The Benefits of Activity Streams and their Implications for UI and Customer Care

I wanted to share a very interesting article that I read this week on the Software Advice blog about Activity Streams. Activity streams are a list of recent activities on a website, that provides direct links to the most up-to-date content and contributors in a social site. An activity stream is a feature made most famous by public social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and they are are quickly becoming prominent in enterprise software.

Blog author, Derek Singleton, points out some benefits of activity streams in a manufacturing organization. He lists ways that activity streams can improve manufacturing software UIs including their potential to:

1. Automate reminders to keep projects flowing;

2. Stream educational information along with project tasks; and,

3. Indicate which projects are most important and require immediate action

Read Derek’s fantastic post and join the conversation about use cases for activity streams for your business!

Derek has pointed out some key benefits to the activity stream. I would like to point out another way the activity stream can enable a extended enterprise community.

This topic is close to my heart, because microblogging and activity feed features are so prominent in the Saba Online Community. Powered by the Saba People Cloud, our homepage features the activity feed function and I can see where activity feeds often foster conversations between our members that would otherwise not occur.

For example, today the activity feed helped to shape and promote an upcoming user conference.

See the way it appeared on the homepage - with links for many options. You can:

*Enter the discussion forum

*See only the first response (while remaining on the homepage)

*Scroll through all responses

*Find out more about the community member who posted the question

A conference track owner posted a question asked for feedback from our LMS customers. This was posted in the LMS group, and notifications only went out to the group members.

Of course he wouldn’t have wanted to notify all community members, so that he wouldn’t be spamming customers who are not interested in the LMS, and who haven’t opted-in to be notified about LMS conversations.

After his post, I saw responses from many LMS customers and partners, but also members who were not members of the LMS Group. They offered their advice for session topics. I also saw an influx of new subscribers for our conference page. Because of the easy to expand listing on the public activity feed, his content reached a larger audience on their own terms, allowing all community members to provide feedback on the presentations in our upcoming user event without annoying them with unsolicited emails, and promoting the event at the same time.

What are some benefits of the activity stream?

What are some drawbacks?

How does your organization foster conversation using social media functionality?

Facebook today for professional networking: Unblur your Personal and Professional

Facebook is constantly in the social media news, with good reason. Around 2008, it surpassed Myspace as the biggest social network, and has continued to grow by leaps and bounds. Even the recent Google+ beta program doesn't come close to the hype and hot stories around Mark Zuckerberg's college project. Most recently, the country of Germany has declared Facebook's new facial recognition software violates German data protection laws and in Columbus, Missouri a new law may restrict teacher/student interactions on Facebook. Just more drama from the collassal social network.

How many businesses have had a critically acclaimed movie made about their inception? (Even if Mark Zuckerberg hates it) In fact, I think I'm going to have to add The Social Network's trailer here, as one of the best movie trailers I've seen in a long time.

Facebook themselves will be the first to tout their amazing adoption rate. Click here to their impressive statistics. Some of the more stand-out numbers include:

• More than 750 million active users


• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day


• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook


• There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)

In addition, the demographics on Facebook have changed drastically in the last 3 years. Gone are the days where facebook was just a college student's party guide. The majority or recent user expansion has been with more mature age groups and it is a rare person that I meet who doesn't have a facebook page. I personally am friends with my great-aunt living in Killkenny, Ireland and my 12 year old cousin in Arizona. Since we are friends, of course, they have complete access to my profile, posts, pictures, and anything my friends put on my wall,

Being aware of your information's visability is key to avoiding blunders in the Facebook arena.

How does your profile page look?

Do you really want to 'share' that with every one of your 500 friends?

And with that in mind, do you want to be friends with your boss? Your customers? That analyst?

It's a tricky, sticky thing you are doing when you use Facebook for professional networking, but done with care, it can produce fantastic results. This blog post is about the first step you should take to keep your personal personal and still use Facebook for making connections in your professional life.

Rule #1 Seperate your Professional Friends and your other friends

Most people don't overshare on Linkedin. They connect to people based on education and past and present employments, and thus don't need to tell themselves not to share their bowling plans that night, or their pictures from their nephew's bar mitzvah. If you want to get traction with your professional contacts, it's best to take them out of the pool for all your everyday- interesting to your sister, not your former colleague-items. To do this easily, you just need to create a list that seperates out your professional contacts.

1. Click Friends from the left column

2. Click Manage Friend Lists

3. Click Create a List

4. Select all of your Professional Contacts to put them in the list

Here you see I am creating a list of Professional Contacts, and making it so my default sharing excludes them. For the inane items that I assume only my friends really care about.

1. Creating the List

2. Customizing my Post Settings

3. Excluding my Professional Contact

4. Posting my beach pictures for friends, not all my business contacts!

That is my #1 rule in using my personal Facebook account for business. Of course there are many other techniques to making the most of it. Most businesses have set up a Facebook Fan page, which can be a huge advantage and a great way to connect to customers. Also Facebook groups, searchable by industry can be a great way to connect and promote yourself. Before I leave you, I want to cite a great example of Facebook networking.

A friend of mine (and a Facebook friend!) works for a production company in London. He always has to keep up with local, entertainment, political, and cultural news for his role. He also has to produce original content based on his connections in London. Here's an example of him using Facebook to secure great leads from his 800+ contacts with a few quick posts.