same way around their drinking buddies as they do around their managers. The ability to access the corporate network from where you need it most without blurring the distinction between the professional and personal has been a major focus of ours. An upcoming announcement with Oracle on Nov. 15th will give some visibility into how we think we can make this happen. And with OpenSocial, we think it’s possible to bridge the two worlds -- providing secure business transactions directly from the personal networks people use most in addition to a level of collaboration hitherto unseen in corporate social networking.
October 23, 2007
Join Us at the Corporate Social Network Design Council this Monday
by Lynda Radosevich
The Visible Path Corporate Social Network Design Council at the Olympic Club in San Francisco next Monday, Oct. 31 is meant to foster discussion about the requirements for corporate social networks.
Orginally we intended to host a small session on cororate social networking with a dozen or so companies and some facilitators. But the demand has been so great that we've turned it into a day-long discussion with several sessions. Ray Lane, general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, will give the opening remarks. Following Ray is a panel on implementing social networks inside your company. Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester, Ross Mayfield from SocialText, Anthony Lye from Oracle and Matt Beveridge from Motorola, moderated by Anneke Seley, CEO of Phoneworks and author of an upcoming book on Sales 2.0, will each put a stake in the ground from their distinct vantage about what needs to happen.
After the panel, the day breaks down into increasingly detailed discussions. One track will discuss business requirements, one will discuss technology requirements, specifically integration with CRM and information and collaboration tools. The day wraps with birds-of-a-feather roundtables to share experiences and brainstorm requirements for social networks related to business processes including sales and business development, recruiting and collaboration.
If you are planning social networking and/or Web 2.0 strategies for your company, please join us by signing up here for free. If you aren't planning social network deployments yet, perhaps you should be... so come anyway!
Also, Visible Path, along with Oracle, Webex, genius.com and others, is sponsoring the Sales 2.0 conference Oct. 29-30 at the St. Regis hotel in San Francisco. People who attend the Visible Path Corporate Social Network Design Council can get 20% off Sales 2.0 conference regitration by using the registration code DCEB50 when registering here.
July 31, 2007
Join us at the AO100 awards tonight
by Antony Brydon
Visible Path is being honored as an AO100 winner at an AlwaysOn party from 6pm to 8pm tonight at the Arrillaga Alumni Center at Stanford. I’ll be there with Lynda Radosevich. Let me know if you’ll be at the party tonight or the Stanford Summit tomorrow;
we’d love to connect.
July 26, 2007
We'll be at the Social Networking Conference
by Lynda Radosevich
Heads up that Antony Brydon is speaking tomorrow (Friday) at the Social Networking Conference at the Courtyard Marriott Downtown in San Francisco (299 Second Street).
He's on the last panel of the day, and, in case the topic itself isn't enough of a draw, and I hear that all participants get a free beer afterwards.
Here are the details:
Panel
Mobile Technology in the Social Networking Industry - Issues from Executives and Management
Time
Friday, June 27. 3:30pm
Panelists
Michael Cerda, CEO, Jangl.com
Jessica Alter, Director of Mobile Initiatives, Bebo
Steve Sarner, Vice President, Tickle.com
Stephen Johnston, Senior Manager for the Corporate Strategy Group, Nokia
Dr. Song Li, CEO & Co-Founder, SinoFriends
Mark Brooks, Publisher, Social Networking Watch
Joe Suh, Co-Founder, MyChurch.org
Frederick Ghahramani, Director & Co-Founder, AirG
Antony Brydon, CEO & Co-Founder, Visible Path
We hope to see you there!
July 16, 2007
Serious Business Networking with Security & Privacy
by Antony Brydon
Social networking sites seem to be mushrooming like crazy these days, and people are starting to show some fatigue in trying to keep up. With a few exceptions, users are either signing up to new sites and then abandoning them a short while later when they don’t see the value, or ignoring them altogether.
So what makes Visible Path different from other networking sites? We exist for one purpose only - to help people who are serious about business networking. The fact that we quantify the quality of relationships, moving beyond the pure numbers game of the “who you know” to “who you know and how well you know them,” makes us very different from other sites out there.
Through a simple Outlook plug-in, we continuously update and monitor users’ networks to determine the relationship strength between people. By measuring the strength of the relationships, we also help find new business connections by suggesting different paths of introduction based on users’ already-existing connections on Visible Path.
But what does this mean in terms of security and privacy? Do users sacrifice either for the benefit of creating more connections? Absolutely not. Everyone at Visible Path is keenly aware of the importance of privacy and security, so we’ve built strong controls into our platform to ensure that only the Outlook contact information and the message tracking data of e-mails, tasks and calendar – but never the message content – are monitored. The plug-in gives users full control over what Outlook folders are scanned and what relationships are discovered.
Our networking controls, meanwhile, give users a wide range of privacy options. For example, introductions can be made between 1st degree connections or 2nd degree connections, depending on one’s preferred setting. Customization regarding who gets to see a user’s profile and who gets to see a user’s identity when introductions are made are also present. At every step of the way the user is in control, deciding their own perfect balance between privacy and functionality.
As good as these controls are, I think we can make them even better in the future. For example, several users recently asked for the ability to change and edit all the profile information that other users or public information sources list for them. We didn’t originally think the design should work that way – who can change the results of a Google search? – but we’ve been converted. We’ll be adding this control in the near future.
July 09, 2007
Embedding Visible Path into any website, blog or intranet
by Jeff Patterson
Say you run a blog, a website or a company intranet, imagine if viewers could click on an icon next to any person or company to discover their connections to the person or company through their social network? In other words, what if the social network became a tool that makes your content actionable?
What I’m outlining below is a way to do just that by giving viewers ability to see how they’re connected to people and companies on your site, as long as those viewers are Visible Path subscribers. If they are not Visible Path subscribers, they will be redirected to a sign up page, where they can join for free and use the full professional Visible Path service for free in perpetuity. (We’ll write more about why Visible Path doesn’t have to bombard individual subscribers with “upgrade now” requests in an upcoming post.)
Note: the techniques below are aimed at programmers. If you have questions or need help, please let me know.
Visible Path Widget Implementation Guide
To get started, download the script here: http://media.visiblepath.com/binary/VisiblePathWidget.zip
Concepts
- A script is a bundle JavaScript source file that you can link to from an HTML web page.
- A div is an HTML element that you can precisely position on the page.
- An iframe is an HTML element capable of embedding one web page within another.
Use Cases
1. Embedding script into page
The first step is to upload vp-pathfinder.js to your webserver. Then reference the script using a <script> tag, as with any other JavaScript script. Ideally, place this tag after the opening <body> tag to ensure it is loaded properly.
<script src="vp-pathfinder.js" type="text/javascript" language="javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
2. Page author adds path finder widget links to HTML page
HREF links
Invoke the path finder widget functionality using the javascript: syntax for normal HTML links. For instance:
<a href="javascript:VPPPF.nameSearch('frank');">name: frank</a>
ONCLICK links
Also, you can bind the VPPPF.searchOnClick() function to the onclick attribute of any HTML element. This triggers a person search using the element’s body as the query. For instance:
<a href="#" onclick="VPPPF.searchOnclick(event)">Query String</a>
triggers a search for ‘Query String’ when the link is clicked. You can also apply this pattern to non-link elements. For example:
<span onclick="VPPPF.searchOnclick(event)">Query String</a>
has the same effect as the <a> form above, but you’ll need additional customized style to indicate to the user that the <span> is clickable.
Interfaces
The script provides a simple JavaScript API for you to to access the path finder widget functionality. The API is exposed through JavaScript functions in an isolated namespace to avoid impacting any other scripts on the page.
|
Function Name |
Arguments |
Description |
|
VPPPF.welcome() |
none |
Render the floating path finder div if it is not already visible, and direct it to the Pathfinder Welcome page. |
|
VPPPF.close() |
none |
Hide the floating path finder div, if one is visible. |
|
VPPPF.search() |
String |
Render the floating path finder div if it is not already visible, and direct it to Search results for the given search string. |
|
VPPPF.nameSearch() |
String |
Render the floating path finder div if it is not already visible, and direct it to Name Search results for the given search string. |
|
VPPPF.companySearch() |
String |
Render the floating path finder div if it is not already visible, and direct it to Company Search results for the given search string. |
|
VPPPF.titleSearch() |
String |
Render the floating path finder div if it is not already visible, and direct it to Title Search results for the given search string. |
|
VPPPF.searchOnclick() |
event |
Render the floating path finder div if it is not already visible, and direct it to Search results for the body of the element to which the handler is bound. |
HTML Samples
See HTML samples here.
June 25, 2007
Rapid releases and downtime
by Lynda Radosevich
A young uptime monitoring service called Pingdom published Downtime numbers for 10 featured TechCrunch web startups a couple days ago.
Visible Path's site was one of the sites Pingdom pinged, and it was, according to their data, down for 141 minutes during the month-and-a-half period of testing, which placed it 9th out of 10 sites tested for uptime.
The post caught my eye because it's a clever PR tactic (and I say that with admiration), and because I didn't know if 141 minutes of downtime was good or bad. So I asked our engineering group, and the answer was good, but not for the reason I thought.
Visible Path's engineering team is rapidly releasing enhancements to the platform. Each time they do so, they take the system down for brief periods, always during non-business hours while most people (with the exception of the team overseeing the release) are asleep.
So the downtime is a reflection of Visible Path's rapid release cycle, demonstrating that in some cases, downtime can indicate something positive. 
June 20, 2007
Enterprise 2.0 case studies - Motorola
by Lynda Radosevich
A panel session called "How to Build an Enterprise 2.0 Platform Employees Will Use" at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston today captured attention on blogs. Panelists included moderator Rob Preston from InformationWeek plus speakers Mike Fratesi from Cisco, Oliver Young from Forrester and Toby Redshaw from Motorola.
Toby Redshaw's descriptions of Motorola's social software deployments (including Visible Path) captured attention in a large part because of Motorola's innovative deployment strategy that pairs IT-driven platform selection with organic adoption models. Some posts of note include:
-
Ross Mayfield 's How to Build an Enterprise 2.0 Platform Employees Will Use
-
InformationWeek's Motorola's IT Department Takes On Enterprise 2.0 by J. Nicholas Hoover
-
John Eckman at Open Parenthesis's Liveblogging Enterprise 2.0 - How to build solutions people actually use
I wish I’d been at this panel. It sounds like the best discussion of first-hand Enterprise 2.0 case studies to date, and it's a good counterpoint to an Enterprise 2.0: Think 'collaboration' post by Paul Roberts at InfoWorld. Roberts uses the word "hype" and "bandwagon" and other skeptical terms that don't map to what IT leaders at Motorola and Cisco are saying. Disclosure - I was a staff writer/editor at InfoWorld during in the late 1990's.
June 20, 2007
Enterprise 2.0 case studies - Webex
by Lynda Radosevich
Joe Schwartz of WebEx spoke this morning at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. Sandy Kemsley at eBiz has a post outlining how Webex is using RSS, blogs, podcasts and social networking (including Visible Path) to enhance its global sales operations.
Meanwhile, Suw Charman at at Corante gives a good overview of the key themes of the conference, including Andrew McAfee's keynote about how social software is gaining momentum in the enterprise and how companies are discovering that a freeform approach to deployment works best. For instance, letting knowledge workers organize information around their own metadata, in the form of tags, works better than imposing top-down structure. (This is my summary of Suw's summary).
It's good to see increasing awareness of how companies are deploying social software for business advantage and to see how companies like Webex are starting to discuss their successes.
June 18, 2007
How to add social networking to your web site
by Antony Brydon
There are many ways to add social networking to your website.
Here's one.
We've recently launched a new partnership section on our website: http://info.visiblepath.com/partners/learnmore. The section outlines a program is designed to allow our partners to add social networking to their existing applications or websites with a minimum of fuss.
Why?
We took a look at the social network market overall and there seemed to be a surplus of social networking destinations. For example, I have accounts at LinkedIn, MySpace, FaceBook and three or four others. In addition to the existing and popular social networks, new ones keep popping up all the time - there are now social networks for cars, dogs, hair care, cooking – you name it.
I began to feel a sense in the market of destination fatigue – so many networks to keep tabs on, so little time. We took a look at one of the key value propositions of a social network – building out my relationship network and then connecting with my peers to access the relationships I need – and wondered if there was a way that we could provide this functionality to our partners as more of an embedded service rather than an end destination.
The result is our new partnership program. We create and host a social network that carries the brand of our partners. We then provide widgets that partners can embed into their applications so that their site visitors can map a path to a company, job, or individual on the site without feeling as if they’re whisked away to another site.
To see this in action, go to the free
icon next to the company name. An iframe pops open and searches your relationship network for people at that company that you know through your network. A bit further down the page, you can find a path to key executives. In either example, you can ask for an introduction to, or the inside scoop about, the target contact from a trusted intermediary. You’ll notice that the product is called HooversNet and is integrated right into their site - it feels like it’s part of
The new partner program has two levels, a standard and a premium. The key differences between the levels are branding control and access to the subscriber contact information. The standard is free and is more appropriate for a website, blog, community site or information portal. The premium program costs $10K as a startup fee plus 1 cent per subscriber per month. This is more appropriate for sites or products that want to up-sell to the virally expanding base of network subscribers. As subscribers invite their friends, and these friends invite their friends, and so on, the subscriber base gets big fast. These viral subscribers are well targeted to boot – if someone is using your service, there’s a very good chance that their closest friends would be good prospects too.
We’re glad to announce that we’re seeing a nice uptake on the partner program. We’ve launched four networks in just that past couple of weeks. SuiteTwo (Intel’s social networking inititive), AfterCollege (the largest college recruiting site) ThinkEquity (an investment bank focused on the venture community) and
May 25, 2007
Corporate networks
by Antony Brydon
We re-released corporate networks this weekend, and are beginning to migrate companies using the original (vintage!) service over to the new service. The service helps a company create a relationship network quickly by inviting people (a department, division, or entire company) into the company network and automatically connecting these colleagues. Once they've joined, people can build profiles and map their own relationship network inside and outside the company. The result is a company network that can reach hundreds of thousands, or millions of people outside the company, and the service is designed for companies that want to map this network and integrate the networks into their CRM systems, portals, etc.
I think the novel part is that the corporate service now integrates with the free service for individuals that we launched last month. What the integration means is that the people who work for companies running our corporate network can connect to their friends and colleagues outside the company – who can use the free service for individuals. It also means that people using the free service can connect to their company, or disconnect from their company, and take their personal network with them when they leave (or join a new company).
I think the approach mirrors how many of us think about our own relationship networks in the workplace. We’ve each got a set of relationships we’ve built over our lives and career. When we join a company, we use our network to help our colleagues and our company, and enjoy the access and assistance that the company network provides. When we leave, we take our individual networks with us and leave the company network behind, except for the colleagues and contacts that we’ve built strong enough relationships to count in our own network.
In any case, I’m looking forward to feedback from the people in corporate networks and people that connected to these networks. Please comment on this post, visit our survey or feedback page, or send a note to feedback@visiblepath.com
