If you have been looking at LMS/LCMS solutions lately you may be noticing a trend – social media. Of course, many vendors like to pitch it as “Web 2.0”, which by the way was coined in 2004.
Early Examples of Web 2.0 (pre 2004) – BTW, in the 90’s the term was Web 1.0 – another buzz word!
A BBS, CompuServe, Prodigy or even Usenet.
Amazon.com 1995
Customers could post comments and others could respond. During that time period, the term listed in the vernacular of the net, was “Web 1.0”, which had nothing to do with “reviews”, nor any form as such.
My Own Web Site 1995-96
I had discussion boards (white boards), where end users could post questions, people could respond and post, chat rooms and forums, plus full analysis and tracking on the back end.
We are Your Web 2.0 solution: After all, we have blogs, wikis….
Why do LMS/LCMS vendors keep pitching “blogs”, “wikis” “a facebook like page” “reviews” as though that is all that there is when it comes to the buzz word, web 2.0?
Sure, they can toss in app sharing of some form (video or audio comes to mind) and ratings – I know that Bob would love to see that his post got two stars, I’m sure that will make him want to continue posting! – plus the infamous “About me” section and the wonderful picture or image that I can add, unless my administrator decides it is unacceptable and removes it.
RSS Feeds – Look we have them…we are sooo Web 2.0 err Social Media Focused
Oh, and while vendors love to list “RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication” as a part of their Web 2.0 arsenal, I would argue that while
RSS feeds with live bookmarking located in your browser or bookmarks still exists, most people now use other types of readers – like Google Reader or Netvibes.
You can even have a RSS desktop reader – with enhanced features and capabilities, such as FeedDemon or the very popular eSobi which includes multimedia, podcasting and search functionality.
Dump, Ditch and Awaken
Ditch the “Web 2.0” term, once and for all. Instead, let’s call it, what it really is – simply – Social Media.
Social Media – Followed by an example
- Social Bookmarking – Delicious – spelled often as del.icio.us
- Social Network Aggregator – Profilactic some will argue that Hootsuite is also a SNA
- Vlogging (Video blogging) – Blip.tv
- Virtual Worlds/Reality – Second Life
- Social E-Mail – Google Buzz
- Crowdsourcing – Chaordix
- Photo/Image sharing – Flickr
- Forums & Message Boards – (Something Awful – If you visit the site, please be aware that the language and topics varies from G to PG to R and Beyond)
- Livecasting – USTREAM
- Presence Applications (aka micro-blogging) – Twitter
- Blogs – WordPress, Blogger
- Social Discovery – Stumble Upon (Wikipedia likes to stick this into social bookmarking, however IMO it does more than that)
- Events – Meetup
- Wikis – Wikipedia
- Social Professional Networks – LinkedIn
- Media Sharing (Video, Audio, Application) – (Video – YouTube, Audio- Last.fm, Application – P2P)
- Social Networking – Facebook
- Product & Blogging & Niche Communities (Amazon.com – Product; LiveJournal – Blogging, Nibbledish – Niche)
- Social News Aggregator – Digg
- Reviews & Recommendations – Yelp or TripAdvisor
- Social Q&A – Askville or Answers.com
- Social Search – Bing Twitter
- Presentation Sharing – SlideShare
- Social Measuring – Technorati
- Open Social – APis, open source – while this necessarily isn’t social media, it will enable multi-faceted social media features and capabilities. Hence, I placed it in here, because it can cross into so many areas, and do so many things.
- Yet to be Defined – Squidoo Diigo
I left out social analytics, since with a LMS/LCMS it is needed and would be included on the back end anyway.
Social Media Metrics
One bit of data, that I wanted to pass along to you (prior to my analysis report which I am writing for Brandon Hall) on social media and e-learning: 50% of those surveyed had a Twitter account. Only 50%.
Which makes me wonder, how many of you are using your Twitter account on a daily basis? According to RJ Metrics, nearly 80% of all Twitter users in 2009, tweeted fewer than four times. 40% of Twitter accounts in 2009, never sent a single tweet.
Something to Think About
Grab a tea or coffee or soda, sit by your computer and check out what is out there in the social media offering land. Every day, more and more sites are showing up with a new twist, which after viewing, I always ask myself – can this be applied to a LMS, portal or a virtual (e-learning) community? I think you will be quite surprised at the number of times, you will say yes.
Next week’s post: Hosted LMS vendors
E-Learning 24/7