Social Software Explored

When I first got started on the web I was pretty good with photoshop.  I worked for a small local ISP in Wakefield, RI.  We started by offering dial-up internet access in 1996 and by 1998 we were heavy into website development.  I was the only developer for the company for the first few years and built some pretty awesome websites (which never made a dime).

I wasn’t a real graphics designer but I knew how to use software and I was pretty creative. At the time Adobe sold Photoshop and Illustrator as separate products and it was way before the Macromedia merger and years before the concept of Creative Suite. I don’t know the exact cost of Photoshop back then but I have to guess that it was a few hundred dollars.  Without Photoshop, our web development team would have never been successful.

Contributors were developers back then

In the early stages of the web successful developers were usually either really savvy technical people with a bit of creativity or full on designers that had taken courses in college on digital development.  We have come a long way since then.  Now almost everyone is a creator.  Almost every computer you buy comes with some sort of content creation suite (Apple obviously leads this charge with their “iLife” series).  If you are savvy developer and you have ever used these “out of the box” applications you can see their limitations pretty quickly.  iWeb is no Dreamweaver.

Contributors are not developers anymore

The major issue with Creative Suite is that Adobe does a great job selling to large corporate companies that have many “talented” content contributors but doesn’t really offer a lot of options for the growing general community of contributors like Stella.  She maintains a Lego Indiana Jones walk-through site called BrickRaiders.net (along with a few other similar sites).  As you can see, she spends a lot of time and does a really good job organizing and styling her content.  She says she’s “… considered Adobe Creative Suite and other similar programs, but to be honest, I just can’t afford them.”

Nick Bilton quotes Sarah Rotman Epps from Forester, in the NY Times article entitled “Where Does Adobe Go From Here”:

“Adobe’s main business comes from its enterprise software and its massive sales to corporations,” Ms. Rotman Epps said. “They might have to offer a less expensive and stripped down set of software for standard consumers.”

Opportunity knocks

I agree with Sarah.  Content contributors are everywhere and they are getting more savvy and are starting to expect more from the software they use.  Especially, when it comes to publishing their content to the web.  If Adobe (and others) want to make it in the next stages of the Internet growth, they must consider the general consumer as an opportunity and learn how to address their needs.

Blogging for money may be a dangerous use of resources but what about ‘trolling’ for money.  Today I came across this awesome blog post by Jeremiah Owyang (Senior Analyst for Forrestor) – someone that I follow on Twitter and a blog that I enjoy reading.

The post (entitles CMS Horror Stories, and Your Soon-To-Be ‘Legacy’ Community Platform) is a real good read for anyone who is in the midst of a CMS selection.  In his post, Jeremiah asks to very key questions:

1) I’d love to hear from you about your CMS horror stories, feel free to leave a comment below, go ahead, vent away.

2) Are you deploying a community platform for your web strategy at your company? What are you doing to plan for the long term 5+ years impacts of this system in regards to the rest of the enterprise web strategy?

I work at PaperThin (makers of the CommonSpot Content Server) and I have to say that Jeremiah opened my eyes with this post to an amazing sales opportunity.  One that I am sure smart people are deploying (and we will be shortly as well) – and that is ‘Blog Trolling’.  A quick search on Technorati for CMS returns over 22K results.  Each search result a Blog with some information about Content Management Systems.

One of the most difficult thing to do in the world of sales is to find your target market.  What better way to find a customer interested in a CMS then on a blog post (an open communication channel) that is discussing pains or issues with their current CMS.  In solution selling this would give us the opportunity to “Recognize the pain” – for most of the people who post comments on Jeremiah’s post they are admitting their pain publicly.

Best thing about comments on a blog – since most people are constantly trying to sell their blog to readers of other blogs, they include the link in their comments (just click on the persons name).  Can’t fault a sales person from e-mailing or calling (most blogs extend contact information) you and saying:

“Hey, saw here that you were having difficulty with your current CMS and that you feel like it is ‘inflexible’.  Give me a half hour and I will show you how flexible our application is …”

In all honesty, when you post comments on a blog you are openly asking someone to contact you.  You are begging for it.

Note: More on his second question (about your Community Platform) a bit later.