LinkedIn, Plaxo, Spock, SecondLife and Facebook

Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) and other enterprise technologists get more done together than they do apart.   So how do today’s CTOs collaborate?  For many, collaboration is not via a specific tool, but is through an ubiquitous pervasive environment that includes VOIP, VTC, IM, e-mail, blogs, wiki’s and of course face to face meetings.

Some new tools in the collaboration environment include LinkedIn, Plaxo, Spock, SecondLife and Facebook. The following are some thoughts/perspectives based on how I use those tools:

LinkedIn.com is good for keeping up with the careers of friends and associates.   It has also been of use in helping me introduce myself to others since I can connect to a new associate via LinkedIn and they can see my extended profile.   Conversely it helps me learn a bit more about who I might be meeting with so I frequently check LinkedIn before I meet with someone new.   If a CTO was only going to pick one online social networking site to use I would recommend this one.

But, no one picks just one tool anymore.

Plaxo.com began as a site that would help users keep each other informed when their contact details change, and it is still pretty good at that.  It also provides contact and calendar and task synchronization services, but I don’t use those.  My data synchronization needs are far more complex and I found when I turned on Plaxo agents on all my devices I started generating duplicate entries.   The value to me now of Plaxo is in periodically reviewing it to see when friends have updated their blogs.  I also point my blog to Plaxo and some friends tell me that is how they read it so I’ll stay a member.   One good thing about Plaxo is that it can automatically synchronize with LinkedIn, so it is not hard to keep up to date.   My view:  if someone invites you to join Plaxo, you should accept.

Spock.com
seems to have grown really rapidly.  I started getting invites from associates and tried it out myself.  But for the life of me I don’t see what value I’ll ever get from it.   They claim to make it easier for professionals to find you, but if a CTO is in LinkedIn and has a blog or webpage then you are already discoverable, so I wonder about the value add.  But, like Plaxo, if someone invites you to join you are not
risking much by signing up.

SecondLife is just the beginning of future ways to collaborate.  I recommend all CTOs dive in so you can learn both the strengths and weaknesses of this environment.   Some of the strengths include the ability to virtually check out technologies from all the major IT vendors.  Some of the weaknesses include the very primitive ways of finding information and the very slow ways of interacting with others (mostly via keyboard).    So, although it is not the best way to find others it is a great way of thinking about the future and I recommend all try it out.

Facebook is used by an increasing number of technologists.  I use it for a couple purposes, including the fact that I need to stay up to speed with the technology of things like Facebook.  I also point my blog feed to Facebook so what I publish gets pushed to my page and is visible to those I connect with (this is a feature similar to Plaxo’s).  I get some traffic from Facebook to my blog and this was very easy to set up so that was worthwhile.  I also use Facebook to stay up to speed with the whereabouts of some friends, a few of which are very mobile.

My bottom line:  CTOs should be in LinkedIn and probably Facebook.  Other tools are just ok.

And a thought to close this post: Technologists are especially fortunate when it comes to collaboration, since increasingly collaboration is enabled by the technology we should be completely knowledgeable about to begin with.    Some challenges exist in moving these technologies to enterprises, but that is the topic of a future post.

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