There is too much information around for anyone to read all of it. This is why numerous tools have emerged to help people manage, organize, classify, filter and sort information. RSS has been a great step towards personal information independance, allowing individuals greater freedom as to what heir informations sources could be and how often new data was made available.
Breathing Through
Even the best RSS reader will not prevent one from feeling overwhelmed by bits of information. Social news rating websites have stepped in to help people go a bit further and order and give meaning to information together. Digg, Wikio, Newsvine are as many examples of ways to sort information. Wikipedia has done a great job to bring the right information to the right place for the people who are looking after it, or at least it does so most of the time.
Going Further
However, even with the help of those tools irrelevant information keeps popping out most of the time. Could this be avoided? Probably not. Could this be reduced a bit more? Certainly. Interactions between people about blog articles could be centralized for a group in one place to let them discuss and share it more easily. This is exactly what a product like XWiki Watch is aiming at doing, providing a team with a place where it will be able to share information and enrich it collaboratively.
Staying Ahead
The right question however is, why are all those information flows so important? Because, in today's world, information provides you with an advantage over your competitors. It has amways done so, but something changed recentlty: the speed at which relevant data can be exploited. A factory can be built quicker than ever before. Companies have to remain reactive not to get out of touch with their customer bases. A wiki provides a tool to let you communicate with the people who buy your products. Somehow, in their collective knowledge lies the products you will be offering them tomorrow. Isn't that worth a try?
Want more ? Stay tuned.
© Guillaume Lerouge for WikiBC
1 comment:
Wikis may be simple to use, but not so easy to get everyone else to use. CMSWire has a post that gives a few strategies for integrating wikis into office life.
Another tool for businesses looking to get the most out of their wiki is Wiki Patterns, covered here. It assigns patterns to users' behavior on the wiki, provides a classification system of concepts they've created, and lets people see the mistakes that others have made before them. Less time wasted = more effective (and profitable!) enterprises. What's not to like?
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