Workstreamer Blog

Facebook’s redesign has significantly altered the look and feel of the mini-feed.  Much of the change is focused on differentiation between types of feed activities (i.e. Photos, Posted Items, etc), as well as a much more pronounced emphasis on Status Updates.

Via AllFacebook:

It’s clear that statuses have become one of the most important components of Facebook and many have called it a Twitter killer. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an increasing emphasis on statuses as Facebook moves forward. One interesting component about this new layout is how the statuses are updated instantaneously whereas the main news feed content is only updated periodically.

This contrasts FriendFeed where every load of the page presents new data among your friends as the site is updated in real-time. Facebook has tried to automatically filter information for users to try to select the most relevant information. It will be interesting to see if Facebook ever shifts this strategy to display more information.

This is a simple change but it most definitely highlights the importance of statuses in Facebook.

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Tags: attention, facebook, friendfeed, mini-feed, status updates

Nova Spivak on the future of the desktop:

The focus shifts from information to attention

As our digital lives shift from being focused on the old fashioned desktop (space-based metaphor) to the Web environment we will see a shift from organizing information spatially (directories, folders, desktops, etc.) to organizing information temporally (river of news, feeds, blogs, lifestreaming, microblogging).

Instead of being a big directory, the desktop of the future is going to be more like a Feed reader or social news site. The focus will be on keep up with all the stuff flowing through and what the trends are, rather than on all the stuff that is stored there already.

The focus will be on helping the user to manage their attention rather than just their information.

This is a leap to the meta-level. A second-order desktop. Instead of just being about the information (the first-order), it is going to be about what is happening with the information (the second-order).

Thanks to Bruce for pointing this out!

Tags: bruce macvarish, feeds, flow apps, nova spivak, workstreamer

Cisco has acquired PostPath for $215M in an attempt to add email and calendaring features to its WebEx. The acquisition shouldn’t come as a surprise: John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, recently said:

“We believe we are entering the next phase of the Internet as growth and productivity will center on collaboration enabled by networked Web 2.0 technologies.”

We at Workstreamer see this as further proof that the online collaboration space is about to undergo a series of innovations and consolidations. The macro trends clearly favor a rise in collaborative activity, especially relating to cloud technology.

Of note is that the software development team is based in Bulgaria. Go outsourcing!

Story via GigaOM

Tags: acquisitions, cisco, email, industry news, Outsourcing, postpath, webex

As summer is nearly over, it is time for me to return to college. Sam introduced me in his “Thank You” post, but for those of you who missed it or didn’t read that one, my name is Steve Preefer and I’ve been manning the ship as Workstreamer’s community manager for the summer. It’s been a great experience working with and learning from Sam Huleatt and Ben Schippers, our co-founders and CEO’s. The life of a startup company is really fun and interesting, especially once you consider the macro-trends in web 2.0.

Workstreamer is currently working out of Brooklyn Heights and we have a small, cozy office. Although I don’t have significant work experience, this environment is much more relaxed than anything I’ve ever seen and we still finish everything we need to. The life of a startup entrepreneur is fantastic and it’s easy to see why web 2.0 is a burgeoning business.

I’ve really enjoyed my time here and want to thank Ben and Sam for the opportunity. It’s been a fun summer guys, thanks! I also want to thank our loyal Workstreamer blog readers. Hopefully those of you who believe in our product will help us take off and make Workstreamer the next big company on the internet. Thanks.

Steve

Tags: ben schippers, sam huleatt, workstreamer

Fred Stutzman is one of the best technology orators I know of. His ability to distill cutting-edge concepts into laymen’s terms has always been impressive and not surprisingly Fred’s done it again: suggesting we consider Twitter updates to be equivalent to reading subject-only emails.

How does this become relevant in the context of work?

“The enterprise Twitter gives rise to a new channel of communications that offloads  from the inbox…the enterprise Twitter might just be the electronic, distributed water cooler of lore”

The workstream as we initially envisioned it plays this very role: a high-level flow of events, activities and important communications populating in real-time. This means a worker can have ‘awareness’ without the need for distracting deep-dives. As you see things that truly require your attention you dive-in or out as the situation demands.

Tags: fred stutzman, twitter, twitter subject only emails, workstream

Be sure to checkout this fascinating article from Harvard Business Publishing’s Tammy Erickson on the “project-based workforce.”

Erickson argues that modern generations have decided they will likely work indefinitely (no more retirement) because the benefits of working so outweigh those of leisure. For example, Erickson estimates that “today, more than three-quarters of adults approaching retirement say they plan to continue working in some capacity.”

Whether or not that that figure is true,  it’s an important shift in the work culture thinking. Erickson continues on explaining that retired baby boomers are frequently moving into “cyclical working arrangements” where they work full-time on projects, and once complete, move into a period of leisure time before starting the next project. In particular, the boomers are expected to do this for their entire life, rotating from work to vacation every few months.

This change in attitude is in part attributed to a talent shortage in specific industries, as well as a changing corporate structures that allows people to temporarily join a company for a project, leaving when it’s complete. This creates an interesting opportunity for a community of baby boomers contract workers. Coupled with recent innovations in social tools, there is significant opportunity for a new breed of worker to emerge. For those familiar with Tim Ferriss and the Four-Hour Work Week, you know that such a project-based lifestyle when managed and delegated properly can still lead to massive amounts of productivity. So, come on Boomers, it’s time to get more involved in the web 2.0 space!

Tags: Baby Boomers, Harvard Business Publishing, Tammy Erickson, Tim Ferriss

You may not have realized it, but the majority of posts on the Workstreamer blog this summer have been penned by our awesome intern: Steve Preefer. Steve is going into his sophomore year at Dartmouth College where he plays on the squash team and is fascinated by the impact of social media on his generation. In fact, Steve’s high-school senior thesis was written about the opportunity for social tools to impact politics and political marketing. Really cool stuff!

Steve has been an exceptional addition to the Workstreamer team this summer and we greatly appreciate the time and energy he brings to the office each day. I hope you will drop Steve a comment and wish him well as he begins to prepare to head back up to Hanover. We’ll miss him and hope to see him again next summer!

Thanks Steve!

This also puts real pressure on Steve to make some uber good final posts

Tags: dartmouth college, politics, steve preefer, workstreamer intern

In 2006, the Department of State launched a project called Diplopedia (wiki-based software) with a goal of creating a better way to share unclassified information on diplomacy, international relations and political figures internally. Last week we saw a ton of press coverage following Eric Johnson’s speech at Wikimania in Egypt.

Johnson said that part of the success of wiki effort comes from prosecuting anyone who posts invalid information (you have to register to post on the site) and a lack of arguments of phrasing in articles. Interestingly the New York Times’ coverage of this story discusses the burgeoning collaborative nature of the government agencies:

There certainly is a culture of collaborative writing at the State Department, Mr. Johnson acknowledged: memos are drafted, massaged, passed up the chain for comments and then approved. But this form of collaboration is based on the notion that the more people who read something, the less chance it will be candid. Wikis, by contrast, are collaborative only in retrospect — someone has to be prepared to be the first to write something, and deal with having those words changed by a complete stranger.

Mr. Johnson said his office occasionally gets calls from new contributors: “People will say, ‘I have something I want to post; I want to check before I do it.’ And we say, no, no, put it up.”

The decision to embrace wikis is part of a changing ethic at the department, from a “need to know culture” to a “need to share culture,” said Daniel Sheerin, deputy director of eDiplomacy, which was created in 2003. “This is a technological manifestation of a policy difference,” he said, a change he dated to when Colin L. Powell was secretary of state.

Government adoption of new technologies tends to greatly lag consumers and the enterprise. If the government believes it can leverage web 2.0 tools to improve efficiency and accuracy in the workplace, than it’s great validation for the future of collaborative tools.

Tags: Collaborative Technology, Diplopedia, Government Technology, Social Collaboration, social media, U.S. State Department, web 2.0, wikipedia

Michael Arrington wrote up a nice post on gmail’s outage yesterday so I won’t summarize that again, but I loved his play on the twitter whale that we all know so well. I just wanted to pass it on. Enjoy!

Tags: Gmail, google, Michael Arrington, twitter

The Kaufman Foundation just published a report on the forces that have helped transform India into a global force in R&D. One of the driving forces is that Indian firms have adopted best practices from top U.S. and European firms while also implementing their own unique scaling strategies to increase efficiency of talent evaluation and training. Two techniques Indian firms have vastly improved upon are a) skills forecasting and b) distance learning. According to Wikipedia, distance learning is

is a field of education that focuses on instructional systems design that aim to deliver education to students who are not physically “on site”. Rather than attending courses in person, teachers and students may communicate at times of their own choosing by exchanging printed or electronic media, or through technology that allows them to communicate in real time and through other chatting ways.”

In other words, distance learning is the concept of the virtual classroom, made possible in large part by the web and collaborative tools. The U.S. has lagging in R&D, especially in the private sector, for quite sometime. If there is a better way to find talent and offer them more intensive skills training at lower costs, it should be imperative for our major corporations to implement it, right? I think so. Distance learning can also make a huge difference at larger companies like Microsoft, Google or Yahoo!.

If US companies cannot find a better way to complete globally in the R&D wars, what does that mean for both economies and the world?

Tags: google, india, innovation, Kauffman Foundation, Microsoft, Outsourcing, R&D, U.S., Yahoo!