Google Aardvark purchase has expert finder potential

Ron - great to point out this acquisition (actual news) vs the buzz on Buzz (a train-wreck which has already been abandoned by many early adopters).

It’s a combination of static and dynamic content that makes useful and sustainable expertise management/location happen. Some static content, such as your resume/CV, combined with various activity/interest indicators, such as e-mail, content creation, re-use, collaboration, blogging, microblogging, Q&A, etc. is how one can build an “information-rich” system to tap in locating experts.

Any single channel to gather this insight is doomed to failure, doesn’t matter whether it’s static or dynamic. Feedback loops to indicate whether content is used, re-used, enhanced, corrected, etc., is one of the more modern areas to be added on to this - and an area where "social collaboration" can easily provide value on top of the more static/long-term information underneath.

I started covering this kind of technology in the 2000-2002 timeframe, when people like Tacit (now since acquired), SRD (acquired by IBM), askMe (which still exists, to my astonishment), Contact Networks Corp (acquired by Thomson Reuters) and others were first getting out of the gate.

Unfortunately, as we see time and time again, the ROI for much of the work under the Enterprise 2.0 umbrella is difficult to sell/quantify, and expertise even more so. So, along with prediction markets, even though there is great potential value (if done well), the interest in experts/expertise has been buried under the more broad, and perhaps less valuable in the end, “social watercooler” that many seem to get caught up in.

From time to time I argue that if you flip this upside down, it may be far MORE useful to create a “newbie locator” service, such as new hires, and specifically pair them up with the experts. This can feedback/forward in both directions, as even experts still have more to learn, and a fresh perspective may get them to re-think the subject/problem at hand. Loops, feedback, and that’s right, emergence!

There’s a presentation I gave many times in the 2002-2004 timeframe, and have since update off and on. It’s slightly outdated as far as the possible commercial solutions (since there hasn’t been much direct focus on this), but still, hopefully of some use.

See: http://www.slideshare.net/dan.keldsen/build-smarter-internal-and-external-communities - Build Smarter Internal and External Communities - on communities and networks as Relationship Intelligence (rather than Business Intelligence, etc.).

Relating as well, see http://www.slideshare.net/dan.keldsen/enterprise-20-knowledge-management-20 - Is Enterprise 2.0 = Knowledge Management 2.0? - which works in the connection between “old school” KM and Enterprise 2.0, and a fair amount on emergence/loops.

We’ll see what Google does with Aardvark – expect it will remain more consumer-focused in the short-term, but eventually be folded into Google Apps. Depends on how quickly Wave/Buzz become stable and more widely adopted in enterprise settings.

Cheers,
Dan