Open up your mind and say, ahh...

In part two of Rethinking the Future of Business, we examined the state of social media in business. Once again, we take a look at a recent report published by Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang,”Career Path of the Corporate Social Media Strategist.” As part of a study on social media strategists and the divergent career paths that lie ahead, Owyang reviewed the social framework for socially renowned enterprise businesses as well as corresponding strategies and resources for 2011. The results says more than we may realize at first blush. Most importantly, we’re given a looking glass into the genesis of a next generation business that’s more sociably aware and responsible.

Divide and Conquer

How a business embraces social media and ultimately how it organizes resources around engagement is directly tied to the internal influence of champions and the culture of the business. This discussion accounts for almost the entire second half of Engage. This is a critical discussion that will help businesses excel today and over time. That’s the impact of new media, it’s always new. Social media is simply the latest chapter in its evolution and its effect on business and society.

In his report, Owyang  shares five ways companies currently organize for social media.

Of the 150 businesses Altimeter examined, 41% employed a Hub and Spoke model to support social media. This framework represents a centralized resource for guidelines, governance, best practices, and policies that supports cross-functional teams and business units. In my experience, I’ve also observed the hub and spoke model across most of the businesses I’ve helped. Many times, the hub is represented by a special unit, usually a social media task force or board of advisers made up of stakeholders. This team usually reports directly to the CMO or CEO or in some cases an executive vice president and its members consist of HR, Legal, Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, etc. However, these organizations are rather far along in the new media adoption cycle. And, it should be said, that this is only one stage in the maturation of a social business.

For the more evolved and experienced organizations, the Hub and Spoke model scales to what Altimeter refers to as the “Dandelion” or the multiple Hub and Spoke model. While only 18% businesses are currently structured to support social, we start to see the fluidity of such a schematic. A centralized system allows for effective top-down leadership as well as amplifies the need for harmony and direction.  When we combine the two Hub and Spoke models, 60% of participating organizations represent the foundation for a  majority of social businesses.

Centralization is a key theme in the lion share of participating businesses. 28.8% of companies manage social media in one department, similar to that of corporate communications.  In my work, you’ll see a fusion of the multiple Hub and Spoke archetype combined with this centralized approach.

Altimeter found that almost 11% of organizations are not yet structured around social media. Instead, social is decentralized and this sets the stage for chaos and brand dilution.

Of all of the companies interviewed by Altimeter, only 1.4% claim to run social media from a Holistic methodology.

Considering the level of sophistication combined with varying roles of the social consumer,  perhaps the framework for the future of business looks a bit like this…

The executive management team responsible for the direction of the brand is of course at the center. But now we’re adding a centralized hub for social excellence between executive layers and business units. This model empowers the existing management and execution roles within each division to introduce social elements as they apply to each unique circumstance while still centralizing the resources and intelligence necessary to guide stakeholders. This hub protects the company’s mission and purpose to ensure brand integrity in new media. And, this new resource center maintains best practices, sets policy and governance, introduces new methodologies and guidance, and also provides the training and technology necessary to achieve desirable outcomes.

From Bottom-up to Top-down and Outside-in to Inside-out

Businesses are approaching new media differently and no one formula prevails. But it’s less about what is and more about what needs to be. Social media introduces new or long forgotten elements that serve as the foundation for relationships and affinity.  Over the years it seems that the world of business and media placed process roadblocks, technology and automated intermediaries between the brand and the people who define success. While social media is not the only banner for change, we are given a new opportunity to renew the mission, purpose and commitment to the communities of people that represent our markets.

Culture and leadership are at the root of adoption and ultimately how the organization embraces change. It’s not easy. The truth is that the bigger an organization is, the greater the challenges, and politics, to introduce change. But that doesn’t mean that we should cower in complacency.

Our opportunity is to introduce collaboration internally before we can do so externally. It’s the difference between remodeling and rebuilding.

Businesses must look within in order to clearly see what’s required. What we’ll learn, is that the business of tomorrow takes a human touch and social media are stepping stones to a new era of collaboration both internally and externally. Businesses will have no choice but to lead and respond as the rise of the social consumer upsets the balance of power between brand and customer. It’s up to you to ensure that the organization adapts accordingly. Your experience and vision are instrumental in designing an org chart and workflow that integrate the roles of listening and engagement departmentally and across the company.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Love it or hate it, there’s no debating just how much e-mail has changed the way we communicate.

Since the 1990s, electronic mail has eclipsed snail mail and the fax to become the standard in the business world, and although social media sites are edging in on personal online messaging, e-mail still holds strong in that arena.

You may use it everyday, but how much do you know about e-mail? Do you know who sent the first message? What the biggest webmail provider is in the U.S.? What about the most common Hotmail password?

We’ve found 10 fascinating facts about electronic mail. Have a read, and do share in the comments below any relevant trivia you know on the topic.

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1. What Was the First E-mail Message?

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Ray Tomlinson is credited as being the first person to hit send on a network e-mail message.

Tomlinson had not been specifically tasked to develop e-mail, but he was working out some useful applications for MIT’s ARPANET project (which later evolved into the Internet). He took the time to work on e-mail “mostly because it seemed like a neat idea.”

Sent between two side-by-side computers, the first message was a small step for e-communications, but an important one. Tomlinson says he can’t remember the content of that first message but it likely read “testing 123″ or “QWERTYUIOP” — the letters found on the top line of a QWERTY keyboard.

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2. Where Did the Word Spam Come From?

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The term spam is widely thought to have come from the above Monty Python sketch, where its incessant chanting by Vikings (naturally!) drowns out all meaning.

These days, while the term refers to nuisance e-mail, it seems the phrase pre-dates e-mail as we know it, and has been traced back to online role playing chat rooms from the ’80s called MUDs. Generally, the term refers to any type of abusive online behavior.

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3. What’s the Most Common E-mail Password?

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We are nothing if not unimaginative with our e-mail passwords. It seems “123456″ is the all-time most popular choice for protecting our precious online correspondence. This sequence came out on top in 2009 when 10,000 Hotmail passwords were exposed online. (“123456″ also topped the list of passwords in the recent Gawker hack.) Come on netizens — must try harder.

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4. What is Google’s Spam-Flavored Easter Egg?

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Google has a little fun with spam via an Easter egg that can be viewed in any Gmail account. Opening the “Spam” folder turns the “web clips” display into recipes for the canned pork product. Spam Primavera, Spam Swiss Pie, Creamy Spam Broccoli Casserole and Spam Veggie Pita Pockets are just four examples of the delicious recipe links Google offers. Mmmmmm, Spam.

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5. What is the @ Sign in Morse Code?

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Despite the rise in popularity of e-mail in the late 20th century, Morse code didn’t get a character for the “@” sign until 2004.

The string combines Morse for “A” and “C,” and is known as the “commat,” an abbreviation of “commercial at.”

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6. How Do You Spell E-mail?

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So is it e-mail, email, Email, E-Mail, E-mail or eMail?

That depends who you ask. While many dictionaries and style guides are beginning to drop the hyphen and the caps in favor of “email,” the The Associated Press Stylebook still insists on seeing the word as an abbreviation of “electronic mail” and therefore sticks with e-mail. Here at Mashable, we do the same.

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7. What’s the Biggest Webmail Service in the U.S.?

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As of September 2010, Compete revealed that, based on the U.S. Internet browsing population, Yahoo! Mail clearly dominates. Hotmail — or “Windows Live Hotmail,” as Microsoft insists on calling it these days — comes in second. A little upstart known as Gmail looks positively minnow-esque in third place.

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8. What is the @ Sign Called?

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In English, “@” is commonly known as the “at” sign or symbol — or if you want to be adventurous, the “commercial at.” Other languages have much more poetic ways to describe the symbol, many of them animal-related.

In Dutch, it’s apestaart — “monkey’s tail.”

In Swedish, it’s snabel-a — “A” with an elephant’s trunk.

And in Italian, it’s chiocciolina — small snail.

Other languages nickname it “mouse’s tail,” “sleeping cat,” “little duck,” “dog,” and “little worm.”

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9. When Was the First E-mail Sent From Space?

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The first e-mail from space was sent in 1991. The crew of STS-43 Atlantis used Apple’s early AppleLink software on a Macintosh Portable to transmit the following:

“Hello Earth! Greetings from the STS-43 Crew. This is the first AppleLink from space. Having a GREAT time, wish you were here… send cryo and RCS! Hasta la vista, baby… we’ll be back!”

Oh, and if you guessed from the latter part of the message that 1991 was also the year Terminator 2: Judgment Day came out, you’d be correct.

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10. Which Animated Character’s E-mail Was Hacked?

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It was everyone’s favorite donut-loving, dysfunctional dad — Homer Simpson. Simpson’s e-mail address — chunkylover53@aol.com — was revealed in The Dad Who Knew Too Little.

Back in 2003, a Simpsons writer used to reply to messages in-character until the address became unmanageable due to sheer volume of mail.

Once the address was inactive, some dastardly hackers sent messages from the account to people who had added chunkylover53 to their AIM buddy list. The messages promised exclusive access to a new Simpsons episode, but instead delivered nothing but malware.

D’oh!

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, chezzzers. Homer image courtesy of Simpson Crazy.

Materials researchers at Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh and Kyushu University of Japan have developed a polymer that can heal itself over and over again when exposed to ultraviolet light. The substance could potentially be used to create products that repair themselves when damaged, including self-healing medical implants or parts for vehicles such as aircraft.

When the polymer is cracked it can swiftly be prepared without the need for heat or glues by simply pressing both sides of the material together and applying UV light.

Researchers — led by professor Krzysztof Matyjaszewski — found that they could break the material into pieces and then reassemble it at least five times. They believe that with further development they could create a material that could heal itself many more times.

Other self-healing materials have relied on microcapsules containing a healing agent, which break open when a crack forms. Researchers at Britain’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, for example, are developing composite materials that “bleed” resin when stressed or damaged, effectively creating a “scab” that fixes the damage. It’s an innovation that could drastically improve air safety, foster the development of lighter aircraft and bring biomimicry to aviation.

The drawback to that technology, however, is once the healing agent has been used up, the material loses its self-healing ability.

The new polymer is cross-linked with trithiocarbonate bonds — carbon atoms bonded to three sulfur atoms, two of which use their second bonding position to attach to another carbon atom. When UV light is applied, one of the carbon-sulfur bonds is broken, producing two radicals — molecules with a free, unpaired electron. These radicals then react with other thrithiocarbonate groups to form new carbon-sulphur bonds, while breaking others to form more free radicals.

The experiments were conducted in a pure nitrogen atmosphere because, so far, the polymer can only repair itself in an oxygen-free environment. But it is hoped that other polymers could be developed that would heal themselves under normal atmospheric conditions.

The researchers presented the details of their experiments in a paper published online in Angewandte Chemie Applied Chemistry.

This story was written by Olivia Solon of Wired UK.

Photo: Airmen prepare an F-15E Strike Eagle for takeoff Jan. 4, 2011, at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan.
Staff Sgt. Robert Barney/U.S. Air Force.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook fan page seems to have been hacked, with the hacker posting a message calling on the company to transform into a “social business”.

The message, seemingly posted on Facebook from Mark Zuckerberg’s account, was quickly removed (together with the fan page), but not quickly enough to go by unnoticed, receiving over 1800 likes and hundreds of comments in the process.

The message read: “Let the hacking begin: If facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ‘social business’ the way Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus described it? LINK What do you think? #hackercup2011″

Facebook made no statement about the incident, but if Zuckerberg’s fan page was indeed hacked, it’s a big deal. If the Facebook CEO (more accurately, the PR team who’s handling the page for him) can’t keep his Facebook account safe from intruders, who can?

We’ve reached out to Facebook about the incident and will update the post when we hear back.

via TechCrunch

Twitter’s market value has reached $4 billion just a month after it raised $200 million in funding.

According to SharesPost, a secondary market for buying and selling stock in privately held companies, Twitter‘s value has jumped to $4.0 billion, based on recent transactions. That is a $300 million increase in value in just over a month, based on the $3.7 billion valuation set by its funding round in December. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led Twitter’s most recent round of funding.

Twitter’s market capitalization will likely continue to rise in the near future. Several recent stock purchases on the private markets imply that Twitter’s value is over $6 billion. While these smaller transactions aren’t a definitive basis for defining Twitter’s value, they are a benchmark that can help determine whether a private company’s value is trending up or down.

Facebook is still the king of private markets, though. While its most recent funding round valued the company at $50 billion, its value on the secondary markets has skyrocketed to $75 billion.

Secondary markets for privately traded companies are currently the subject of an SEC probe over whether they violate SEC regulations.

The mad scientists at Volkswagen have wheeled out a bullet-shaped diesel-electric plug-in hybrid that gets a stunning 261 mpg. VW claims it is the most fuel-efficient hybrid ever, and it shows what’s possible when you let your engineers run wild.

It is with supreme irony that the Germans will unveil the XL1 concept car at the Qatar Motor Show this week. The car, the latest in the company’s ongoing experiments with ultra-efficient vehicles, was born of the simple question, “Just how much could the energy consumption of cars be reduced if all the stops were pulled out for efficiency?”

This is a question Volkswagen chairman Dr. Ferdinand Piëch posed to his engineers almost a decade ago, and one automakers around the world are grappling with as they face tightening fuel economy and emissions regulations.

Piëch challenged his team to build a car capable of going 100 kilometers on a single liter of fuel — the equivalent of 235 mpg. VW’s been at it ever since, turning out concepts with stellar fuel economy but less-than-stellar practicality. The XL1 is the latest project, the one you’d most likely want to live with and the one most likely to see production.

“When the new millennium was ushered in, Prof. Dr. Ferdinand Piëch formulated the visionary goal of bringing to the market a production car that was practical for everyday use with a fuel consumption of 1.0 liter per 100 km,” the company said in a statement. “In the new XL1, Volkswagen is demonstrating that this goal is now within reach.”

The XL1 is the most practical and refined of the so-called One-Liter cars. The first, the Volkswagen One-Liter Car, was a tandem two-seater that looked a bit like a Tylenol. It was a technological marvel when it appeared in 2002, with lots of carbon fiber, magnesium and other exotic materials. Power came from a tiny diesel engine good for 235 mpg. Efficient, yes, but completely impractical because it was absurdly expensive. Still, Piëch was confident the cost of the technology, and the exotic materials it featured, would tumble, and he suggested the car might see production by 2012.

Then came the Volkswagen L1 Concept, a definite step forward when it was unveiled in 2009. It was more refined, with a diesel-electric hybrid drivetrain. It was a little bigger than the One-Liter, with more power, superior performance and increased roominess. It wasn’t so futuristic, but still a bold redefinition of the term “car.” It was good for 1.38 l/100 km, which comes to 170.4 mpg. VW claimed the L1 emits just 36 grams per kilometer of carbon dioxide. For the sake of comparison, the 2010 Toyota Prius emits 89 g/km.

And now we come to the XL1.

The coolest thing about this car is the drivetrain. The diesel-electric combo features a two-cylinder TDI engine with a displacement of just 0.8 liters. It’s essentially the company’s ubiquitous 1.6-liter engine cut in half, and it’s bolted to a seven-speed DSG gearbox. The engine is good for 48 horsepower and 88 pound-feet of torque.

The electric drivetrain sports a 20 kilowatt (27 horsepower) electric motor that draws power from a lithium-ion battery of undisclosed size. It’s a plug-in hybrid, and VW says the XL1 can go 35 kilometers (21 miles) in electricity alone.

This combination provides remarkable efficiency. Fuel economy is pegged at 0.9 liters per 100 kilometers, which comes to 261 mpg by our math. Emissions are just 24 grams of CO2 per kilometer. More remarkably, VW says the 1,700-pound XL1 can cruise at 62 mph on just 8.4 horsepower. That’s about half what the Golf TDI requires. Under electric power, the car needs less than 0.1 kilowatt-hour to go one kilometer.

Stomp on it and the electric motor assists the diesel engine in accelerating, and VW says the XL1 will do zero to 60 in 11.9 seconds. Top speed is limited to 100 mph.

The XL1 differs from its siblings in that it offers side-by-side seating, a nod to increased practicality. It’s also got proper doors instead of jet-like canopy. It’s still made of high-tech stuff including carbon fiber polymer parts attached to a Formula 1-style carbon fiber monocoque. That’s expensive stuff, but VW says it’s making progress bringing costs down through a patented production process it calls advanced resin transfer molding.

All told the car weighs about what a first-gen Honda CR-X HF weighed. There’s a lot of aluminum under the carbon-fiber bodywork, including the suspension components, brake calipers, shocks and other components. Other tasty bits include carbon fiber anti-roll bars, ceramic brake rotors and magnesium wheels.

This is one super-slick car, with a drag coefficient of 0.186 and a frontal area of 1.5 square meters. That makes it more aerodynamic than the General Motors EV1 but not quite so slippery as the Aptera Motors 2e. The car is 12.7 feet long and 5.4 feet wide, roughly the size of a VW Polo. It’s just 3.7 feet tall — roughly the same as the Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder.

Volkswagen has long hinted we could see a car based on a One-Liter model in showrooms, and it said something based on the L1 Concept shown 2009 might be available in 2013. But it seems unlikely we’ll see anything resembling this car anytime soon given the exotic (and expensive) materials and outlandish styling (which, frankly, we love). It’s more likely that we’ll see some of the technology underpinning the XL1 in production models as VW, like everyone else, scrambles to increase the fuel efficiency of its lineup.

Plug-in diesel hybrid Polo, anyone?

Images: Volkswagen

The U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled against Kodak in its case against Apple and Research in Motion (RIM).

In January 2010, the imaging and photography giant filed a complaint with the U.S. ITC against Apple and RIM, alleging that the phone makers infringed on a Kodak patent involving image previews.

The AP reports that the ITC went against Kodak in its preliminary ruling, finding that the iPhone and camera-enabled BlackBerry devices do not violate Kodak’s patents. The agency has until May 23 to either alter this determination or let the ruling stand.

In a statement to the AP, Kodak’s Chief Intellectual Property Officer Laura Quatela said, “We fully expect the ITC commission will ultimately rule that the patent claim at issue is valid and infringed by Apple and RIM.”

These types of patent lawsuits are often used to negotiate licensing agreements. Before filing suit last year, Kodak said it had attempted to reach an agreement with both Apple and RIM, but to no avail.

It’s a tactic that has worked before. In December 2009, the ITC ruled in favor of Kodak in a patent suit against Samsung and LG. This is significant because that lawsuit concerned the same image-preview patent that is at the heart of the dispute with RIM and Apple. After losing the preliminary ruling, Samsung and LG both negotiated one-time royalty payments with Kodak.

Kodak is also suing Apple in U.S. District Court over patent infringement. In April 2010, Apple countersued Kodak in those cases.

Image courtesy of Flickr, walknboston

An innovative “foaming” aluminum that expands like a sponge and bonds to steel could cut the weight of cargo ships as much as 30 percent, reducing their fuel consumption and emissions.

The material, aluminum-titanium hydride powder, expands like foam when heated and is said to be lighter than water and remarkably stiff. It was developed at Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany,

The powder is pressed into bars that are sandwiched between steel sheets and heated. The foam rises — much like bread — at about 650 Celsius (1,200 degrees Fahrenheit) and bonds to the steel without additional adhesives. The resulting plates will deform but not break, which the researchers say means cargo vessels could navigate year-round without fear of ice sheets.

Using the compound could cut the weight of a typical cargo ship by 1,000 tons, the researchers say. Shipping companies might find that attractive because a lighter ship means more payload and less fuel consumption.

Main photo: Kevin / Flickr. Second photo: YourIs.com

1. He bootstrapped himself. A scrawny little kid at 15, he decided to change who he was and how he was perceived, and then he did. The deciding was as important as the doing.
2. He went to the edges. He didn’t merely open a small gym, a more pleasant version of a boxing gym, for instance. Instead, he created the entire idea of a health club, including the juice bar. He did this 70 years ago.
3. He started small. No venture money, no big media partners.
4. He understood the power of the media. If it weren’t for TV, we never would have heard of Jack. Jack used access to the media to earn trust and to teach. And most of what Jack had to offer he offered for free. He understood the value of attention.
5. He was willing to avoid prime time. Jack never had a variety show on CBS. He was able to change the culture from the fringes of TV.
6. He owned the rights. 3,000 shows worth.
7. He stuck with the brand. He didn’t worry about it getting stale or having to reinvent it into something fresh. Jack stood for something, which is rare, and he was smart enough to keep standing for it.
8. Jack lived the story. He followed his own regimen, even when no one was watching. In his words, “I can’t die, it would ruin my image.”

He died last week at 96. I don’t think he has to worry about ruining his image, though.

Building a “traffic internet” of vacuum tubes that zip drivers to anywhere on earth in under an hour and circumnavigate the globe in two hours might sound like science fiction, but work on vehicles capable of tube-travel is already underway.

Acabion, a Swiss company led by former Porsche, BMW and Ferrari engineer Peter Maskus, is building vehicles it claims will be the “certified successor of cars.” They’re “streamliners” — upgraded land-speed racers that look like motorcycles wrapped in fighter jets, and Maskus hopes to have them in the hands of consumers by 2015.

The vacuum tubes won’t be around during our lifetime, but cars built in this decade could lay the groundwork for a future transportation infrastructure.

The company is working on the GTBO VIII “da Vinci,” a $15 million fully electric vehicle with a top speed of 375 mph that Acabion claims is 20 times more efficient than current EVs. It’s as much a work of art as a proof of concept: Maskus says that for production vehicles, the price will come down “by reducing the overall exclusivity and by reducing the power from our today’s top-of-the-line 700 horsepower or 800 horsepower to standard regions, and of course by mass production.”

With new cars must come new roadways. By 2050, Maskus thinks elevated tracks will separate high-speed Acabions from antiquated automobiles, just as horse-drawn carriages aren’t allowed on interstates. “The speed potential of the Acabion is so dramatically higher than the speed potential of any car or motorcycle, that future perspective will most likely call for tracks allowing much more speed much safer than today’s highways do,” Maskus said.

Elevated tracks over highways would be automated, much like high-speed rail but with individual cars. And when the elevated highways end, Acabion users can still drive on existing roads.

Next up is a network of intercontinental vacuum tubes — a “traffic internet” — that probably sounds as far-fetched today as an undersea telegraph cable did in the 1850s.

“Two tubes between New York and Paris, 1.5 meters in diameter each, maglev driven and fully automatic controlled, will move three times more people between America and Europe than all airplanes do today,” Maskus said.

Once the traffic internet is up and running, current Acabions will be fully capable of entering vacuum tubes that would propel the vehicles quickly enough for drivers to commute daily between Paris and New York.

If you’re itching for a taste of that future, we suggest you check out the current Acabion lineup. It consists of custom-made streamliners that Maskus is aiming at customers bored with their Veyrons.

For starters, the Acabion GTBO borrows an engine from the Suzuki Hayabusa, has a top speed of 340 mph, can get 100 mpg at 100 mph and has a $2.5 million price tag to match. “It is so comfortable that people would buy it even if the Acabion would just stand in the garage. Plus, as soon as you move it, you have the enormous effectiveness, whatever road you use.”

Images: Acabion