Filter the Filterless

Posted May 30th, 2008 by Adam

I’m an information addict. Throughout the day, I bounce between Google Reader, Facebook and Twitter, while keeping a Gmail tab open at all times. I’m sharing articles, emailing, blogging and micro-blogging. But what I spend more of the day doing is keeping up with news, Twitter links, blog posts, Facebook updates and emails. And, still, I always feel like I’m behind. It’s impossible (and insane) to try and keep up with all the noise out there.

Initially, noise management came in the form of the RSS reader, pulling together feeds from blogs and news sources so you didn’t have to make multiple stops on the web. Then came blog aggregators, and as we embrace the term “social web”, we find ourselves with activity aggregators like FriendFeed and Facebook, whose activities’ can be dropped right back into RSS readers onto blogs. (Well, not Facebook – their information isn’t going anywhere.)

However, there is still the same amount of noise. It is now aggregated, but just as time consuming to go through. The most “social” thing about these services is being able to choose who to get information from. In terms of reducing the noise down to the items that matter most to an individual, there’s still a ways to go.

It will be interesting to see what the next generation of social aggregators will look like, and how well they will work. Services like FriendFeed and ReadBurner already have the framework in place, but it is still a matter of letting users view information through an even finer-toothed comb. Smart RSS readers like Illumio (via ReadWriteWeb) are focusing more directly on the problem by allowing users to set up specific preferences.

The next challenge for the social web is finding the balance between the information people want and information people need. If the web stays this noisy, they may begin to tune out.

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The Success of Blue Shirt Nation

Posted March 4th, 2008 by Adam

In a recent post, Gary Koelling of Best Buy talks about Blue Shirt Nation, an employee community he developed with counterpart Steve Bendt. The idea was to create a place where employees could talk to each other. Through the chatter, they hoped to tap into insights that would improve customer service and marketing within the stores.

With little funding behind the site (built for free with open source software), Koelling and Bendt set out upon building the community. Following the June 2006 launch, they visited Best Buys around the country and talked to employees about the site. They used employee insights to improve the community. They encouraged users to join and post about what they liked (and disliked) about the site. In facilitating the dialogue, they began to address the biggest complaint that employees had: “My opinion doesn’t matter”.

The community now includes 20,000 members and has been influential in affecting changes to the email policy, improving enrollments in the 401k program and setting up systems for employees to communicate between shifts. In his post, Koelling calls the success a “fluke”. Building a community is not easy and it takes time. Even then, not every community will succeed. But Koelling and Bendt made the most of the opportunity by listening to employees and treating them like valuable members of the Best Buy family. By empowering them to get involved with their feedback (positive or negative), it addressed their biggest concern – that their opinion did not matter. Employees now felt a sense of ownership in the community; it wasn’t just another form of “corporate-speak”.

And it paid off. Best Buy now has a community teeming with opportunities to improve the customer experience and employees engaged in helping them get there.

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