TED, which stands for Technology, Education and Design, though the scope has broadened out over the years, is undoubtedly the most significant site of its kind. It hosts a multitude of categorized videoed presentations by respected people from all kinds of fields covering a host of topics. TED has the taglines “Ideas worth spreading” and “Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world“. If you’ve never seen it, I thoroughly recommend spending some time investigating it in much more detail. I’ve been using it for some years.
FORA.tv is a similar site to TED. It too has videos of presentations, and discussion, given by noted people. Its tagline is “Fuel the Enlightenment“. I was rather pleased when I stumbled upon it. Also worth spending some time browsing the content.
I recently posted about Nurphy, a way of having a public ‘conversation’ that is saved, kind of like a recorded email discussion that others can access and even join in with. Now I’ve found something that parallels Nurphy, except it’s about a voice conversation; a sort of way of saving an asynchronous phone conversation that multiple people can participate in.
You can make your discussions private, open or restricted and you can create talkgroups specifically so that others can join to discuss within a particular topic of interest, similar to a discussion in a forum topic.
The talkgroups are categorized so that you can find one you might want to join in with, or you can use the search facility. Also you can list the most recently active, the newest, or the ones with most members.
You can follow the discussions using the RSS feed or you can squirt the feed out into iTunes and follow it as a podcast using the useful iTunes link.
Asynchronous discussions can have some benefits, for example they provide you with time to think before you add in your opinion.
I can imagine using Voxopop instead of trying to record a Skype conversation, or for easier interviewing of multiple participants in geographically separated locations and/or in different time zones. Also, this will allow questions to be put to large communities for responses and discussions. I can see me making some use of this service professionally.#
I haven’t tested this yet, but it has just occurred to me that you should be able to participate using a mobile device, an iPod Touch with a mic fitted for example.
Google just yesterday announced their new facility, Sidewiki. It’s a plugin for Firefox and IE at the moment, Chrome is to follow (where it is anticipated to be in by default).
I’ve been using similar functions provided by Diigo (the bookmarking and annotation service) for some time now. Just part of what you can do with Diigo is comment on a whole page using a sidebar facility. And this is pretty much what Sidewiki does.
“Why does this change anything?”, you might ask. Well, even though Diigo is a fantastic service (which I’ve written about here and here, and talked about here), it just hasn’t got the penetration required (yet) to achieve its full potential. Whereas Google has the pulling power.
“So why is being able to leave or read other people’s comment significant?” Well, this makes every page on the web is collaborative. Every page has the potential for dialogue and discussions to take place, informing and adding to the original content; re-enforcing the premise or refuting it.
Every corporate page now had the potential to have consumer comments presented alongside. Every PR disaster can instantly be commented on, on your own website, by thousand or tens of thousands of disgruntled customers. And remember, customers trust each other and their opinions more than they trust the corporate stance; think of Customer Reviews on Amazon.
The renowned analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, has said that a Social Strategy needs to be developed, now. He highlights three point in his web strategy blog:
Shift your thinking: recognize that you don’t own your corporate website –your customers do.
Develop an internal strategy and ongoing program.
Don’t just hesitate or be reactive to negative content –embrace social content now.
But consider the potential for education. You can now have asynchronous discussions on topics in-situ with renowned experts in the area, from universities and industry, researchers, students, school children, or anyone who is interested.
