Great social networking idea

Despite the fact that my colleagues will probably make fun of me for posting this, but I love the concept. Technobabble 2.0 has created a Vote for the best analyst contest. This is an outstanding use of the social media concept. Because of Technobabbles reach and audience, I think the results should give a pretty good snapshot on how the online community views analysts and could give rise to a new generation of superstars. Along the same lines, I read yesterday that the American Medical Association has been/is working on a standard for creating a doctors rating system. Seems like a pre-emptive strike by the medical field to corral the social network effect that could happen if someone beats them to the punch and deploys a killer doctor rating web app. I know that there currently several of those types of systems that exist, but none of them has reached critical mass yet to have an true impact. It will allow them to set the terms for ratings, establish a standard scoring scale, and possibly prevent disinformation being spread about doctors. I am on the fence for this one. I don't really have a problem with online ratings for lawyers, coders, analysts, companies... ect, but I do have a concern about opening up the medical profession to public scrutiny. Here is the reason why: doctors at higher end medical facilities would be unfairly exposed to more risks online, due to the demographic that they serve. It could skew the results. On the flip side of thing, fantastic surgeons and doctors operating out of "St. Elsewhere" would not be getting the recognition they deserve. If the AMA puts a system in place and all hospitals are forced to give ratings and reviews at the end of every treatment session, we will see a more clear picture on the effectiveness on individual doctors.

Analysts Gone Mad!!!!

Big news in the analyst space this week. It looks like there are some rumblings on Silver Lake Partners selling their holdings in Gartner to IDG. This is not very interesting when you just take a look at the article, but it becomes intriguing when you look are some other news that is swirling around this space. For instance, Gartner's share price has been behaving erratically over the last 6 months, dropping from a high of 28 down to 15, and then immediately spiking back up to 20. All of this movement was generated on no specific news. The second point is that that has been some anecdotal evidence that Gartner has not been very helpful in dealing with existing customer issues & posting new content to the web. They were supposed to have launched a stronger blog/social network initiative, but it looks like it has stalled. Furthermore, Forrester is continuing to push into their space with more effectiveness, and a louder voice. As I am a betting man, I say there is a .20 probability of a buyout of some type taking place in the next year.

Also in the analyst news, hello / goodbye for David Linthicum formerly of the Linthicum Group, formerly of ZapThink, now CEO of Strikeiron. When the Linthicum Group was bought out 6 months ago by ZapThink, I was very excited to see that such a well known industry expert was coming on board to my favorite SOA analysis site. However in reading David's post since the merger, they had begun to take on a far more repetitive / negative connotation. You could actually see the frustration that he was feeling coming through the screen. The short stint at ZapThink bugs me a bit, but only because I had such high expectations of the merger. As expected, both sides are saying the right things about the time spent, but from the outside it just looks like the differing views on SOA were incompatible.