Cisco's Newest Social Media App

Cisco is breaking social media ground yet again with it's new VNI PC Pulse application. I happen to work with one of the masterminds (Thomas Barnett) behind this application so I was able to talk him into an interview to give other social media enthusiasts a back stage view of what went it's creation.

Can you give me a brief description of the new Cisco VNI PC Pulse application?

>> Thomas: Cisco has created a free application to show users how much network bandwidth they consume and the types of applications they use. This application shows users the amount and types of traffic that flow to and from their computer and provides aggregated network usage proof points of all global users of this application for comparison purposes.

This is a great idea, how did you come up with it? What is the benefit to the end user?

>> Thomas: As part of our Visual Networking Index (VNI) initiative, we are interested in activities that can help provide qualitative views of network-based consumer video usage patterns and trends. Cisco has sponsored and will continue to explore consumer preferences and perspectives through surveys/questionnaires (see Cisco VNI Pulse political survey and Initial Cisco VNI Pulse consumer survey). A natural extension of our direct engagement with consumers was to offer a free utility application to develop a deeper understanding of consumer video behaviors and attitudes on a global scale. End users can gain a better understanding of their personal PC use and compare their bandwidth consumption with the aggregate average of others worldwide. They can compare their personal historical bandwidth usage stats (i.e., personal high, personal average, personal low) against WW stats (world high, world average, world low). The application measures LAN and Wi-Fi connections.

What have you learned since the application has been available?

>> Thomas: Data retrieved through the Cisco VNI Pulse application showed that on January 20, 2009 (the day of the U.S. inaugural festivities)individual users downloaded more than twice the amount of data they do during a normal day, at 322 MB vs. a typical average of 159 MB. Doug Webster, a marketing executive with Cisco, speculates that many people had the inaugural festivities streaming in the background while they did other things
Are there any social elements of the application? Thomas' Response: At this point, the ability to compare personal bandwidth usage against world stats is the primary social feature. Users could also compare their usage directly with family, friends and colleagues that choose to use the application. Cisco plans to develop a interactive web page in later in 2009 that will provide additional social networking elements.

What is the main objective of the application and how are you measuring your success?

>> Thomas: By using the Cisco VNI PC Pulse application, consumers will gain a better understanding of their online preferences and needs. The aggregate data will help Cisco build a better understanding of what we all demand from our networks. Data from this application will be shared publicly on a quarterly basis. We will measure our success the number of global users we are able to attract and the quality of new and insightful findings that we are able to share with the telecommunications industry and others interested in IP networking consumer trends.

What future apps can we expect from Cisco?

>> Thomas: We have developed a new mobile application that is currently available for iPhone users and will soon be available for Blackberry users as well. The Cisco Global Internet Speed Test (GIST) for iPhone application is publicly available via the Apple iPhone App Store in iTunes (http://www.apple.com/iphone/appstore/).

To learn more about the app check out Doug's post 'Are you a Super User?' or of course go directly to the download site and check it out for yourself.

Pulse on the Blogosphere

StumbleUpon Takes the Social Bookmarking Lead
I can't say I'm surprised but StumbleUpon wins the ProBlogger popularity contest with 40% of the vote, del.icio.us had 21% and Digg had 19%. Are you still trying to figure out how to get 'stumbled'? Read The Guide.

Blogger Tips - How to Get Noticed
Whether your a new blogger or an old timer this quick post with three main tips is worth a read. If you looking for more ideas to gain popularity check out this top 50 list. Once you start putting these tips to work you'll want to measure your success right? Well check out this post for a good framework for for success.

Adobe Wants You to Share
Sharing, collaborating and doing it online is the trend of the decade and Adobe surely can't be left out in the cold. Their new web service - Adobe Share - allows you to share docs online. Check out this post for a product review and product comparison.

MySpace Follows in Facebook's Footprints
On Tuesday MySpace launched it's own developer site allowing anyone to build apps onto their platform. Is it too little too late? I don't think so but we'll just have to wait and see...

Reputation Marketing
What a great post by Paul Dunay - this one liner sums it up "A reputation that took decades to build can be threatened by a single event." Read his post for a three-step approach to that could save your reputation.

Can You Handle the Truth?
Matt Dickman doesn't think so and I have to agree - the biggest challenge corporations have with Social Media is letting go because they are afraid this "truth" will surface. What they fail to realize is that they are already surfaced. Ok, let me stop before I get on a rant - check out Matt's post for suggestions on how to get your social media feet wet.

Apple gets the Value of Widgets - Do You?

Apple 'opens up' according to Red Herring with it's new iTunes widget that lets "users list their recent purchases, display their music reviews, or show their favorite artists."

There are a couple interesting things about this announcement. First, the functionality of this widget already existed but Apple still took the opportunity to create their own widget as a branding opportunity. The point is that if your company/brand should be associated with the delivery of a certain type of content then own up to it, create a widget and get your brand out there.

Second, I think the functionality of this widget can be altered to meet the needs of just about any business. Granted few things are as cool as sharing your music favs but the great thing about social networks is there's a network out there for everyone. A network engineer for example may want to use a widget to promote their participation in forum discussions, display their product reviews and show off their personal authority levels. With a little bit of widget magic this can be done and posted on blogs everywhere.

There's a widget out there for every business. What's yours?

Web 2.0 Widgets in Action - Examples & Ideas

Richard Bach says, "If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were” – I think the same can we said for messaging with a few tweaks "If you want to get your message out, set it free. If your readers come back they're yours; if they don't, revisit your content and make it better."

Widgets are mini-applications that allow marketers to set their content free beyond their own domain. Partners, bloggers, mobile users and other online publishers can easily re-use whatever content you have widgetized by copying and pasting a string of code and putting it on their site.

So what kind of content should be widgetized? The possibilities are endless, here are a few examples (or ideas) that I've come across:

• Live Discussions - Cisco created a widget to show live discussions (right column of page) that are happening in the Networking Professionals forum.


• Social Bookmarking - HP, IBM and Sun created widget to remind visitors to bookmark certain pages on their website.


• Blog Widget - If you have a corporate blog, promote it on your website. Use a widget to show titles of your most recent blog posts to engage visitors in a discussion with fresh content. Although I see these on blogs to promote their recent posts I haven't come across a corporate website that uses it to promote their own blog. Although I wouldn't be surprised if it's out there.


• Security Updates - Infex has a widget that shows the number of infected PCs -- what other security updates can be widgetized? Or maybe the question is better asked as: what security updates can't be widgetized?


• Widgetize your Webcasts - I haven't seen this done yet but why not create a widget for your webcasts for partners, bloggers or even publishers to embed your content on their sites.


• Google Earth -Google breaks through the innovation doors again with it's newest version of Google Earth. Dell is using this Web 2.0 application as a way of analyzing customer data to see who and where customers are -- additional layers of business analytics can be layered on top.


• Video - Whether it's a commercial, an interview, or a video data sheet, Cisco is leveraging the YouTube platform to take full advantage of video and allowing any other interested party to repurpose their content.
  

Creating a widget is easy with help from Clearspring, Widgetbox or MuseStorm – but of course most B2B companies will likely create custom widgets. What's not so easy is widget analytics. Your best bet according to an interview with Lawrence Coburn, author of the Sexy Widget blog is to, "get a rough idea of how many times your widget has gotten picked up by doing backline searches on Google, Yahoo, or Technorati using the “site:” qualifier to isolate the big widget aggregators like MySpace. Inbound traffic from widgets can be measured by checking your log files."

It's time to jump on the Widget Wagon!

Web Tools

In this session JP Rangaswami and Jeremy Ruston share their story of transitioning BT to an Open Source company. Rather than try to anticipate the fast changing needs of their customers they are asking them, and letting them create their own tools and applications that can run on BT's all-IP network. JP explains that innovation takes place at the edge of the network but that in order for that to happen people need the tools to innovate. Jeremy created TiddlyWiki (which is a really, really cool open source Wiki platform that can be stored locally as well as on a shared folder or web server) - JT explains the three main points:

1. Output can be used anywhere else – no one owns it, any one can use it, anyone can improve it (you only bring it back to BT if you want to use their network).

2. The tools allow the innovation to take place in the consumers hands
3. They don't dictate the information allowing each person to make their own translation of what to do with it

When asked how to monetize this idea, JT uses American idol as an example. Fox could have charged to entry into the contest and made voting free but no one would have joined. "It's important to keep the barriers of entry low," he explains. You can go into it locking people in trying to figure out how to make money from it. He then offers a few examples of how they can build a business care around support, services, hosting or consulting among other things. But more importantly he notes "what we know it that we see more innovation and faster growth by opening it up to the users than we can ever see inside."

Going open source is definitely a hot trend these days - I believe it was the tipping point for Facebook making them the #1 social networking site. But is there a breaking point? How many companies can turn to open source before people stop paying attention or will that ever happen?

Where should we meet?

A previous colleague of mine who is now at SocialText saw that I mentioned them in my last post and thought it was good time for us to catch up over lunch. Trying to find a good place in the middle is always a challenge - SocialText is in Palo Alto and Cisco is in San Jose. Rather than looking at a map on one browser and a restaurnat guide in other I though to myself, there's got to be a mashup site for this. And of course there is - a.placebetween.us - in a matter of seconds I was able to find a number of restaurants (by type) that are located halfway between our locations. What a great tool for the sales reps in the field - I sent it to a few of my field reps already...

One Step Deeper

In my efforts to exploit Web 2.0 technology to add to my Marketing 2.0 toolkit, I’ve spent some time looking beyond widgets to actual web-enabled applications.

It’s my belief that the widgets of tomorrow are going to come from the webapps of today and the webapps of today just became a lot more interesting with this announcement: Google Gears churns toward Microsoft.

Here’s why this is interesting to me:

I recently read Scott Rosenberg’s book Dreaming In Code – typically a little beyond my geek level but it caught my attention and turned out to be a good read. It focuses on a development project code named 'Chandler' which due to the complexity is still a work in progress after 4 grueling years.

The vision behind 'Chandler' was to enable peer-to-peer access to calendaring, email and notes applications that could exist offline or online. One key decision made during this project is that they built it as a client side app as oppose to a pure webapp – with the thinking that web application technology was too far out to consider.

Unfortunately they're kicking themselves in the ass for that one because little did they know companies like Google, and 37signals, also highlighted in Rosenberg’s book would soon be rolling out webapps well before they could have imagined.

The downfall of these apps is that unlike their client side counterparts, consistent connectivity is needed to get stuff done. When I think about my computer use, I’d say no more than 10% of my time is spent offline. My challenge is that I can't use a semi-critical app if it’s limited to the web – I need to know that I can access what I create if I want to open it up in my safari tent in the Serengeti or the Piazza Navona in Rome. And that is what prevents me from transitioning from these heavy client side apps.

Well, that just changed with Google’s announcement. Okay, it didn't change yet – most of the apps I'm using today weren't built for the web but it's coming and I'm already excited by this vision. Just imagine being able to use all these great productivity apps that are Web 2.0 enabled (SharePoint, Wiki's, and Blogs to name a few), making for lightning fast download and seamless integration with web-based content delivery systems - but still available offline when I want them.

One of the most significant achievements of Web 2.0 is correcting the discrepancy that my content is still mostly created in applications that work best offline but my customers really only want to connect with me online. Sure, there has been lots of progress with the advent of Flash, WebEx, canned PPT presentations and PDF in the browser – but those applications weren’t made to take advantage of the interactive power of the web.

Marketing 2.0 (aka Social Media Marketing) isn’t about me talking to my customers, it’s about creating a conversation with my customers - and hopefully building a relationship. But I still have to create and package knowledge to begin that conversation – and those apps need to have offline as well as online capability. Before my customer and I can really connect the way we should be able to, we need apps that can be used to create and package that knowledge as well as facilitate and encourage interactivity. That means interactive online apps that can be taken offline - not offline apps that can be uploaded. Google just took an important step in that direction. I’m not junking all my client side apps for hyper-functional widgets just yet but I can see now - probably much like the Chandler team eventually did – that its much closer than I thought.