The last example talked about how Zappos, the online retalier, uses twitter to reach out to its customers. So the questions is would it make sense for your company?

What is twitter  ? ( for those of you who haven’t been caught up in this craze ).

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service cost nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. It is sometimes described as the “SMS of the Internet”^[3] since the use of Twitter’s application programming interface for sending and receiving short text messages by other applications often eclipses the direct use of Twitter. - Wikipedia

Tweeting is a rather new concept for a lot of people most of whom can’t wrap their head around the concept of sending “thoughts” out on a random basis. It’s facing the very same barriers that blogs faced when corporates first started evaluating them, primarily the question of “how on earth do we use this effectively”?

So why tweet?

Well,  its a great way of connecting with people. However you need to understand the traditional “targetting” methods do not apply as the way you “get” followers is very arbitrary.

It’s probably the wrong medium to use if you want to share large volumes of information but great if you want to send a constant stream of “thoughts” out and get feedback from those following you.

So, before you go anywhere you need to first identify what business problem you’d like it to address. If the medium doesn’t make sense there is no point in wasting time pursuing this direction of thought.Establishing a presence via social medium takes a lot of effort and if you intend to use it as a platform to drive future initiatives a lot of thought has to go into the final solution.

This is meant to engage individuals not large organizations and while some companies do have twitter accounts setup the focus again is to connect with individual users across the web.

Create an account at twitter and play around with it for a while, it is a little confusing initially ( the benefit ) but you’ll eventually get the hang of it.

You can follow me on twitter as well..

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For any initiative to succeed and be accepted across an organization it requires some level of leadership buy-in, Knowledge Management is no different.

There are certain things that leaders can do to promote the sharing of knowledge in the organization.

• Tie your initiatives to your vision:
• Create and publish an integrated mission, vision, and values statement that endorses and sustains learning and transfer. It’s very important to showcase success stories at each executive meeting. Unless there is a clear indication of progress the executive backing for an initiative like this will quickly die out.
• There has to be an emphasis on re-enforcing management commitment to identifying new ideas and removing barriers to progress.
• This has to be built on top of a robust rewards and recognition program, and most importantly, make sure you have the right people working on this.
• The management as a rule is always looked up to for direction, and its the same with knowledge management, lead by example and show commitment to learning through action. Tell employee groups that the most important thing is to share and use best practices.

Once this has been accomplished start rolling out these initiatives across the rest of the organization.

Aggressive Marketing, Rewards and Recognition programs are but the first steps to spreading awareness on KM. However if are in the business of Knowledge Management for the long haul, culture changes need to be made as executive backing can only take you so far.

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In today’s economy where almost every company has taken a beating in profits and revenues Google seems to be chugging ahead rather strongly.

Let’s just take a quick look at the numbers:

• For the quarter the company reported a net income of around $382 million
• For the same quarter last year the company reported a net income of around $1.21 billion. Now this is seen as a huge drop in revenue.

This drop in revenue can be attributed  to two non-cash charges writing down the value of its investments in AOL and Clearwire at $726 million and $355 million respectively.  Which means, if you put all this together Google’s revenue for the quarter is at a staggering $1.62 billion!!

How on earth did they manage to pull this off when everyone else seems to be losing money?

Well, a lot more people performed Google searches and Google showed search ads more often.  The company has invested a lot to ensure its search engine remains competitive, with over 250 improvements made to it in the last year alone.  They have also started using universal searches ( a blend of all aspects of content ) to give the user a larger variety of results and we can be sure of further improvements in the days ahead.

Another aspect high on their priority list is balancing between the quality of ads opposed to the quantity. High quality ads show less number of times thereby impacting revenue though initial indications show that they are tackling this issue rather well and already have a comfortable lead in the coverage department.

Google has also become very careful with which initiatives they are willing to support. The aim here is to maintain a very tight control over costs. The worry here is that Google might not expand as aggressively as it seemed to be before.

Another move that will affect their balance sheets is an exchange program that will allow employees to exchange their worthless “underwater” stocks with ones based on Google’s current price. This will set the company back $490 million to get this done.

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One of most difficult questions I’ve had to answer with respect to the subject of Knowledge Management is why Technology is so important.

The people asking these questions do not confuse Knowledge Management with Content Management ( as a lot of people very often do ). More often than not they do understand what KM is about and what it could potentially achieve.

So what is the answer? Is technology really that important to KM?

I tried drawing a correlation between the various KM initiatives I’ve been a part of over the years and whether technology did play an important role in it. The results were pretty startling, in over 80% of the initiatives technology did play a vital role. The most common role being the ability to bridge the huge geographical divide that comes with the day to day runnings of a Multi-national corporation.

As I’ve stated in many of my previous posts Knowledge Management is very simply creating channels of communications ( in essence, getting people to talk to one another ). With the breadth of communication enablers that we have at our disposal today its no wonder KM has started relying heavily on technology.

Lets not forget another valuable contribution of technology to the implementation of KM in an organization. The ability to derive metrics! a necessary task for those of us battling with the leadership teams for funds. As with all companies success speaks volumes when it is in the form of a verifiable number. KM is held to the same level of accountablility as any other function. You need to know where and how KM helped achieve a particular organization goal.

Bottom line…. For KM to survive in todays organization a technology framework is vital.

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Choosing the RIGHT Technology for KM

“This is a question that a lot of you might have battled with at some point in time and if i’m not mistaken continue to do so. Before we get into the “meat” of this post let me sum it up for you , there is NO right technology for KM.

While we all agree KM is more of a cultural initiative, there is no doubting that without a solid technology backbone chances are you’re heading down a dark road.

I’ve reviewed a large number of applications that claim to provide the perfect KM solution, and guess what? they don’t. No surprise there for those of you who’ve spent time trying to find an application that suites your needs. Please feel free to disagree with me, and if you’ve stumbled upon that “Perfect” KM tool do leave a comment. I’m sure the rest of my readers would love to get their hands on that information, as would I.”

Rewards OR Recognition

“One of the biggest challenges in Knowledge Management these days is getting people involved in the process. Unlike other initiatives which use a mix of the carrot and stick approach, KM can only be promoted using the carrot.

Now the challenge is, what motivates the average users to contribute towards the system? Is it the rewards or the recognition? From what i’ve seen its a balance between both.”

Is the Term KM misleading?

“The term “Knowledge Management” can be misleading at times. When i first got into this field a couple of years ago i was a little wary of what i was supposed to accomplish. The very idea of Managing Knowledge was something i just couldn’t wrap my head around.

Today, after having practiced KM in the real world and studied it, i’ve come to understand that true KM is more environment management than actual managing of knowledge.”

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Wiki’s in SharePoint 2007 - Part 2

“My last post introduced you to Wiki’s in Sharepoint 2007 ( MOSS 2007 ). I have since had the time to explore this feature in greater detail, and to be honest was very impressed by what i discovered. I was a little apprehensive about the wiki feature for the simple reason that being part of the Sharepoint platform might have encouraged over-engineering. However aside for the rich text editor ( which makes the process of adding content that much easier ) the basic layout and functionality of the wiki hasn’t changed. So if you are a contributor on Wikipedia you needn’t worry.”

YouTube a KM Platform

“YouTube a KM Platform?? Are you out of your mind? thats probably the first reaction you had when you read the title of this post. Honestly? i don’t blame you , i was having the same thoughts a week ago , but then as you know when an idea takes hold it takes a while to shake off.

So I asked myself this very simple question, What makes a good KM platform? and then started listing the points down one by one. This is what i’ve come up with so far ( this is a very basic list, so bear with me)”

Why is Knowledge Sharing so different in the corporate world?

“Users spend over a hundred hours every month on collaborative sites like Wikipedia. While it seems cruel to call this Knowledge “Management”, it does describe the very foundation of KM. Get people to share their knowledge.

More importantly, this cultural phenomenon has shown long term sustainability of such initiatives without traditional drivers like Rewards and Recognition. ( Read Here ). Which addresses the basic question this post raises : Why is Knowledge Sharing so different in the corporate world? For a lot of you the answer might seem obvious, but with the trend of KM adoption in corporates rising there is a serious need to understand what can be done about this.”

MS Wiki Vs Wiki

“Right, i’ve already put up two prior posts on the wiki functionality thats available on MOSS 2007 ( Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 ) , You can read them here and here.

Now while it’s a great thing that Microsoft have finally awoken to the wonder that is the wiki, an in-depth look at the functionality would give an average wiki user the shudders.”

Knowledge Mapping in Organizations

“Why is establishing a knowledge map important for your organization? Well, lets look at it this way, unless you had a travel map you wouldn’t know what was out there and more importantly you wouldn’t know how to get there. A knowledge map for a company works in pretty much the same way. It tells the company where their knowledge resides and where the gaps are.

However the most important thing to keep in mind when creating a knowledge map in your organization is to map it in the context of the business processes that you are trying to improve. Otherwise you end up mapping knowledge you have no idea what to do with”

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10 Tips of KM strategies as given by Cory Banks.

1. Manage the Change - Undertake any of these activities from a change management perspective, even IT related ones. Don’t just manage the change around the initiatives.
2. People before Technology - Spend money on travel and socialising before technology.
3. Behavioural Change - People have to be open to supporting new/different practices. They need to adapt to change. They need to see the value to them/others.
4. Organisational Culture - Depending on what the corporate and people culture is like will depend on whether KM efforts will survive. Examples could be that reward structures are personally focused and support a competitive environment so people may not be inclined to share.
5. Strategic Alignment - Activities need to support the direction and priorities of the organisation. This also assists in getting things approved/endorsed.
6. KM in the wild - Find out where knowledge creation and sharing is already happening in the organisation and study it. Learn why it has been successful (don’t just copy it) to help design other activities.
7. Technology is an enabler - Design the process/system and then look for technologies that enable this, e.g. Don’t install a wiki and then look for what you can use it for. Work out what you want to do and then see what tools are suitable to support it.
8. Adopt KM Principles - Don’t introduce separate KM processes. Modify your business processes to adopt KM principles.
9. Don’t stop at the first solution - Consider different options, methods, frameworks and see what works. Experiment.
10. Motivation - It’s not necessarily about reward and recognition. You need to find out how to motivate people to play the game.

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As with a number of you who have been using digg over the years I’ve come to love the simplicity of its design and the huge benefits in terms of information. However, one of its biggest drawbacks is the fact that the type of information you can feature is highly restricted. One assumes that as digg evolved the options to add more and more non-tech content would increase as well.

Which is why whenever I come across a nice KM related article I’d like to share with the Digg community I’m always at a loss when deciding which category I should submit it in.

To fill this “gap” a number of other initiatives like digg have sprung up around the internet community. These include Dotspotter, SugarLoving, Lipstick and the latest in the series ShowHype. This shows a growing trend of addressing the gaps of digg’s submission system.

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