beatnic - just wondering

• Genius online image editor http://www.sumo.fi/platform/ (via @sitepointdotcom newsletter) #

• To unexpected cross platform workshop in Soho. As planned. #

• Card sorts, wireframes, workshop and pub quiz. All in a day’s work. #
• @robgray re php agency - will get back to you #
• Made mistake of checking email on bus. Took a deep breath. Glad I didn’t hit reply all. #

• Card sorts, wireframes, workshop and pub quiz. All in a day’s work. #
• @robgray re php agency - will get back to you #
• Made mistake of checking email on bus. Took a deep breath. Glad I didn’t hit reply all. #

• What is it with all this “reaching out” all of a sudden? I have a conspiracy theory involving the Four Tops. Even if it was 42 years ago. #
• Sheltered from big rain under railway bridge by Waterloo Station with fellow cyclists on way home. Heard it was snow further north. #
• Sleet in south London. Maybe the snow’s on its way. #
• @sammenter What happened to the other 10? ;-) #
• @tomVS some great tweets at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=snow Not all London of course, but it’s a Twitter blizzard right now :-) #

• What is it with all this “reaching out” all of a sudden? I have a conspiracy theory involving the Four Tops. Even if it was 42 years ago. #
• Sheltered from big rain under railway bridge by Waterloo Station with fellow cyclists on way home. Heard it was snow further north. #
• Sleet in south London. Maybe the snow’s on its way. #
• @sammenter What happened to the other 10? ;-) #
• @tomVS some great tweets at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=snow Not all London of course, but it’s a Twitter blizzard right now :-) #

• Lost my guitar tuner, found http://tinyurl.com/32966l And for son’s ukelele http://tinyurl.com/5sb7u7 #

• Regaining digital-ness after 2 days off. Free train wifi thanks to National Express east coast. Have several wonderful emails to reply to. #
• Laughing out loud on the train to the Mayo Kermode podcast. Professor says he shed tears at end of High School Musical 3. Toodles vs Bond. #

• Our street felt more spacious this morning and I wasn’t sure why. Then it struck me. No scaffolding on any house for first time in 6 years. #

• @sammenter I must add that to my pattern library ;-) #
• Tuning in to BBC World Service to listen to @cybersoc. Bit concerned that @DanDamon fell asleep 113 days ago. #
• Retweeting @Cennydd: Sorry. No. Architect is not a verb. #
• Watching Tony Robbins on TED from 2006 http://is.gd/12G6 He’s talking jolly fast. He keeps asking the audience questions and saying “Say I” #
• The intranet innovations James Robertson would like to see in 2009 http://is.gd/4F4X #

• In “virtual meetings” all day today. Odd expression that. Surely it’s either a meeting or it’s not. Will soon find out… #
• @teppie Tell us who the company is on Twitter. They should get message ;-) #
• An intranet is an ecosystem, not a busines system. An intranet manager must be a constant gardener. #
• Russell T Davies on BBC five live. Doctor Who was the result of a 1960s focus group. I’m in shock! #
• Backing up gmail with Thunderbird / pop3 #
• Connect, be active, be curious, learn, give. These are the 5 steps to happiness. According to research. Via Times article http://is.gd/4wZW #
• @euan So true. I find it strange trying to think about doing those things without the web or good technology. #
• @teppie Perhaps a twitter version of this might be handy for later http://tinyurl.com/4gf4ku :-) #

One of the hats I wear is Content Producer for Intranets Live, a subscription-based intranet media channel, with a monthly two-hour online show starting on 4 November.

In the first show we’ll be interviewing David Sacks, CEO of microblogging service Yammer, winner of the TechCrunch50 award last month.

Yammer is designed to provide a secure online space where company employees (with the same company domain in their email address) can broadcast short messages to each other.

For example, people can use it to ask questions or to let everyone else know what they’re working on.

Yammer follows in the footsteps of the hugely successful Twitter, which is being put to great public effect in the run-up to the US presidential election.

Philosophically, Yammer - “What are you working on?” within the company - and Twitter - “What are you doing?” publicly or privately - come from different places.

I’ve spoken with some companies who’ve been using Twitter to communicate in teams and groups privately for some time now. They say they can’t see the value in moving to Yammer. Others have said they find Yammer is just what they needed, and is really helping to make the feel part of the company.

Web-based services like these, along with many others, are described as the intranet beyond the firewall.

So I was just wondering…

1. With employees using more and more web-based services to get their work done and communicate, what now for internal communications and IT managers?
2. Why should we trust third-party services with our information?
3. What would happen if the service your company uses becomes a victim of the credit crunch?
4. What are the best and worst examples of people using microblogging services at work?
5. Do services like Yammer and Twitter finally spell the end of the company firewall as we know it?
6. Is all this the responsibility of the intranet manager? And if not, who’s responsibility is it?

Reading the e-Consultancy interview with Lou Rosenfeld on the importance of site search analytics, I was reminded of when I was product manager of intranet (or enterprise) search at the BBC.

It was back in 2002. People complained that search was broken, but we had neither quantitative nor qualitative data to analyse.

After consulting with my colleague Martin Belam, who at the time was looking after search on bbc.co.uk, I put in place a system for capturing search engine usage data.

In a nutshell, this included where people came from, what they searched for, and where they went.

We also conducted user research to gather qualitative data about the experience of using the intranet and what it was like to find things on it.

After only a few weeks, the usage data started to settle and patterns began to emerge.

We noticed that search term frequency had a long tail (though we didn’t know that’s what it was called at the time!).

The top 25 search terms accounted for half of all searches. The top 50 terms accounted for 75% of all searches made.

We tried searching for the top 10 terms, including “training”, “expenses”, “ariel” (the BBC in-house weekly newspaper) and “jobs”.

The results were worrying to say the least. Few of them returned the result expected on the first page of search results.

If we could find the most likely link (or links) for each of our top search terms, and return that as the top result, we should be able to guarantee providing most people with what they’re looking for.

So we set about building what became the Best Bets system. (How we did this I will write about another time, but needless to say it involved an SQL database, some asp code and some hacking in to the Microsoft Site Server system.)

We then set about working with the numerous intranet site managers to determine what the best link should be for each of the top 50 search terms. Further usage analysis, research and testing showed that this working. Success! People were clicking on the Best Bets result almost 95% of the time we had a search term match.

Over time we extended to cover the top 100 search terms, then 200.

Regular usage analysis showed us when new terms appeared and we took editorial decisions on whether they should have a Best Bet.

In spite of the success of the Best Bets system, we certainly couldn’t rest on our laurels. This was an improvement for sure, but as we well knew, it was only a part of the overall search and navigation user experience. There was plenty more work to be done!

Any search engine worth its salt these days comes with best bets functionality as standard. My advice is to take the time to study and understand how people are using your search engine. Test the top search terms yourself to see what the results look like.

Maintaining a best bets system is a relatively low cost exercise, and encourages regular monitoring of search usage and behaviour, which in turn will provide excellent information about your users’ expectations and your intranet’s findability performance.

A word of caution from experience: bear in mind that the formatting of the best bet in the search results page should be minimally different from the natural results, otherwise it risks ending up in the user’s blind spot and be regarded as a “Sponsored Link” rather than something genuinely useful.

A year to the day since I embarked on this freelance adventure.

It’s been full of variety, full of people, full of learning, full of challenges and full of fun!

Thoughts to follow sooner or later no doubt.