Spam is obviously a fact of life these days, but I can’t help but notice a subtle increase in the amount of unsolicited email hitting my work inbox.

And it’s not just the quantity that is grabbing my attention, but the content too.

You see, this isn’t the usual Viagra or Rolex material but people – I’m guessing salespeople – desparately trying to hit their lead generation quota.

Now I have every sympathy for anyone trying to make a decent living in such uncertain times, but sending unsolicited and untargeted email actually has two effects on me.

Firstly, it’s annoying. Business-to-business marketers think they can get away with email marketing tactics that have been pretty much outlawed for self-respecting business-to-consumer equivalents. Even in this market (the UK) there are some gaping loopholes that allow emails marketing products and services to other businesses a free ride. If we don’t have a relationship that I initiated, then you shouldn’t be sending my email. Period.

Secondly, it’s irrelevant. By casting your net wider I pretty much guarantee that your response ratio will drop. I have no plans to review my developer headcount (none suits fine, right now) or upgrade my IP telephony. Just because your product might save me money doesn’t mean I’m going to be hitting that reply button.

Business-to-business marketing needs to learn a few lessons from its consumer marketing brethren, and realise that its market is in control when times get tough. And that means spending less time selling, and more time listening.

It’s taken a while, but getting both timing and pricing right has been unbelievably difficult. However, for all those without corporate expense accounts that baulked at the price of the hardcover version, I’m relieved to announce that a downloadable PDF version of Enterprise 2.0 is now available from lulu.com for just £9.99/$14.03/€11.15.

This is a complete electronic replica of the printed book in PDF format. None of that anti-social DRM involved – in this hyper-social age I hope I can trust people to respect my copyright.

To buy, you can go directly to: http://bit.ly/enterprise20
For more information, go here: http://bit.ly/enterprise20info

This is a topic I am just starting to explore, so bear with me. I have a couple of hypotheses to play with:

1. The distribution of languages used for content – especially in social media – does not correlate with the distribution of languages of internet users (see chart below).
2. The prevalance of non-English languages online is much higher than most English speakers think.

Discuss.

Newsnight: Paxman’s Dig at Banking Sector

During my Canadian tour last week, I’m proud to say that I used slides just once at the breakfast for Hill & Knowlton clients. The rest of the sessions were all off the cuff.

In response to numerous requests, I put my slide deck on Slideshare.net. Here they are:

I’m afraid they lose a little without my talking over them. If you’d like me to come explain them to your company, please contact me.

At the Enterprise 2.0 breakfast I held for Hill & Knowlton clients in Toronto last week, someone ask me about tools for capturing ideas from sales people with voting and commenting capabilities. Nothing sprang to mind, but I promised I would do some research.

Seems like a bit of an untapped market to be honest*, but one that hits all the buttons is Nosco (www.nosco.dk) from a Danish firm.

Not only does it allow voting and commenting, but it also allows participants to buy and sell shares in the best ideas and run competitions. For sales teams, I think these kinds of features could be ideal. The software can be hosted securely externally (so up and running quickly) or installed on a customer’s own servers.

* Since posting this, Noam Danon left a comment pointing me to QMarkets, another potential candidate. Any more out there I’m missing?

** Add Consensus Point to your list as well. President David Perry informs me that they “actually started developing prediction markets 15 years ago but things *really* started heating up with The Wisdom of Crowds came out.”

In the words of my hosts, I’ve “finally realized where the action is” and will be taking the Enterprise 2.0 roadshow to Canada next week.

In what promises to be a whirlwind tour I’ll be speaking to Hill & Knowlton clients and staff in Toronto on Tuesday 7th, followed by beers at Third Tuesday that same evening. On Wednesday I fly to Ottawa and do the same thing all over again, with Third Tuesday in Ottawa on a Wednesday (these Canucks are crazy guys, aren’t they).

It’s a while since I was last in Canada, but seeing that both the literature review and foreword authors for Enterprise 2.0 are both based there, it seems like a fitting place to begin the tour.

The rest of the year currently sees the roadshow moving on to Paris and Finland in November, and Sweden in December.

Promises to be a busy end to 2008.

In Enterprise 2.0, and indeed as early as June last year, I talk about the benefits of internal micro-blogging using enterprise versions of tools like Twitter.

If this is an area of interest to you (and it probably should be), then I strongly recommend you read two posts from Jeremiah Owyang and Neville Hobson.

In List of enterprise microblogging tools: Twitter for the intranet, Jeremiah has started a list of vendor offerings in the area (currently standing at eight). Well worth watching I think.

Neville takes one of the offerings, Yammer, for a test drive in Twitter for the enterprise from Yammer.

• Tonari no Totoro video

Like blogs, wikis and other social software that has gone before, I advise caution. Make sure you know what you want from such tools (and also what you need in terms of security and control) before diving straight in.

There’s a new review of Enterprise 2.0 in town – this time from Pleon’s Daniel Penton, writing for Simply Communicate who also interviewed me last month.

Daniel’s review is practical and down to earth, a point made clear from the title “Web 2.0 made simple”. He highlights both the Oracle and Janssen-Cilag case studies that feature in the book as examples that “make a very compelling argument for Enterprise 2.0.”

He also singles out the 4Cs Approach that runs through the book, labeling it as “a practical action-led guide to employing social software within organisations.”

I was particularly interested to see Daniel picking up on the increasing friction between business and IT departments that will result as companies try to introduce these tools:

As a result, an initiative often falls over when it gets to the IT department, who are more concerned with maintaining current infrastructure than experimenting with new unproven technologies. This is one of the major challenges of widespread adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise.

He concludes that the book is “a great way to educate people new to the subject while enabling those who are already experienced in the area” and “shows how easy it can (and should) be to start experimenting with Web 2.0 technologies in the workplace.”

Who am I to argue with that?

With the first reviews of Enterprise 2.0 coming in thick and fast, I thought it would be worth highlighting and commenting on them here. I promise I won’t limit it to just positive reviews – I’m more than happy to respond to any criticism as well (although I obviously hope that will be few and far between).

First up is a review from Roy Johnson

, who maintains the excellent Mantex website which is full of excellent resources.

He summarises the book well, explaining that its purpose is to show how the techniques and concepts behind Web 2.0 application can be used to encourage collaboration efforts in secretive, competitive businesses. He comments that to succeed in modern business, managers and directors “must learn to listen and talk to their customers and staff”, be “more agile in their thinking”, “less monolithic in their practices”, and “catch up to new Internet-based activities which can sweep away unwary traditionalists overnight”.

There is one criticism though:

In fact he misses the opportunity to point out that one of the biggest incentives for companies to embrace Web 2.0 software is that much of it is completely free. Almost all major programs are now available in Open Source versions – including such fundamentals as operating systems (Linux) content management systems (Joomla) and virtual learning environments (Moodle).

In the UK, government institutions have invested and wasted billions of pounds after being bamboozled by software vendors. In the education sector alone, VLEs such as Blackboard and WebCT have proved costly mistakes for many colleges and universities. They are now locked in to proprietory systems, whilst OSS programs such as Moodle run rings round them – and are free.

It’s a good point well made. I certainly wasn’t explicit about this. I tend to find that the fact that software is open source or free (which aren’t the same thing) doesn’t make it good. It’s certainly not one of the criteria for success. Sure, it can be an incentive, but my guess is that most businesses would prefer well supported, paid for software that will meet their needs than open source, free software that might not.

Summing up, Roy says:

This is a truly inspirational book which should be required reading for managers, IT leaders, systems analysts, developers, and business strategists in any enterprise, small, medium, and especially large.

I encourage you to read his full review to draw your own conclusions.