What's Next In Social Networking? Meaningful Simplicity

Used with the permission of http://thenetwork.cisco.com

by Melissa Jun Rowley

Data scientist and MIT professor, Alex Sandy Petland, coined the term social physics to describe the way human social networks spread ideas and transform those ideas into action. As niche social networking services are becoming more prevalent and more focused, a window of opportunity is wide open for studying and understanding social physics.

While contemporary society and statistics are spawning unsettling theories about the repercussions of social networking, "Social Media is Making You Stupid" and depressed, a new trend and potentially a cultural shift is unfolding across the digital landscape—one that goes deeper than clicktivism and is far more illuminating than a high Klout score.

Among platforms that breed the most sharable and positively charged content that leads to synergistic, offline activity, a few common threads are present. These include curiosity, simplicity and purpose. Despite the onslaught of regurgitated listicles and selfies, more and more dedicated spaces for sparking meaningful dialogue, sharing thought-provoking content, and instigating action are emerging and finally proving to have staying power.

How do ideas spread?

The popular petition site Change.org illustrates a shining example of how an online platform can trigger the spreading of ideas that lead to action like wildfire. With 70 million users around the world and 30,000 new petitions and 3 million new members on the platform every month, Change.org promotes powerful stories that often help decision makers see issues differently, and in some cases, take notice of them for the first time.

"Whether it's the parents of Trayvon Martin who want justice for their son, a young woman who wants to be allowed to play middle school football, or a young gay man who wants to be allowed to be an Eagle Scout, so many of the petitions on Change.org represent the deeply personal experiences of real people who often wouldn't otherwise be able to make their voice heard," says Jake Brewer, Change.org's head of external affairs.

Brewer explains that online petitions are successful for two reasons: they're simple and they're effective.

"The stickiness [of the site] is in the simplicity," Brewer says. "Signing a petition on Change.org is a relatively easy thing to do that gives our users the opportunity to take action on something they care about or perhaps something they just learned about for the first time."

The next step after signing a petition is often to share that petition and invite others to join. From there, people often join organizations who use Change.org, allowing the organizations to gain new members and enabling people to continue taking more action through donations, further advocacy or volunteerism.

"Most important to the growth of Change.org has been the fact that people who start petitions are winning," shares Brewer. "When people who start or sign a petition are successful at creating the change they want, it makes them feel they can create even more change. And so they do!"

The new ideas-sharing site Ideapod, which is shaping up to be a futurists' social network, was created for the same purpose—to create positive change both for society and the individual. Currently in beta, Ideapod is an invitation-only site where users post ideas across a wide range of topics using urls, images and video with text limited to 1,000 characters.

"We think we're bringing a new method of organizing information to people," explains Ideapod co-founder Justin Brown. "Google has organized all of the world's information, and it's a huge online archive. Twitter disrupted Google's method by organizing information in real-time. By highlighting information at the level of ideas, Ideapod is actually organizing information that is related to the future, as an idea is a thought, concept, or suggestion designed to shift perspective moving forward."

No stranger to creating sharable content for the web, filmmaker and featured Ideapod member, Jason Silva, speaks often about his passion for the power of ideas and how it can move an audience.

"Usually if you evoke an emotional feeling in the viewer, you're good," says Silva. Erik Davis used the term ‘lightning bolts of meaning" in the mind of the receiver. If people feel that from your content they will share that."

Brown says over the next six months, Ideapod will be progressively introducing features to help users collaborate more deeply on turning ideas into action. This way Ideapod will help turn discussion around ideas into a process for creating change.

What's the secret sauce for growing a social action network?

The act of using social media designed to make a difference is nothing new, but many sites in the social good space have had to pivot more than once to find a model that resonates with people.

When Change.org first launched in 2007 it was primarily a blogging network featuring posts about issues affecting communities all over the world.  At one point, the development team put a petition on the site next to one of the blog posts to give readers the opportunity to take action directly alongside the story they were reading. In 2010, the site made a full shift to focusing on petitions.

Brewers says, "It was a natural shift as the most effective petitions are in themselves personal stories turned into an opportunity for action and change."  

The tech company Causes has cultivated another social action-focused platform that has undergone major changes since its inception. Originally a Facebook application, Causes became its own independent network dedicated to helping people take action together in September of 2013. Raking in 5 million users per month, the site's key demographic is women in the U.S. ages 25-34.

To date, Causes has facilitated 50 million connections formed between users and other people, as well as users and organizations. Causes CEO, Matt Mahan, says that when people ask both Facebook friends and members of the Causes platform to lend support, the connections on Causes are twice as likely to take action than their regular Facebook friends.

"Our democracy is broken," shares Mahan. People don't participate nearly enough because they don't believe their voice matters. We're trying to fix democracy by asking people to act collectively. It's pretty natural for us that we would move to being our own network. We found people needed a dedicated space. "That's why we launched this dedicated network for purpose."

Whether it involves signing a petition, sharing an idea with 1,000 characters, or mobilizing team action, people are looking for content to inspire them and offer the possibility for real-world results. This is a kind of social physics worth analyzing.

4 ways to give feedback so you get the most out of your team

by Joe Serio, www.joeserio.com

Giving feedback is one of the most important skills to master in the workplace. Think about it for a second. As I wrote in an earlier post, more than 85% of employees don’t quit their jobs, they quit their supervisors. If that’s true, then how employees are treated, or perceive themselves to be treated, by a supervisor is central to the success of any operation.
High turnover—any turnover for that matter—costs money. It disrupts the flow of work and can have a negative impact on the environment in the workplace. Too much turnover and the organization will start getting a reputation in the community and have difficulty attracting top talent.
Are you aware of how you give feedback? Do you let your mood get in the way of delivering the message? Are you thinking about other things that need to get done so you rush through feedback without giving it much thought? Do you have any idea how the person on the receiving end is taking it?
I know people whose favorite feedback tool is to yell and scream. I once asked a supervisor how he felt after doing so. He said, “I feel much better.” Then I asked, “What about the people you screamed at? How do they feel?” He sat with a quizzical look on his face. It never occurred to him that yelling was a negative thing. It never occurred to him that his team might have a problem with it.
It never occurred to him that his screaming might be the reason people leave his company.
Let’s look at it from a different perspective. If you’re a supervisor and you’re told that your salary would be reduced in proportion to the amount of money spent hiring and training new people in your division to replace the ones who left because of you, would you pay greater attention to the way you talk to others, especially when you give feedback?
That scenario is not so farfetched—you’ll have fewer resources at your disposal if your company or organization has to keep hiring and training new people.
Part of the difficulty is that supervisors frequently have no idea that they’re doing anything wrong. They have stress of their own. They have things to do and may think that taking time to give appropriate feedback is a luxury time won’t permit. They may have grown up in a work environment that valued screaming—or creating a culture of fear—as a way to motivate employees.
When in doubt, you can fall back on fundamental ancient wisdom when delivering feedback: Everyone wants to be treated with respect.
Here are 4 tools for providing respectful feedback:

1. Don’t be stingy with your praise. Give compliments when it’s appropriate. In organizations that have no money for raises, bonuses, or awards, praise may be the most valuable currency for employees.
2. Whether what you’re talking about with the employee is positive or negative, be specific in your comments so the employee understands exactly what should be repeated and what to correct.
3. If the feedback is negative, remember to keep it based on the problem at hand. Don’t make it personal.
4. Listen actively to the responses or questions of the person to whom the feedback is being given. If you dismiss those comments as unimportant or inconsequential, fundamental respect is already missing from the equation. People need to feel heard, and they also need to be sure they fully understand what you’re saying.

Feedback delivered well can be a powerful resource in the supervisor’s toolkit. Likewise, feedback that feels like attacking or belittling can easily feed the engine of discontent.

About Joe Serio

Dr. Joe Serio believes possibility is everywhere—you just have to know how to look for it. In his unique presentations, he provides a refreshing new perspective on exactly what’s possible for you, both at work and at home. He uses musical instruments and shares his unbelievable life experiences to motivate and inspire you—even make you laugh. You can find out more about Joe and his work at www.joeserio.com.

How internal social networks boost workplace innovation

used with permission from MSFT for Work

Your business may already be tapping into social networks to analyze data and make real-time adjustments. But it's time to turn the tables and bring the same people-powered network to your office. While the issue raises productivity concerns—will employees spend more time socializing than doing work—social tools are actually shown to increase output. Businesses applying this trend to their work environments are finding that working like a network spurs more creative thinking, idea-sharing, and ultimately, business innovation.

Transparency across departments

You may not need, or want, to know everything that's going on in your business, but having the information readily accessible for employees companywide can bring about collaboration and help avoid duplicated work efforts. It's about moving away from silos and thinking in terms of systems. This means that while your business will probably continue to have individual teams, each team needs to open itself up to collaboration with other teams as a way to advance business goals instead of department goals.
In doing this, your business can promote more information discovery and delivery. Employees at all levels of the organization can discuss ideas, share information, ask questions, and provide updates. Your business is full of experts in various areas, and social channels are another way for employees to share skills, knowledge, and learn—about each other and what's going on in the business. Having a place to collect this information can also give your business a better understanding of how employees across different departments approach problems or look at a situation. It can help teams develop better ways to communicate and work together for a common cause.

Adapt to employee needs

You're listening to your customers (or at least you should be), but are you engaging in social conversation with your employees? Internal social channels can provide a place for employees to get information and stay in the loop. They also provide a place for ideas and feedback. Giving a voice to employees allows them to be heard, especially if you can incorporate the feedback into real-time changes, or resolve conflicts before they arise. This can help you meet their changing needs and ensure that top talent stays with your organization. When employees feel more connected to your organization, they can better understand its business goals and direction.

Grow business faster

Social, collaboration, and communication tools give your employees the power to get work done anywhere, on any device. Instant messaging tools can connect colleagues for immediate answers, while sharing documents lets workers collaborate in real time on projects. Giving employees a place to voice seemingly crazy ideas can, in the end, help your business capitalize on new opportunities and deliver better customer experiences. As long as you have policies in place for internal and external social media, your organization can expect the same high level of work, while raising the bar for innovation.
And remember: Implementing social solutions doesn't have to be complicated. You can seamlessly weave tools, such as Yammer and Office 365, into how you and your employees already work. Check out how these cloud-based applications and others are already helping businesses connect to colleagues and easily share information across teams.

Have you seen the Cisco Internet-connected billboard that delivers messages based on traffic conditions?

You’ve heard us talk a lot about the major value at stake – or increased revenue and reduced business costs – around the Internet of Everything (IoE) for the public sector and various industries including retail, healthcare and manufacturing. But what about the one nearest and dearest to my heart — the marketing and advertising industry?

Cisco has identified a $1.95T value at stake for advertising and marketing organizations that harness the potential of the IoE.  Companies will realize this value by becoming more connected with their customers and delivering individually targeted messages and offers to them on any device, at any time and at any location.

And today Cisco is becoming more connected with its customers and showcasing IoE in a way we never have before by launching our first ever billboard…connected to the Internet. Read More.

Social Media & Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Tips

 

There's no doubt about it - social media is changing the way we communicate. These online tools, once thought to be for personal use only, have asserted their dominance in times of emergency as go-to sources for news and updates.

Here are two great resources to help bring sense to this subject. Check out this on-demand webinar "Social Media & Disaster Recovery" and this blog post, "The Link between Crisis Management and Social Media."

Warning: Internet Explorer Hack Discovered

 

A new zero-day attack is targeting Internet Explorer users, prompting a warning from Microsoft. The zero-day threat is targeting a flaw in all versions of the browser, including Internet Explorer 6 / Windows XP, and could allow remote code execution. An attacker could host a specially crafted website that is designed to exploit this vulnerability through Internet Explorer and then convince a user to view the website. You can read more about it here.

Is a fix coming?

Due to the end of support for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, which include Internet Explorer 6, there will not be a security fix for Internet Explorer 6 to patch this vulnerability. If you are running XP and/or Server 2003, we recommend that you upgrade as soon as possible to Windows 7/8.1 and Server 2012. This is only the first of multiple vulnerabilities and "hacker's paradise" type scenarios that experts are predict will endanger XP users' security.
If you are running a later version of Windows and use Internet Explorer versions 7 through 11, you can expect that a fix will eventually patch this vulnerability. There are circumstances that mitigate this vulnerability and Microsoft has also listed some Suggested Action and workarounds for the meantime.

What should you do?

We strongly encourage you to not use Internet Explorer until this vulnerability is fixed; use a different web browser such as Firefox or Chrome. This hack is dependent on Adobe Flash as well, so disable Adobe Flash on your machines.
If you would like assistance in upgrading systems with XP or Server 2003, please contact Emerge for help at 859-746-1030.

Gain Operational Simplicity With Lower Costs

(see bottom for IWAN Lunch & Learn information)

Cisco Intelligent WAN (IWAN) delivers an uncompromised user experience over any connection. Now, you can benefit from the right-size connections for your branch offices, while gaining operational simplicity with lower costs.

Cisco Intelligent WAN (IWAN) At a Glance

With Cisco IWAN, you can:

• Optimize your WAN use to increase ROI, as IWAN helps IT fully use their WAN investments, and avoid oversubscription of lines. The growth of new cloud traffic, guest services, and video can be easily load balanced across multiple WAN lines.

• Support provider flexibility to lower costs and speed up service delivery time, by moving to less expensive transport options without compromising performance, reliability, and security.

• Secure all your branch endpoints, as IWAN can efficiently offload traffic onto the Internet while transparently scaling security.

• Deliver an application-aware network for optimal performance, since IWAN gives IT full visibility and control at the application level (Layer 7), to tune the network for business-critical services, and quickly resolve network issues.

• Apply advanced compression for minimal WAN load, to reduce WAN bandwidth requirements and help applications perform better with the smallest load possible.

• Simplify branch operations, as IWAN delivers comprehensive services on a consolidated platform. It gives IT a scalable approach to remotely manage WAN traffic growth from trends like cloud, mobility, and video on a smaller branch footprint.

Please contact you Emerge representative today for a personal invitation to the June 11th IWAN Lunch and Learn hosted by Emerge and Cisco at Embers in Cincinnati, OH. Space is mimited so call today - 859-746-1030.