Thinking in public, part 3 - risks and barriers. Got an interesting email from one of my readers, Jack Vinson. I'm reposting it with his permission.

I have to mention a concern that will arise as blogging gets higher on the corporate radar screen.

In today's blog you summarise that weblogs enable people to "think out loud" in a convenient way. This is something that corporate lawyers will wince to read. And prosecuting attorneys will drool. The problem is the way the US court systems have developed: A prosecuting attorney can dig through any and all relavent documents, looking for damning content. And this content is frequently devoid of context. "Look what that manager wrote in the marginalia!" Or "Look what 'evil' comments I found in the original version of this document" (from documents that have used the Track Revisions tool in MS Word). Never mind that the larger context has nothing sinister happening.

I could easily imagine that weblogs could be host to all sorts of "thinking out loud" discussions that would be ripe for the picking.

Of course, companies have to deal with these kinds of things all the time. They must get business done, while at the same time protecting themselves as much as possible. Most will encourage their people to "write smart" when committing anything to a potentially permanent record.

First off, it's clear we need to encourage Jack to join the ranks of bloggers. And I suspect that he's right about what some of the early reactions are likely to be from corporate counsel. How do we work through this objection?

For most companies the focus will remain on doing business and doing whatever best contributes to getting the job done. I remember a conversation a few years back with an attorney who had done some work with Cisco. Cisco managers basically said "we're using email to run our business, we're making commitments and binding agreements with it, and it's your job to figure out how to make that work, so deal with it." While there may be some initial hemming and hawing, the concerns Jack raises won't be show stoppers.

I think there are two reasons to believe that internal weblogs will actually prove to be a better solution than email and newsgroups for this category of concerns. First, weblogs directly address the out of context problem created by email and newsgroup and exploited in discovery proceedings. Weblogs keep the context visible both in terms of the chronological and archive structures of the weblog format and in terms of the practice of linking across weblogs. Second, is the point that Jack raises at the end. The public nature of weblogs does encourage more attention to "writing smart" than email and newsgroup formats. It helps keep you focused on the notion that you are writing for the record. I sometimes wonder what would have happened at Enron if they had done more of their thinking "in public." If an extensive weblog culture had been in place, could they have done wha they did? I don't know what the answer to that thought experiment might be. But if you had a choice between joining an organization with an active weblog environment or one that discouraged them, which would you choose?

[McGee's Musings]
11:06:52 AM  #  

Retort to Dr. Weinberger.

With Friendsters like that.... After two friends asked me to join Friendster, I finally gave in. It's a well-designed site that enables friends to explore one another's social circles and make new friends. Yet I resent it and other sites like it. I think now I know why: I don't like it when a site assumes that what's implicit can be made explicit without loss. Friendster asks me to do so twice over. First, to jump into Friendster, I have to make explicit a social network that at its heart and at its best is implicit. There's an online social network lying unearthed in... [Joho the Blog]

Each identity system is gonna have their own twist on what a fun experience is.  That's the essense of the difference between each system.  Friendster has all sorts of avatars, fake profiles, spurient data (as we call it) - who become anchor points between 10,000's of friends.  I believe this happened as Friendster's exclusive referral system limited the easy entrance of people into the system.

Another fun thing about Friendster - is when you invite somebody and the system informs you that that person has ALREADY joined, they just didn't link to you as a friend.  It's a whole new mindtrip.  Friendster also supports introducing people to each other, matchs and you can more or less walk up to somebody (virtually) and ask to become their friend - and more times than not - they do (I've now tried it a few times now.)  But only to really interesting people.  It's all about the inherent referral of someone who is your 'friend'.

People feel comfortable when you're identified back to some "trusted" friend.  It works everytime.  Systems like this could easily tie into XPertWeb - right?  And support PingID?  With a Creative Commons license?  Using ENT? And XML-RPC, RSS and OPML.  Of course.

[Marc's Voice]
10:55:27 AM  #  

Jabber & PingID.

                

Well, 15 months after starting PingID, I feel privileged to have the opportunity to connect my past with the future. In this phase of the Jabber/PingID relationship, we've integrated Ping's first product (SourceID - www.sourceid.org) into the Jabber's eXtensible Communications Platform (this integration is being demo'd this week at the RSA conference in SF). The integration enables Jabber to 'federate' it's identity & authentication system via the Liberty Alliance Phase I specifications. 

What does this actually mean? Well, for starters, it means that Jabber customers will now be able to single sign-on to Jabber (even between companies), or launch a Jabber client from a web page without having to re-authenticate one-self when the Jabber client is launched. But that's just the tip of the iceberg!  As the Liberty Alliance specifications progress into Phase II, both the number and power of the identity related applications surrounding identity federation will explode -- and the opportunities for our two companies to collaborate will also significantly increase.

- Andre Durand

About Jabber, Inc.
Jabber, Inc. is the developer of the world's most widely used open platform for extensible instant messaging and presence management applications. Jabber Inc.’s commercial software has been sold and deployed to more than 3 million users. The Jabber Open Source project now has more than 150,000 servers in operation worldwide. Jabber has been adopted in the telecommunications, enterprise and software development markets by customers that include France Telecom, Hewlett-Packard, BellSouth, webMethods, AT&T, Landmark Graphics, and Juniper Networks. Jabber, Inc.’s investors include France Telecom (NYSE: FTE), Intel Capital, Intel’s strategic investing arm, and Webb Interactive Services, Inc. (OTCBB: WEBB). Please see www.jabber.com for more information.

About Ping Identity Corporation
Ping Identity (www.pingidentity.com) is a privately held company developing integrated business and technology services for secure identity federation. Ping Identity is the corporate sponsor of SourceID (www.sourceid.org), the leading open source implementation of the Liberty Alliance specifications for identity federation and the driving force behind the PingID Network (www.pingid.com), the first member-owned, technology-neutral identity network.

[Marc's Voice]
10:52:34 AM  #