Meet Salmon. Not the fish swimming upstream to spawn, lay eggs and die, but the protocol that defines how comments can link to resources being discussed across the Web. It's an open standard based on decentralized blogs; social networks like Google Buzz and Facebook; and sites like Twitter. The protocol can link these comments no matter where they post.
The goals of the code project include a reference implementation and library developed to prove protocol specification, demonstration and application to show how Salmon works, and tools to help implementers interoperate, according to Google.
Marketers will use it to monitor the chatter about their companies across the Web similar to the way Twitter allows them to monitor chatter from people (suppliers) or companies those managing supply chains might want to "follow" such as engineers. Yes, engineers and smart geeks like @cdibona, @jbqueru and @JohnMu, or engineering communities like @USCViterbi. (You can follow me at @lauriesullivan.)
Look at Twitter as a research tool. Engineers working on concepts can tweet a line or two on Twitter about a project or idea to gain feedback from followers or the follower's followers. The concept is to share ideas through social media links with a variety of people and platforms. When multiple platforms connect through a single platform such as TweetDeck, engineers can share one idea across Twitter, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Buzz, Foursquare, MySpace and other social sites. Links in the tweet can direct followers to other Web pages with information and videos.
Engineers also can find a few investors to follow on Twitter (@RonConwayFacts and @kraneland) to determine market trends before developing products or building out supply chains. Or find the entrepreneurs who have made successful companies, not once, but many times over: @mlevchin and @GuyKawasaki.
What set me off? I point to Hawk's comment to Avnet Inc. (NYSE: AVT) vice president Al Maag's blog post.
(See: To Tweet or Not To Tweet: That is the Question.) Hawk wrote: Twitter being "one of those services that make no products or engineer
anything" and "most engineers avoid it because of the mindless drivel that comes with it. I know it will fade away in
the near future but only to be replaced by a new variation of blah, blah, blah."
Those who don't tap into social media will miss the next evolution of the electronic supply chain. Engineers will begin to use social media as a means to not only share ideas and concepts with OEMs and potential consumers, but suppliers will follow supply chain gurus to determine trends, schedules and even introduce themselves to a new prospective client. It's called team building, partnering and building relationships.
I keep going back to a conversation I had in the early 2000s with Avnet chairman and CEO Roy Vallee. We sat face to face in his office at Avnet headquarters in Phoenix discussing how the electronics industry would pull out of its slump. We talked about mobile products, innovation and new technologies that didn't exist at the time, new technologies like Twitter that would forever change the supply chain.
Twitter's latest funding round led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers ,
placed a $3.7 billion valuation on the company. It sharply increased Twitter's value from $1 billion last year.
Founded in 2007, the San Francisco-based company in total has now raised about $360 million. A recent research report indicates 8 percent of Americans online use Twitter.
Engineers and supply chain professionals are a creative bunch. Have you rethought social media's role in the supply chain? How would you use Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Buzz and others?
It sounds like something companies can find very useful. I went on the site, http://www.salmon-protocol.org, to try to learn more and was surprised at how sparse the content there was. The news page, for example, only has 2 very brief entires, both from March 2010. It makes it look like they've lost interest.
with the constant increase in number of undergraduate colleges in most of the countries and the younger generation showing lot of interests in the field of engineering and technology soon all engineers are going to be diversified in all the domains so there should be a common forum for all the engneers to share their ideas to build upon their talents and they want to do it in an open forum which would enhance people to understand the growth in the present scenario initially the platform will be the available social network might be in the future they will start their own soon.
I do not think the social medial will have any impact on how the complete electronic industry and supply chain operates. There is already lot of stages available for both the suppliers and the OEM's to interact and communicate the different information. Engineering is more about innovation and arriving at a right solution rather than just the availability of information from the suppliers about different parts.
I wanted to get an update from Google before I responded. Salmon is alive and progressing, though slowly. The core spec is done and libraries are being implemented, as people have a need for available resources. Deployments for large scale sites are stuck behind other priorities, so at the moment the project may seem stalled, but it's not. Those working on the protocol are looking forward to seeing deployments this year.
Absolutely, elctrnx_lyf. I agree that engineering is more about innovation and arriving at the perfect solution, rather than access to available information from suppliers and part. That's why I think more engineers will tap social sites for ideas. The Twitter handles I provided in the post are from engineers who do just that, tap social for ideas, sharing theirs and gaining new ones.
I can see a benefit to social media if indeed Salmon does what it proclaims. My biggest issue with social media right now is that it is too fragmented. There are too many options to post/blog from and that can get time consuming. If a user picks one over the other, then he may not be linking to the right people. If the comments are linked no matter where they post from, that could be quite useful.
So, it begs the question why Google has not moved forward faster with this???
Personally I believe we left social media "era" and right now we are going to a sort of natural evolution, I mean the need to carry out through one single stream informations from multiple social sources. I mentioned within a different post for example "cotweeting phenomenum".
Reporting to you my experience, as professor I can say students preferences are really vaste and several ways from them to reach me for asking support or suggestions are in place; it is not easy to manage messages/tweets/and so on coming from different platforms, so my personal opinion is Salmon could potentially help us a lot in your job in the future.
Laurrie, social medias are one form of networking to the engineering community and it offers lots of flexibility also. Anybody can join and share their ideas and view through this type of forums. Lots of peoples and marketing research companies are taking advantage of such forums for gathering information. But here the main drawback is about the genuinty of the opinions; one can drive the polls or discussion in a wrong way also because they are not providing the identity (sometimes with a fake identity also).
So the only fruitful way, it can be used for companies to broadcast their messages to the community regarding the release of any new products or sharing technical details. More over sharing of any critical ideas through such a social media is not advisable.Another important aspect is privacy of the data’s/opinions gathered through such medias. So personally am against of sharing any type of critical details in any type of networking or social medias.
Being able to get ideas and suggestions from all over the world through the social media is fine, But when a company is deciding a particular strategy for its product distribution or marketing or for the sourcing of components, it would not like to make it public as it may be the USP of that company to gain more market share. So the real original ideas and strategies will never appear on these social media. All that will appear will be in my opinion some harmless discussions which normally lead to nowhere. What will be published onto these media will have already lost its competitive advantage! So what's the use? except may be the student community can learn a few things out of such content.
EBN Dialogue enables and encourages you to participate in live chats with notable leaders and luminaries. Not only editors and journalists, but the entire EBN community is able to comment and ask questions. Listed below are upcoming and archived chats.
Archived Dialogues
Thailand Stages a Comeback Join EBN contributor Jennifer Baljko on Thursday August 23, 2012, at 11:00 a.m. EST for a live chat on how electronic manufacturers in Thailand have shored up their supply chain to reduce the impact of future natural disasters.
Euro-Crisis: What It Means for High-Tech Firms Join EBN Editor in Chief Bolaji Ojo and Contributing Editor Jennifer Baljko on Thursday, July 12, at 10:00 a.m. EDT for a Live Chat on high-tech and Europe's economic difficulties.
Microsoft Surface: Potential Winners & Losers What are the implications for the electronics industry supply chain of Microsoft Corp.'s decision to launch its own tablet PC? Join industry veteran and EE Times' systems and OEM expert Rick Merritt on Tuesday, July 3, at 12:00 pm EDT for a Live Chat on this subject.
Join EBN contributor Jennifer Baljko on Thursday August 23, 2012, at 11:00 a.m. EST for a live chat on how electronic manufacturers in Thailand have shored up their supply chain to reduce the impact of future natural disasters.
Peter Drucker famously said "Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window." Yet in the razor's-edge world of electronics—with a lean supply chain and just-in-time demands—the need to know the future is vital.
While no one really can accurately predict the future, we can take guidance from another Drucker saying which is the best way to predict the future is to create it.
You've heard the saying "the No. 1 supply chain risk is your people." That hasn't always been the case. But today's complex global supply chain requires a new type of multitalented employee. It's one who understands, finance, marketing, economics, is savvy with technology, graceful with relationships and can think analytically.
Where are these people? Are universities properly preparing the next generation supply chain professionals? How do train your existing workforce for these new, demanding positions?
Brian Fuller, editor-in-chief of EBN, will lead a 60-minute Avnet Velocity panel discussion that will ask and answer these and other questions swirling around today's supply-chain talent challenges.
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