Twitter - Information Network?

This blog post was originally published on the Convallis Software website

in 2012 but I think that it it is still just as relevant today.

I ended up being involved in a conversation which started after the remark of a top Twitter manager when he described Twitter as an Information Network. Many folk seemed to be disagreeing with that view and were
keen to call it a social network, and expressed concerns that Twitter management don't 'get it'.

I have to say I think calling it an Information Network is a far more accurate description.

Let's examine what Twitter does at its core. It takes data, which is passed into its systems by a client application which must have identified itself and its user to Twitter, and then delivers that data to all the other user accounts that follow the identified user. Incredibly, that data is in general only ever delivered to any given destination once, that's in spite of the hundreds of millions of messages that are generated every day. That's quite an impressive technical feat.

So Twitter is a huge and (hopefully) well engineered broadcast messaging system, i.e. it broadcasts the message to all those who have expressed an interest in following the user.

Why an Information Network? From a computer science point of view all those messages are being moved around a network, and each user could (I think) be considered to be a node on that network both generating and consuming content. But there's more to it than that.

Social Networking seems to be one of those things that raises a lot of passion in people, personally I don't pretend to understand why. But I think (and this is only an opinion) that Social Networking is just one of many Twitter use cases, albeit an important one.

There are others, a broadcast messaging system can be used to simply announce an event, or the publication of a new article or to inform a user that a particular event has occurred (a server backup for instance, although there are perhaps better ways of doing that). None of these use cases are 'social' (although the word seems to be redefined so often that it's difficult to know), especially if bots are used to send them - but that doesn't mean that people won't follow that account if they have sufficient interest in the subject matter.

I suspect that since it was first created, its users have created many use cases for it (probably even most of them) that weren't even imagined when Twitter was first designed.

So I think that the Twitter management view of Twitter as an Information Network is actually reassuring, because it means it's less likely to be pigeon holed into serving any one particular use case.

Author: Richard Isaac - originally published March 2012

Nominated for an Award

 PLEASE VOTE!!!!
The inaugural Nat West Devon Venus Awards were launched earlier this year with an event at the Sapphire Living Space in Topsham. The awards are designed to recognise women in the workplace and employers that support women. The awards started in Dorset by Tara Howard in 2010, and have since grown to include Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Southampton and of course Devon.

I was extremely lucky to have been nominated in the Heart Business Mother of the Year category and from an initial 222 nominations made it to the filming section and from there to the semi-finals.

The semi-finals are a public vote, and those with the most votes make the final 3 (announced at a special event on 10th July) and go on to the award ceremony that will be held at Exeter University on 5th September.

This is where I am now asking for your help! The vote closes this evening at midnight and I am looking for as many votes as possible. Why vote for me? I'm a mum of three that runs a business with my husband, I am also a farmers wife and help in the local community. I am a Trustee of the local sports centre/recreational association where I also help out on a voluntary basis. I also manage their Facebook and Twitter accounts on a voluntary basis.

VOTE HERE!

PS: You don't have to live in Devon to vote!

Taking Cheques - do you?

Most of our invoices are now paid electronically via BACS, standing order or direct debit,  but having not had any for a while, in the last week we have received 2 cheques for payments.

Obviously I don't have a problem receiving cheques, the bill is still being paid after all, but it made me realise the extra effort that needs to be made to bank them.

Read more...

ConvallisCMS and ASP.Net MVC 4

In previous posts I've talked about how we slowly evolve our software by taking advantage of advances in the platform that we write our code in (the .Net Framework). Last time I discussed the Entity Framework and why I decided to move us over to it's most recent release. This time I thought I'd write a little about ASP.Net MVC.

This is a technology that I doubt hardly anyone who isn't a software developer (and probably a web developer at that) will have heard of. I'm sure many of you will know that ASP.Net is the name Microsoft gave the web development platform which is part of the .Net Framework, and the MVC framework is a subset of that.

Read more.......

Author: Richard Isaac

Entity Framework 5

Last time, I wrote that I'd decided it was time to update our software and make use of technologies that have been more recently released than those we'd been working with over the past few years. One of those technologies is the Entity Framework.

When we first started work on ConvallisCRM the Entity Framework was still in development and hadn't been released, but what had been released was a tool called Linq to SQL. Both of these technologies are examples of what are known as object relational mapping tools, or ORM for short.

In our daily lives we make use of various objects on a daily basis, from the telephone to communicate with others, to our beds in which we sleep. In a similar fashion many programming languages allow us to define and create 'objects' that represent a function or data within an application. An ORM is a tool that performs a query on a database and maps those results into a data object within the application that can then be further manipulated, oft times that simply means that it is displayed.

Read more.....

Author: Richard Isaac

Our Move to Office 365

At the beginning of the year we took the decision to move our email and document storage solutions to Microsoft Office 365.

Office 365 is a cloud based service that bundles a number of what have until a few years ago been separate server installed products (in fact you can still purchase and install the products locally if needed). These products are Microsoft Exchange (email), Microsoft SharePoint (documents & collaboration) and newcomer on the block Microsoft Lync (formerly Communications Server). The highest priced feature levels also include a license to install Microsoft Office Professional Plus, which the user can install on up to 5 machines (e.g. at the office and at home).

Read more....

Using Social CRM for Marketing

I've just been reading an article on some recent research regarding how marketeers use Social CRM and was very interested to read the results.

Social CRM is a 'buzz' word in the world of marketing and is a topic that is featured in many an article or discussion online, but how is it used? The results of the research showed that most businesses (41.2%) that took part do not have any formal Social CRM program in place, but 25.1% have an informal Social CRM program in place.

But what is Social CRM? To me it is using digital media such as social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter etc) the web and other digital media to engage with and promote my business to others.

The research has shown that 60.9% of the participants use Social CRM for prospecting and lead generation, whereas 58.6% use it to build a community.  Personally, looking at the results, my use of social CRM leads one way or another in most of the roles shown, but am I doing it right? To be honest I find it difficult to show a ROI on Social CRM overall, so I am hoping to be able to rectify that in the future.

Please visit the DestinationCRM website to see the full research results.