Audience Participation Please – the new Net Reality Show

I am not Nostradomus obviously.  But I can predict a few things following patterns and observations. It is like watching a movie or play, interpreting the plot and predicting the end of the story. As we all become part of the show, interacting with software over the web, it is as if we are in a large, audience participation reality show.

Today, software is designed to connect, communicate and infer actions that can optimize effort and provide value to users and customers. As we evolve past the decades of designing software to serve the "system" or "machine", we transcend to software that begins serving us in new ways.  Like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Twitter and Facebook, the software offers us a look at events that were never captured before.  The structure and collection of data is information itself.  Like who viewed my profile and how many messages do I have to read?  Who are my fans?  I can't sleep until I get my unread message count down to something reasonable.  Software today is no longer about feeding the monster "system" or "machine", like an ERP or CRM, but interacting with the world.  The information management and tracking systems is slowly losing the level of importance we once believed was strategic when services are obtained to replace functions from cash flow management, credit card purchasing, procurement management, refunds, ecommerce, opportunity management, project management, grant management, and on and on and on.
 
We are now seeing software systems evolve and focus on collaboration and work flows that no one would have contemplated just a few short years ago because of the implications of the net effect and sharing information.  Meeting wizard, desktop sharing, video streaming, simulations, voice over IP, cloud integration services, shared repositories, content conversion and much much more are delivering more value and alternatives to the systems deployed and operational across organizations. All Pretty cool.  Blogging is one of them.  Social networking is obviously another category.  New forms of news and event tracking like Twitter is another.  Second life and other virtual worlds are colliding with reality, as if we are evolving to a MATRIX like world (the original movie).  Are we connected?  Or not?  Who is the architect anyway? 

The new types of software that lets me communicate to the world and connect to others would not be considered enterprise.  Yet, if for one minute a President or CAO would be disconnected from his or her Blackberry or iPhone, the whole world would stop for them.  An organization's business processes and operations are not optimized around Facebook and Twitter, right?  Well, we could have said that about websites and email a few short years ago.  Now, we have content management and entire software systems to manage how an organization exists on the web and interfaces with it's stakeholders through distributed components and networks that just connect. 

As an individual, I can track what is going on across various communities.  Millions and millions do it.  Who finds my stuff interesting beyond my wife, kids and friends?  Well, keeping track of who visits and views is already upon us.  I can track things for free and I can share things in the virtual world that lets people assimilate my thoughts and information.  My blogging, like many others is a great example of that.  I am not doing it for the system or feeding machine though, but to express myself and to share insights across a community.  If someone finds what I write helpful, I achieved my goal. If no one does, who cares, because there is no real cost?  I can still feel good about expressing my thoughts and documenting them for the future.

From this context, we are all part of a larger audience. It is called social networking.  But, it is a form of new entertainment for many.  A new medium of content.

When I consider that my blogs will only be found by someone searching, I digress.  What is a search?   Everything has to be indexed to be found.  When I consider that, I think of my computer and how I have to constantly search for files I codified at one point, saved in a folder and then can't find it, without remembering some part of the name or date or source.  My memory is not as good as it once ways.  Why can't the computer help me with that?  It will.

The implication though is that software and evolution of the net today is taking us beyond working for the drudgery of working for "machine" or "system", but it is serving our purpose more than previous generations.  And, whether I am using Amazon to buy a book or computer or TV, software today is designed to serve users and their needs.  It remembers me.  And, my profile.  And, my purchases. And, my posts.  The movement from record keeping to self service to software as a service helps users live and work.  It is still evolving.  It is just the tip of the iceberg.  Since what we are also seeing is the trail of use and how that impacts our thinking and behavior.  We have multiple profiles on multiple platforms all over the web.  We have information summarized across systems that creates a virtual profile of our activities like footprints in a muddy field.  My USAIR profile is an example of preferences on how they can help me.  Combine that with my profile on Hilton and Marriott and what happens?

Google page rank and the relevance of information linked to content tries to answer search requests and finding information, media, books, etc.  How does a content search help us?  Does it change our thinking?  Does it alter our behavior?  Do we make new assumptions?  For example, Google page rank drives SEO and efforts to stack the deck.  Everyone who builds a website and wants a presence to be found, seeks to have relevance.  This in turn feeds new types of software to optimise keywords and content organization.  It motivates us to connect and get listed.  In contrast, when we use to have analog phones and the phone company published yellow and white pages, many wanted and preferred not to be listed.  We feared for our privacy. 

We change behavior and influence the systems we utilize and the people interacting with them, which in turn become even more abstract and complex as a result. We impact each other. Like a reality TV show where the actors are uninhibited and intertwined.

I can see nine people viewed my Linkedin profile over the last week.  What does that mean?  Who are they?  Should I care?  Is that good?  All of a sudden, I am seeking information I never knew existed or cared about.  On Facebook, I see comments and photos and questions shared.  I get invitations, suggestions and applications telling me who is doing what today by the minute.  Do I have time to feed the new system?  Can I answer all the emails I am getting from all the systems I am exposed in?  Is it productive for me to even go down this path?  Something to contemplate.  But, one assumption we always seem to make, because we are connected, is that not everyone is.  The digital divide is like parallel universes. They don't intersect, except for a few who venture to cross boundaries.

Today's software systems are all evolving with the implications of connectivity, network effect, virtual profiles and relevance. Where enterprise software systems evolve in this new era of reality will be important to organizations that rely on them for standard practices that may be obsolete by new forms of connectivity and relevance. People will spend less time in the systems designed around the business that once was transactional and inhibited by access, connectivity and complexity because of specialization.   
Tomorrow, software will be designed to extend, project, interpret and even think for us as we transition from users to customers like actors interact on the theater stage. We are all in the online reality show and we watch others as the show unfolds. The audience participation is part of the show. And, none of us, even proprietary enterprise software vendors can stop the show as it unfolds.

I know many of you will say that is an oversimplification.  That is ok.   I just wanted to put the thoughts out there.