First … no answers here.  Only questions and ideas based on past HR experience, observations and some familiarity with interactive and participative dynamics online.

Back in January in one of the sections of a post titled “Exploring the HR Management Framework for Enterprise 2.0” I offered up the following:

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Employee Performance

Performance management has been a hot-button issue in most enterprises for a long time.  At its best, a well-designed and disciplined approach to performance management can play a positive and constructive role in delivering sustained high performance, and can be central to creating a performance oriented culture in the enterprise.

All too often, however, performance management schemes serve to remind us that too many workplaces are the adult version of grade school, with report cards and a parent-like boss who has unwanted power over employee’s future and fate.

360-degree feedback processes (soliciting input on performance from subordinates, colleagues, superiors and even external customers and liaisons) have been around long enough now to have most of the kinks worked out, and are probably a decent pre-cursor to forms of ‘crowdsourcing’ input on employees’ performance.  Many (most ?) of the social computing / collaboration platforms out there have features and functionality designed to offer support to gathering and processing information about peoples’ performance.

The culture of an enterprise is an all-important aspect of why and how performance management is used.  I expect that this aspect will become more important as social computing and collaboration continue to grow and spread.

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Let’s talk a little bit more about how managing peoples’ performance might be practiced in an interconnected, interactive (and cross-silo / cross-organization) and more transparent organization.

Sharing information and building pertinent and applicable knowledge from that sharing is one of the core (and still much-discussed) tenets of knowledge management (KM) – the buzzword that won’t go away.  Sharing information .. links, content, opinions, specific expertise, etc. … is also at the core of using social computing in the enterprise.  Some of the skepticism about being able to control it comes from not understanding clearly how it will fit into, or with, existing business processes, and I suspect that there is an accompanying fear that it may upend or distort some or mamy business processes, if the inmates are handed the keys to the gates.

At the same time, we are at the back end of at least 20 years of calling for breaking down or at a minimum de-rigidifying the walls of specialized functional silos in most hierarchical organizations.

In some sense, the invaders, or the barbarians if you will, are at the castle gates clamoring for the gatekeepers to let them in.  They’ll argue, with some reason, that customers have more power, and that empowered and trusted employess can and want to contribute more to any given organization’s effectiveness.

So … let’s assume that Enterprise 2.0 implementations continue to spread and grow.  Let’s further assume that many of them are at least semi-successful, and that net-working in collaboration with flows of information feeding increasing flexible business processes gains more and more traction.  Will we need to begin setting objectives and targets differently, and will that in turn necessitate that in a socially-networked or ’social business’ environment employees’ performance will need to be assessed and managed differently ?

My sense is that the answer is probably Yes.  People will be working differently, and in all likelihood in more interdependent ways than in more traditional teams.

Setting objectives, for example, will probably need to consider more the role and dynamics of the networks that are pertinent .. whether it involves greater connections to/with customers and markets, or to what purpose and degree the work that addresses the objective involves net-working inside the organization.  In other words, I think it will mean considering the nature of the work more than ever before.

Bring an organizational objective down into an individual net-worker’s performance objectives will also require consideration of how she or he works in the relevant networks, and what kinds of contribution are generated from the interaction in which they engage with others in the network(s) that are addressing the organizational objective.

I believe that there are a range of work design tools that can be useful with these issues .. mainly drawn from the organizational development (OD) field, such as the RACI matrix and accountability mapping.  They would need to become more commonly and frequently used, and I suggest that they would become as or more important than the traditional job description, with its assumptions about relatively static tasks and accountabilities.

Competency models are the most recent work design tool (I’ve written briefly about them here) that has become embedded in most workplaces in support of recruitment, employee – performance fit and as a foundation for assessing individual performance.  I also believe that the competencies associated with most roles (and certainly those that operate mainly in networks and with social computing and social networking tools and platforms) will need to be re-visited as the cross-functional, cross-organizational and internal – external connections proliferate.

In terms of actually assessing performance against objectives and required / desired competencies, today’s organizations have a foundation upon which to build.  Many organizations have implemented and have experience with using what is called 360-degree feedback as a core element or the input about demonstrated performance in a role or job.  The 360-degree feedback process can, I think, be reasonably well-adapted to the E2.0 context … the more difficult challenge is articulating the performance objectives in clear and meaningful ways whilst acknowledging that the roles being performed are participating in a range of networks and flows of information and activities.

Additionally, most (if not all) E2.0 collaboration platforms have or will have mechanisms that track activities, whether around objectives or around issues using tags, click counts, and elements of social network analysis (SNA), organizational network analysis (ONA), or value network analysis (VNA).  As organizations acquire more experience and expertise in using these concepts, I think there will come to be a base of information that will enable new forms of ROI .. namely what I and others have called Return on Investment in Interaction (ROII).

Performance management in organizations has always been a complex set of sociological and political processes. It doesn’t promise to become any easier, but there are signals on the horizon that suggest some ways forward.

Like I said .. no answers, just ideas and questions at this stage.  Beyond the ideas outlined above, there are more far-reaching ideas and issues being discussed in some of the conversation circles I inhabit that are examining more human-centered notions of knowledge work and how they may come together in new forms of organization. Those ideas and issues will no doubt continue to evolve as collaboration platforms and the Web continue to grow their impacts upon today’s organization and the work that is carried out in those organizations.

I’d be really interested to hear what you think.

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Foursquare means business. The 1-year-old startup now has a huge brand — Starbucks — using its platform to test out an experimental customer rewards program.

Starting today, frequent Starbucks visitors who check in at retail locations using Foursquare will earn customer rewards. Although there’s no financial incentive or free coffee to begin with, customers can unlock the “Barista badge” after five checkins.

Of course that’s just the beginning; the coffee behemoth plans to use Foursquare as a testing ground for alternative reward strategies and to unlock “the pulse of the experience” for each store.

If you think this is a straight-up play to offer location-based mobile coupons, think again. The New York Times Bits Blog writes that the company is “hoping to use Foursquare to provide even more meaningful prizes, like invitations to special events, photo-sharing or online reputation scores.”

As Starbucks figures out how best to leverage the checkin, we have to step back and appreciate the magnitude of this decision. With Starbucks on board, there’s no question that Foursquare has all the tools necessary to appeal to — and reach — a mainstream audience. Plus, now that a second company (the first was Tasti D-Lite) is tapping into Foursquare as a loyalty program platform, the additional proof of concept will pave the way for other businesses to follow suit.

[img credit: Bits blog]

Tags: foursquare, MARKETING, starbucks

The number of unique viewers of online video increased 10.5% year-over-year, according to The Nielsen Company, from 127.6 million unique viewers in February 2009 to 141 million in February 2010.

Among the top Web brands ranked by unique viewers in February, CNN Digital Network (+30.6%), MSN/Windows Live/Bing (+21.4) and AOL Media Network (+17.0%) showed the largest gains.

Note: Effective with June 2009 data reporting, Nielsen has made several enhancements to the VideoCensus service, including a panel that is 8 times larger, more granular reporting and improved accuracy and representativeness. These enhancements provide the highest quality data to our clients and the marketplace. For some sites, trending of previously-reported data with current results may show percentage differences attributable to these product enhancements and should only be compared directionally.

Nielsen VideoCensus Methodology and Metrics:
Nielsen VideoCensus combines patented panel and census research methodologies to provide an accurate count of viewing activity and engagement along with in-depth demographic reporting. Online video viewing is tracked according to video player, which can be used on site or embedded elsewhere on the Web. For example, if a “Saturday Night Live” clip from NBC.com is embedded on a personal blog, that video would be attributed to NBC because of the NBC video player.

A unique viewer is anyone who viewed a full episode, part of an episode or a program clip during the month. A stream is a program segment. VideoCensus measurement includes progressive downloads and does not include video advertising.

On Friday, Netflix announced on its corporate blog that it has settled a lawsuit related to its Netflix Prize, a $1 million contest that challenged machine learning experts to use Netflix's data to produce better recommendations than the movie giant could serve up themselves.

The lawsuit called attention to academic research that suggests that Netflix indirectly exposed the movie preferences of its users by publishing anonymized customer data. In the suit, plaintiff Paul Navarro and others sought an injunction preventing Netflix from going through the so-called "Netflix Prize II," a follow-up challenge that Netflix promised would offer up even more personal data such as genders and zipcodes.

"Netflix is not going to pursue a sequel to the Netflix Prize," says spokesman Steve Swayze. "We looked at this, we heard some dissension and so we've settled it, resolved the issues and are moving on."

Netflix's decision to forestall the so-called "Netflix Prize II" was part of the settlement agreement, says Scott Kamber, the plaintiff's attorney. Also part of the settlement and per industry norms, Netflix is not admitting any wrongdoing.

According to the company's blog post, Netflix has also settled an until now-unknown negotiation with the Federal Trade Commission.

The financial terms--if any--remain undisclosed, but Kamber has been involved in multi-million dollar privacy suits before, including the $10 million Facebook Beacon settlement.

The movie rental company captured the world's attention when it announced the Netflix Prize in October 2006, offering a reward to anyone who could improve upon Netflix's personalized movie recommendations by a 10% margin. That mandate wasn't achieved for close to three years and, at one point, was generally thought to be impossible.

Several competing teams ended up joining forces and the contest quickly became so close that nobody knew which of two amalgamated teams would end up on top. It was a mashup of three competing teams, dubbed "BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos," that ended up taking home the check from Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings last September.

The Netflix Prize's great draw--and ultimate flaw-- was capturing the world's imagination and some of its greatest minds. Like the folkloric John Henry and the steam engine, the contest drew machine learning experts from leading academic and private research firms and the attention of publications like The New York Times and Forbes.

James Bennett, then vice president of recommendations at Netflix, issued the initial proclamation at a highly specialized industry conference in Spain. In the end, 50,000 contestants wound up participating.

"We thought that it would generated some big interest among a couple hundred machine learning experts," says Swayze. "It became a news-making machine."

The surprise popularity of the contest, however, came with the unintended consequence of also gaining attention from privacy researchers like Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov, who showed that a second set of information such as comments on the popular Internet Movie Database could help third parties triangulate the identity of the "anonymous" Netflix customers.

Kampor, who brought the suit, says that it was in part the massive attention to the Netflix prize that brought clients to him and compelled some of them to seek an injuction against the announced follow-up. He argues that his clients don't want to prevent the kind of technological and academic innovation that Netflix was trying to encourage, but rather just want to make sure Netflix's customers' privacy is protected.

"My clients specifically expressed an interest in making sure that those opportunities were not foreclosed," says Kamber. "The resolution allows Netfix to potentially tap into that community in the future, but do so in a way that makes customers confident that their information is going to be safeguard."

Interestingly, privacy expert Larry Ponemon says that Netflix could have likely avoided the matter altogether by using a technique called "data masking" that would have randomized its data set while still keeping the data relevant to developers.

A spokesperson for Dataguise, a data masking company, says that it would have cost the company around $50,000 for a license.

First, we'd like to thank all 596 survey respondents and the many Open Thread commenters who gave such interesting and valuable feedback in our recent post "Should Social Media Experts Be Required to Know Their Tech?"

Over the past couple days, we've been able to put together a decent picture and identify some knowledge gaps and points of confusion for many would-be social media experts. But first, let's address why some of the RWW staff - and many of our readers, some of whom must hire social media experts - feel it's important for even the most marketing-oriented of consultants to have a rudimentary understanding of the workings of the Web, including its ecosystem of companies and applications.

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Konqueror is a popular browser among Linux users. The browser Mozilla hasn't been supported since 2006, having been replaced by Firefox and, to a lesser extent SeaMonkey, both products of the Mozilla Foundation.

The Web does a lot more and a lot less than the average bear would think.

For the most part, we humans have a hard time admitting that we're "average bears," though. Before you earn the moniker of "guru" or "expert" or even "professional/consultant," you need to be far above average in your knowledge of the Web, not just how to get a few thousand Twitter followers or how to increase sales by X percent through Facebook promotions. Those things can come down to common sense or secondhand advice from true pioneers in social media.

Generally speaking, a social media expert will have been around the block long enough to know a CMS from a CPU, to know a bit about servers and DDoS attacks, to know what kinds of operating systems and browsers and even hardware the tech elite prefer to use (or debate over). And the good ones will remain humble enough to keep learning and will always admit there's more to know. Some of the wisest social media advisors I've know will ask to not be called experts, in fact, for how can any one person truly be an expert on something as vast as the Internet?

Flip Side of the Coin: Imagine someone telling you he was a broadcast media expert. That includes television - national, local, cable, satellite, you name it - and all kinds of AM/FM and satellite radio. It might also include pre-show advertisements in movie theaters. That also includes media spend, account management and metrics for all kinds of ads, from branding to direct response. Essentially, the person is claiming to be a one-man ad agency - an impossible claim at best and a fraudulent one at worst.

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Start listening to people who disagree with you. Search the farthest corners of the Web for new people and new ideas. Stop hanging out in echo chambers and start telling yourself every day, "I know that I know nothing." That phrase seems to have done Socrates some good; chances are it could help you, too.

Haskell is a rare and complicated programming language. .NET sounds more familiar, but it's a framework, not a language.

In almost every social media project that doesn't involve something as simple as setting up a Twitter account, you'll have to work with and rely on the expertise of developers.

You might not want to learn a programming language yourself - it can take a lot of time, which is a precious commodity. But if you don't know the basics of what programming languages can and cannot do, as well as what languages your developer colleagues use, you'll end up frustrated and inefficient. And the aforementioned developer colleagues might feel disrespected as well; being asked to deliver fantastical products or results from someone with no understanding of your work isn't a fun experience.

Flip Side of the Coin: Imagine a CTO telling you, an interactive marketer, to run a direct mail campaign and get 500,000 new registrations. It could be done, perhaps, but it's not efficient or a good way to use your skills. Even if he told you he wanted 500,000 new signups, is that a realistic goal? Is it based on current adoption trends? Does this guy have any idea what he's asking for?

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Read up on the basics of programming languages; spend a few hours here and there on Wikipedia and O'Reilly books. Then, ask questions of developers you trust. Don't be afraid to "sounds dumb" or be inquisitive.

It may seem to be the ad-free fluffy bunny of the social networking world, but Twitter turned a profit through search deals in 2009.

On occasion, we social media folks make intuitive choices that turn out to be dead wrong. While there's a lot to be said for making bold choices for your users and clients, there's much more value in making solid choices based on observed trends, analyzed data and tested outcomes. In fact, it's plain irresponsible to make recommendations to clients based on feelings rather than facts.

Always challenge yourself to make sure your opinions and advice line up with facts, not the other way around. As a wise man once wrote, "You don't use science to prove that you're right, you use science to become right."

Flip Side of the Coin: Rather than looking at marketing budgets or user traffic, your CEO tells you to spend $1 million on an AdWords campaign because "Google and advertising are where's the money's at online, right?" It seems like a ridiculous gamble with no logical reason or rhyme.

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Test everything you might suggest. Test it over a reasonable period of time, making sure to take peak times into account, and get a reasonable data sample. Learn about A/B and multivariate testing, website analytics, SEO and all the dirty details of traffic and user responses. Most of all, never, ever assume.

Friends and family (and fools) will always be the first to invest in any startup.

Especially if you're communicating with or about startups, you need to understand a little bit about venture capital, if for no other reason than to understand an app or company's place in the market. VCs can sometimes be good barometers of a startup's health or the likelyhood of future success.

Likewise, with regard to our survey question about profitable social media apps and companies, knowing about various stages of development can help you know when to suggest key partnerships. Collaboration between two entities can give a boost to both.

As a strategist, a consultant or any kind of expert, you need to be able to spot a sure bet just as quickly as a sinking ship. And in the startup-filled world of social media, few are better at this all-important task than those with an understanding of tech investment.

Flip Side of the Coin: Your CEO informs you that the company is about to start a marketing campaign on a website that, through your social and industry connections, you know is about to go out of business. In fact, every website of its kind if flailing; you're surprised he wasn't aware of the situation.

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Read ReadWriteStart, of course! We recommend (and frequently interview and comment on) various brilliant VCs, angels and experienced entrepreneurs on this channel.

We hope you've found this information entertaining and informative. The remaining questions on the poll were, by and large, answered correctly. There still seems to be some confusion on the definition of the word "hacker," but I'm convinced that one will simply take more soapboxing on my part.

What words of advice do you have to share with your less technical colleagues in social media? How can we all improve our game online while making the Internet a better, smarter place? Let us know in the comments.

We do a decent amount of social media coverage here at Ars, but not everything that happens with Facebook, Twitter, and the like is worth its own story. Sometimes, though, we happen across things that make us say "huh, that's interesting." It turns out there are a lot of things we thought we knew about social media users, but not all of them are true. Here are a few tidbits we gathered that may surprise some of you.

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