Massive growth in Internet opens new possibility to SharePoint

BBC reports that "British web users are spending 65% more time online than three years ago".

SharePoint benefits from growth in web usage since it develops skills that SharePoint can expose as business functions.

Listed bellow are the top activities of UK users on line, with the tools that can be provided by SharePoint:

Time spent on web:

Social networks/blogs - 22.7% Blogs are in SharePoint 2007 and 2010, social networks are expand in 2010.
E-mail - 7.2% Email is provided by Exchange, but SharePoint integrates with email server or can be part of SharePoint via a web browser
Games - 6.9% Forget it
Instant Messaging - 4.9% With OCS SharePoint can provide IM capacity, and a lot more
Classified/Auctions - 4.7% Many companies can implement corporate classified in SharePoint, and many companies use it to manage supply and demand of staff and resources.
Portals - 4% Full SharePoint 2003, 2007 and 2010 provide Portals
Search - 4% SharePoint provides both standard search and now Fast search
Software info/products - 3.4% SharePoint has many tools that cab be used to provide software information including document libraries, list, wikis, blogs and WCM.
News - 2.8% SharePoint provides WCM news, blogs, and RSS web parts for news
Adult - 2.7% Though there is no reason SharePoint could not deliver this content, lets assume no one will use it.

Source: UKOM with my own comments on SharePoint.

To put this in content. Right now these activities account for 63.3% or online usage, 85% of which can be provided by SharePoint.

This makes SharePoint a pretty obvious tool for web publishers but also for companies hoping to exploit skills users develop on the web to work. And the workforce is learning these skills now at a ever expanding rate, whereas use of traditional system, spreadsheets, or other methods of content creation and communication are not being learned to such an extent.

It simply makes sense to go SharePoint.

Google Recovery

Google, the internet search engine, has announced strong results for the first three months of this year.

"Google had a good quarter given the depth of the recession," said Google chief executive Eric Schmidt.
"These results underline both the resilience of our business model and the ongoing potential of the web as users and advertisers shift online," he added.

(Remember that the dot coms all bombed?)

EBay-style feedback for services

Source BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7934042.stm

People in England will get more online powers to rate GPs, police, childcare and councils, Gordon Brown has said.

He said it was wrong that consumer websites such as Amazon and eBay had "higher standards of transparency" than those for public services.

Officials liken the new approach to the Tripadvisor site, where travellers can share their thoughts on hotels.

The PM promised an "information revolution", but the Tories said public services were still too bureaucratic.

In a document called Working Together, Mr Brown acknowledges the government has been "much too slow to make use of the enormous democratising power of information".

He sets out what he calls "a new agenda of public service reform" and says government must transfer more power to parents and patients.

'Systematic access'

A site comparing council services is due to go live in May and the government is also bringing together a national crime map for England and Wales to be available online by the end of 2009.

From this summer, patients will be able to comment on local services and provide feedback on GPs via the NHS Choices website.

Childcare providers are to undergo similar scrutiny from parents via a site expected to be up and running early next year.

Mr Brown said: "We are ushering in a new world of accountability in which parents, patients and local communities shape the services they receive, ensuring all our public services respond not simply to the hand of government, but to the voice of local people."