Silos, core services and buzz directors

I mentioned silos in my previous post and I think it's worth expanding on what effect they have on the business model of something like ruralnet|online.

In the beginning there was the flower and its petals

and it was good. There wasn't much of an internet, you had to dial up to get it and once you got there, it was all brochure websites that never changed anyway. The people behind Facebook were still in short trousers so connecting with real people had to be done another way - extranets. ruralnet|online was the first extranet and others then grew (the petals) including CAN Online (the Community Action Network). One of the strengths of these extranets were the 'core' services that were shared between networks (Experts Online, xPRESS Digest etc). In addition other tailored services like mentor matching could be added depending on the needs of the individual network.

However from the users' perception, the things they used every day - email, calendars, tailored services were the 'core' services and the other shared services were on the periphery.

With a change in technology, many of these perceived core services could be provided elsewhere and indeed they can either as part of a 'members area' on a website and corporate intranet. However the hidden values and benefits of connecting outside your silo are lost.

One way of addressing this has taken place with a service like Experts Online. We have unbundled this from the extranet offering and can now deliver this to users without having to be part of a network. We do not set up a fresh Experts Online for every new organisation that wants it - they join in and benefit from the archive of questions and answers that already exist. They can also incorporate the service into their own website using a widget.

Instead of forcing users to come to us, we can come to them. Anyway enough of the sales, talk back to the point. The Experts Online model is fairly straightforward - a service that can be sold.

When we get into connecting, networking and of course social networks, things become a little blurry. We know that ruralnet|online will include services like Experts Online and Grantnet, but at its core what is this networking sharing function? (Have a go at describing it in 10 words or less/fewer - it's harder than you think. )

One idea is that is blogging should be at the heart of it - with everyone on ruralnet|online able to post blog items that appear to everyone else. This still requires a fair amount of effort (time, money) to animate on a roughly 100 (readers) : 10 (commenters) :1 (creator) basis.

Some of the questions we hope to explore on here an at the focus groups include are the people that user ruralnet|online now bloggers? Are the rural bloggers already blogging elsewhere and we need to bring them in via aggregation? Will people pay for the privilege of blogging when they can go to Wordpress or Blogger for free?

Do we need buzz directors to keep this going? And how do we measure sucess - (that's the next post!)