May 05, 2008, 1:13 PM — We live in a world that is fixated on the idea of aggregating eyeballs together with the aid of technology. Advertising is the obvious example of eyeball aggregation writ large. Print, radio, TV and now Internet technologies are heavily involved in finding better, faster, cheaper ways of getting more and more eyeballs tuned in to particular world views, particular value propositions, particular products. At a blogging event I attended recently, Michael Breidenbrücker put it bluntly in the title of his talk: "Let's face it: Web 2.0 is all about advertising".
I agree, but only after expanding the definition of the term "advertising". This expanded usage of the term leads to opportunities to use Web 2.0 technologies on intranets too. But, I am getting ahead of myself. I need to expand the term first.
Let's talk about Open Source. Everyone knows what it is now. Why does it work? Well, I believe that one of the main reasons why it works is that all issues/bugs are out in the open for all to see. Sites like sourceforge and Tigris and Google code take all the stuff to do with your software project and open it up for all to see. Linus' Law then takes over: "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."
Paraphrased to suit my purposes, it goes like this: "given enough advertising of the current state of something, all remaining bugs in it are shallow." Now. Extend that idea to your own situation in your own organization on your own intranet.
Your organization produces content of various forms. On its way to completion, it invariably passes through a stage where it has "bugs". It does not matter that the content is not software. It could be presentation slides, proposals, internal documentation... Historically, this material has been siloed into departments or project teams because there was just no sane way for everybody to be involved in all content. Think of the rain forests. Think of the logistical nightmares.
The intranet changes the logistics aspect of this dramatically. All content that wants to be advertised for contribution, can be advertised and distributed, at very little organizational cost.
So, the next time you are planning a document of some description, think of it as an intranet-only open source project for a moment. Think of posting it on the intranet and making it searchable. Give it a blog. Give it a WIKI. Give it an RSS feed. Give it a mailing list. Give it an issue tracker. Give it a versioning content repository. Actively advertise that you are open for comment and open for fixes to the content.
Intranets have eyeballs too. If you want to leverage them, you must advertise your work. Without advertising, all bugs are your problem. With advertising, the bugs are still yours but more people can potentially solve them. The quality of the feedback you get will vary wildly from scenario to scenario but the technology is now in place to put that feedback loop in place.
You might be pleasantly surprised at the results.
