I've long thought this - the reason why I helped create netoCiety in the first place (netoCiety is a combination of the words Networked Society which I in turn first read about in Howard Castells, The Rise of the Network Society). Pretty obvious stuff you would say and I'd agree but that is not the point of this post.

I was reminded of my long-standing beliefs by this excellent post from Stuart Brown over at Wisdump entitled The Ebb and Flow of Social Networking. It observes the phenomenon of "countless communities online that have grown, peaked, and slowly faded into obscurity. Like a roving band of wildebeest, it seems communities arrive en masse, graze for a while, and move on to pastures anew."

He plots a graph, not unlike Gartner's Technology Hype Cycle series that has a peak and a plateau but unlike Gartner, it has a decline. This might lead one to believe that this cycle of birth, death and rebirth has no cumulative effects. I'm not saying that is what is being said but my point is that the cumulative effects of all this luvvly jubbly web 2.0, social networking, community and Enterprise 2.0 stuff on the Internet is giving rise to something in the long term, as fundamental as what was postulated in the book by Howard Castells. That is, aside from the ebb and flow we see in the present time. I've tried clumsily to represent my simple point below:

Something revolutionary is happening! Now let me get off my cloud and start some serious weekend partying

The title is a statement of fact in the positive sense, i.e. blending is required and if done correctly will improve performance. We here at netoCiety have always thought this as we communicate in our standard site bumph here (section on What is...). What has reinforced this for us are two pieces of intelligence from the marketplace.

The first is from a Gartner report, A Blend of Wikis, Blogs and Discussion Forums Can Support Collaborative Business Activities - 27 November 2006. It covers the software, especially open-source products, for wikis, blogs and discussion forums that can support general business collaboration. It offers an evaluation guide to existing solutions and assumes that the best results are to be gained from a mix of collaboration styles and tools. ATLASSIAN'S CONFLUENCE COMES OUT ON TOP as one of the most "blended" of tools! This pleases us no end because we are a reseller of Confluence so it's good to know we picked a winner

The other is from McKinsey's study (available online here) which I reread the other day! The diagram from the study which sums up the point best is below:

The point in this instance is not so much that the components will be blended but that relatively equal consideration will be given to each component and the assumption is that there will be an attempt to blend them, or at least there should be! Each component has its own role, merits and failings but we believe that it is only together that they make more than the sum of individual parts. As to whether this is best done though integration of best of breed solutions or though a single end-to-end solution is a matter for discussion at another time...