July 25th, 2008 by mhjones

As I wrote previously, I’ve spent time exploring the Twitterverse over recent weeks. Micro-blogging is an art form, I’ve decided, but more on that idea another time.

Today’s uh-huh moment comes from Twittercounter, a service that give you statistics on anyone’s twitter subscribers. Yours truly still hasn’t hit the big-time because unlike many of my peers, I maintain a tight, select, or if you like elite list of followers. So we’re talking hundreds, not thousands of fans following our every thought.

But yesterday’s technical glitch meant Twitter wiped more than a hundred of my subscribers away. Today, they’re apparently back and the list keeps growing. Here’s what’s interesting – Twitter is now in the business of predicting subscriber growth. I’m growing at an average rate of three people per day as this chart illustrates. Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: Twitter, Weblogs
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May 30th, 2008 by mhjones

When US tech entrepreneur Jason Calacanis flew into Sydney for CeBIT this month, I joined the queue of Aussie journalists who wanted to meet the man who sold a blogging company to AOL for US$25 million (yes, we’d ALL like to do that…).

Here’s the result of our chat – part 1 and part 2 – on the new-look, big-screen tv.afr.com that my colleague at Fairfax Business Media, Marc Tewksbury, has been working on for months (btw, nice work Marc!). You can also watch it over at misaustralia.com.

Tagged: MISaustralia.com, Social media, Tech news, The Australian Financial Review, Weblogs
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April 14th, 2008 by mhjones

Hey all. A request for information. I’m looking for CEOs of large companies in Australia who would be interested in joining us on The Scoop in the near future.

I’ve already got one person lined up – the new MD of Sun Microsystems Australia & NZ, Duncan Bennet. We met last Friday at the annual ITJourno Lizzie Awards and it turns out he has an internal blog. Given that his boss Jonothan Schwartz is a very well known CEO blogger, I argued it was about time he flicked the switch and went public.

So, any other suggestions anyone?

Tagged: Podcasting, Weblogs
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February 20th, 2008 by mhjones

What is Enterprise 2.0? To paraphrase Harvard Business School’s Andrew McAfee at yesterday’s Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, it’s a term that describes the use of social software by companies. Think Web 2.0 for the suits.

(Cartoon source: Geek and Poke)

So that’s the definition, but what about real world applications? Forum host Ross Dawson assembled some interesting local case studies, and you can listen to their presentations and the Q&A session on The Scoop. (Btw, it’s the first time I’ve done a live recording of a panel using my Zoom H4. The feed out of the desk was a little hot for some of the speakers, but with a bit of digital spit and polish I’m largely satisfied with the result.)

There’s plenty of blog coverage out there from the event, including posts from Brad, Trevor, Mick (plus more from him at Phil Morle on Tangler), and of course Ross’ own reflections.

As for me, it’s been interesting to reflect on the expectations that we bring to this discussion. If you’re a digital marketer, you want to know how social media effectiveness can be measured in terms of ROI and sales leads. If you’re in business, there’s a sense that Enterprise 2.0 should add significant business value. Andrew McAfee’s assessment was that we expect any new collaboration tool to be at least 10x better than the incumbent technology – email.

Expressed in more simple terms, we’re impatient for success. Enterprise 2.0 is part of a broader, very significant shift in the way we communicate and collaborate. We’re still experimenting, and those on the bleeding edge like those in featured in my podcast are blazing the trail. It strikes me that to simply sit back and demand instant success does not reflect the spirit of what’s happening here. It’s the different between participation and consumption. Consumers say “gimme!”, while those in social software are prepared to take a risk and get their hands dirty.

We got a chance to flesh out some of these issues during roundtable sessions at the event. I attended one hosted by Capgemini’s CTO Peter Evans-Greenwood called “Effective implementation of Enterprise 2.0.” Here’s the notes I typed into my dopod 838: Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: MISaustralia.com, New media, Podcasting, Social media, The Scoop, Weblogs
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March 29th, 2007 by mhjones

So my colleague Joshua and I today dived into this Twitter thing that’s been buzzing around the blogosphere for weeks. Here’s my page, and Joshua’s is here. He wrote a yarn on the subject which was slated to run in tomorrow’s paper (Friday).

So what is it? Think instant messaging meets blog, meets SMS messaging, and stir with large amounts of random bizzare conversations. I went out to lunch with an SMS notification service turned on and kept getting an SMS for each message one of my friends wrote. Let’s just say I turned that little service off quickly. I can’t decide if it’s all just a little bit silly. Whatdya reckon?

Update: Story got held. You get that.

Update2: It got a run on page 3 of the Weekend AFR in case you missed it. Joshua kicked off the piece thus: "A digital stream of consciousness called Twitter has become the online flavour of the month."

Tagged: Weblogs
Comments: 5 Comments »

March 20th, 2007 by mhjones

The Australian Information Industry Association’s new boss Sheryle Moon has launched into the blogosphere. Notable because she’s a CEO of a very vocal IT industry lobby group, and there are few CEOs blogging in Australia. Also notable because she did one of those comeeko photo cartoons, a sign that she can’t take herself too seriously. It’s not exactly a funny cartoon, but hey, she’s blogging!

Tagged: Weblogs
Comments: 2 Comments »

October 25th, 2006 by mhjones

United States department of the interior chief information officer Hord Tipton has just delivered his presentation at the AFR’s Government Technology Summit here in Canberra, Australia.

Interesting, smart guy. My ears pricked up when he started talking about how the government has implemented web filtering across approximately 45 categories, including all the usual areas: porn, dating services etc. Then out comes this pearler.

"We blocked the bloggers. That is a first ammendment right as far as bloggers are concerned," he said. "They have taken over in the United States."

Bloggers were apparently wasting time and not doing their ‘real jobs.’ The audience here laughed at the fact that Hord had upset his department’s bloggers. 

But seriously, blogging an elicit activity worthy of being banned like porn sites? Yikes.

If there are any blocked corporate/government bloggers out there, I like to hear how that’s affected your attitude towards your employer.

Tagged: Weblogs
Comments: 5 Comments »

October 12th, 2006 by mhjones

I just thought you should know that Tom Reynolds‘ Telstra blog On the case no longer appears on NowWeAreTalking. It was there this morning, and is not there now. If you look at this page, you’ll see a little white box where he used to live.

Cam’s got the background here. (And yes, it was Cam who broke the story online, thanks mate… ; )

Update: I’ve written a big yarn about the story behind why Tom was sacked from Telstra in today’s (Friday 13th) AFR, page 67. I can’t link to it online because AFR Access is subscriber only. Worth adding that in the process of reporting on the story, it seems to me that Telstra decided to take down the blog in anticipation of today’s piece. Over to you as to whether that was a good or bad thing.

Tagged: Weblogs
Comments: 1 Comment »

September 20th, 2006 by mhjones

A blog called Inside Google says the search giant’s decision to comply with a court ruling and completely exclude Belgian newspapers from its search results is "Ballsy":

Old, dying media, here’s your lesson for the day: Google doesn’t steal your content, it just points its millions of users at you. That is to your benefit. Don’t blow it next time.

I beg to differ. That’s not ballsy, that’s scary. Hello search engine and (by default) internet business monopoly. Microsoft’s been down this road, and it’s not a pretty one.

Tagged: Weblogs
Comments: 8 Comments »

August 7th, 2006 by mhjones

Telstra’s Rod Breum in this post said we’d never run a letter to the editor from Ericsson’s local chief Bill Zikou complaining about AFR coverage. It ran it today’s paper.

But curiously, if you look at the public list of stories on Rod’s blog here, it seems the post has been removed. What’s up with that Rod?

Tagged: Weblogs
Comments: 1 Comment »