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First of all, an apology for bombarding my Twitter followers with news tweets.  I made the mistake of experimenting with my personal account and learned the downside of “open-air” product development.  The spigot has been turned off. 

This past week we’ve been experimenting with Twitter feeds and automation with the aim of solving a growing industry problem.  Ironically, the aim of our Twitter development work is to increase the SNR of industry news rather than decrease it.  We also aim to improve a news stream’s utility for the rest of the industry while overcoming a common user behavior.

There is a very large number of sources of news and valuable opinion to track in our industry.  The Xuropa platform gathers about 80 streams from across the industry which often yields over 400 items per day.  And the number of sources is actually growing - more blogs covering narrower and deeper segments of knowledge; and new neighboring industries such as Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) are starting to become of interest.  (By the way, if there’s a source that you think is important to the community you can add it yourself.)

And here’s the reason for the development:  While having all of your news in one place helps (a feed reader, or a customizable page like iNews on Xuropa, for example) , there is still an awful lot of news out there to scan through and know what is and is not of value.  Everyone is busy, and time is getting more scarce.

The most effective way to get the insight of what should be read is to leverage the community (”crowd sourcing“).  What the community reads is likely to be what is most valuable to read and should bubble up to the top for others to read. 

This is the basic principle behind Digg, but Digg doesn’t help electronic design.  We simply do not have a large enough community to compete with the volume of Consumer Electronics readers, for example.  “Using OCP and extensions to support system-level cache coherence” is never going to get to the top of Digg.  But it is currently #6 in today’s Top News in Xuropa.  ie. If you go to Xuropa iNews you’ll get a good idea of what news is being read and what you should maybe read yourself.  (There are still some discrepancies that we’re working on as we’re increasing the sophistication of the system, but you’ll get the idea.)

So, why Twitter?  This is all part of the “dissaggreated web”.  Specifically, you shouldn’t have to go to a particular website to get a utility it offers.  It sounds counter-intuitive, but that’s the way things are going. 

You shouldn’t have to come to Xuropa to read the article, but we need to make a note that a particular article has been read and that contributes to the ranking of that article.  The bigger the dataset we have to work on, the better the results we can present to the community.

While this is just the start of a small piece of what we’re doing on Xuropa, I hope this explains a little bit about where we see this going.

So, we’ve learned a lot in this past week.  (Unfortunately for some I did not learn fast enough.)  As always, any input, suggestions, or requests you may have, drop us a line, tweet, email, or comment.  Just no letters please - save the tree.

And finally, thank you to all those that provided feedback on this project.

- James

Posted under Community, Features, Xuropa, industry

Great - another acronym.  As twitter grows I expect more of these to come along.  Anyway, I saw it this morning on Harry Gries’ blog, and it stands for “Yet Another Social Network”.

Harry painstakingly gathered tweets from a thread and tied them all together into an interesting conversation.  You would not have got this conversation if you a) had not been “following” every member of the conversation and b) not been on Twitter at the exact time it was going on.  So, thanks Harry!

I put a pretty long comment on Harry’s blog, but there’s a point I’d like to emphasize.

JL Gray was wondering if “we” needed another social network when it came to Xuropa.  Of course, my answer to that is - he’s right, we need a professional network.  At the same time he was making that comment he added that using Cadence tools on Xuropa was “cool”.  And that’s the whole point - using the actual Cadence tools with no downloads, plug-ins, or license agreements is very cool.  But more to the point - it’s useful.  Xuropa is about providing a community that is useful and specific to your career and work.

Within a Xuropa Online Lab you can use the tools and ask questions of the tool’s application engineer directly; read the manual, or watch a video about how to use the tool.  At the same time, if you want to twitter about it, great!  Write a blog post, wonderful! Write about it on someone’s “wall”, knock yourself out!  Each of these social networks has its purpose and focus (or not).

Here’s a video introduction to one of the Cadence MIPI Labs on Xuropa:

This is what Xuropa is about.  Connecting engineers with technology.  The rest is up to you.

Posted under Community, Features, Xuropa, industry, marketing

A new report published by Nielsen describes some incredible statistics related to the growth of Social Networks (or Member Communities) on the internet: Global Faces and Networked Places.

• Two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit a social network or blogging site
• This sector accounts for nearly 10% of all internet time
• This sector ranks higher than email as fourth most popular online sector (see below)

Ranking of Internet Sector Reach

This probably reaffirms anecdotal evidence of older demographics newly discussing their “Facebook page”.  However, what is not as widely understood is the headway that has been made in terms of time.

“The staggering increase in the amount of time people are spending on these sites is changing the way people spend their time online and has ramifications for how people behave, share and interact within their normal daily lives.”   

 

Percentage of Internet Time Spent in Member Communities

Another interesting way to think of this increase in terms of internet “mindshare”:

“A year ago ‘Member Communities’ accounted for one in every 15 online minutes globally – now it accounts for one in every 11.” 

 

But it gets more interesting, and more relevant to electronic design.  Common wisdom within the industr is that the senior demographics do not participate in online member communities.  Times are a-changin’ - the highest level of growth is in the three demographic ranges from 35 years old and up beyond 64.

While anecdotal evidence points to an increased desire of these demographics to access the photographs and videos of younger relatives, that’s not the point.  As with all of these web 2.0 phenomena, consumer adoption and growth will drive corporate adoption as users become familiar with use models and more comfortable with the degree of access.

So, does this mean that every company should rush out and create a Facebook page?  I think they should consider one as part of a comprehensive internet marketing strategy.  But I would tell them that this should not be their primary online channel for two very closely related reasons.

“Much like a friendship, marketing on social networks requires continual investment – in terms of time and effort as opposed to financial – to be of value to both parties.

So, use Facebook as a signpost to your community on a Professional Community Platform - that would be Xuropa - and build your community there.  Even better, place your product at the center of your community!

Posted under Community, Xuropa, industry, marketing