Selecting the ten best intranets gets harder every year because the number of great designs keeps increasing. While tough on the judges, this is good news: it shows that the intranet usability movement is winning. More and more companies are treating their intranets as productivity tools and are investing in improving their design's usability instead of leaving the intranet to grow as it may.
The recommendations from our previous intranet-usability reports are now being widely implemented. This year's designs were so good that our list of runners-up included at least ten additional intranets that were worthy of being recognized, featured, and emulated. However, a top-ten list can only include ten winners, so we had to select the best of the best.

The WinnersThe world's ten best intranets for 2005 are:
- Banco Español de Crédito (Banesto), the third largest bank in Spain
- Cisco Systems, the world's leading computer networking vendor (U.S.)
- Electrolux, the world's largest manufacturer of powered appliances (Sweden)
- The Integer Group, a promotion and marketing agency (U.S.)
- NedTrain, the Dutch National Railway's maintenance subsidiary (The Netherlands)
- Orbis Technology, a small software developer (U.K.)
- Park Place Dealerships, operator of ten luxury automobile dealerships (U.S.)
- Procter & Gamble, a leading manufacturer of branded consumer goods (U.S.)
- Schematic, an interactive design and technology agency (U.S.)
- Verizon Communications, a leading telecommunications company (U.S.)
Cisco is particularly remarkable because its sales-support intranet application was

Because we had our own technical infrastructure in DigiLab, a group I run who talent spot new technologies, it was relatively easy for us to take a suck it and see approach to tools to aid networking in the business.

The first thing we did was to put in a bulletin board. We started using it amongst a group of us to begin with and gradually started telling more people about it. Word soon spread and amazingly it is now the BBC’s second most visited internal site with staff using it daily to ask questions and get answers. It gets used for lots of practical stuff which when you add up all the quick solutions and problems avoided is saving the BBC loads of time and effort. Ask on pretty much any topic and you’ll get an answer within half an hour.

The second tool we put in is a social networking tool that lets users set up a page of info about themselves and can then be searched for particular skills or interests. It also allows users to establish interest groups which are becoming a really effective way of identifying and supporting various communities within the BBC. We are in the process of combining the bulletin board and the networking tool and once we have that I think things will really take off.

We then put in a blog server and now have around 70 blogs being written by about 100 people. They are being used for a variety of tasks from group blogs for project teams to operational logs to pass on info between engineering shifts to personal blogs capturing individual learning and experiences.

Lastly we have implemented a wiki. We chose a tool that allows us to manage access a bit. I know the principle of wikis is to be totally open but that is not always possible or approriate in current corporate culture and we have to acnowledge this and work with it. The people most attracted to using wikis are those involved in writing formal documents, policy, manuals etc.

» London Blogging

Developing a great logo is a strange mix of art, science, psychology and (in most cases) a good amount of luck.
First, let's make one thing very clear. You logo is not your brand. Your logo only represents your brand. If you're thinking that changing or creating a logo is the same as changing or creating a brand, someone's been feeding you some very bad information. Branding and logos are totally separate discussions.
Your logo is nothing more (and certainly, nothing less) than a visual mark that represents your brand. It allows people with money to find you, remember you and differentiate you from a few billion other businesses.
And while your logo is not your brand, its design and consistent use will effect how your brand will be perceived. A great logo can give you incredible leverage and contribute directly to your bottom line.
On the other hand, a lousy one may very well be the kiss of death.

RSS and blogging are two of the most-hyped buzz words in technology right now. Here are some of the ways we’ve adopted the technologies and some of the resulting impacts they have made:
1. Our press releases are now available via RSS feeds.
2. We started a Blog Mentions section on our web site.
3. As a company we have three blogs: My blog -- I’ve been an active blogger for several months now.
4. Our company blog -- This is just getting started we’re really going to use this to welcome the outside world into our offices. We hope this proves to be a strong communication channel for our current and future customers.
5. Our internal blog -- This is a password-protected blog we use for internal communication purposes. This is now how we make internal announcements and post sales tips, product updates, bug fixes, support and pricing information, etc. as well as where we keep our growing list of preferred food and drinks that we store in the office.
6. We now use an internal wiki. They have RSS-enabled their service so that anytime a new change is made to the wiki I can get an RSS feed showing me what was changed (if I want to).
7. We are now in the process of RSS-enabling our internal sales pipeline management tool.
8. I personally subscribe to more than 25 RSS feeds that I read daily. Less than 10% of those feeds are from traditional media sources.

There are probably a few things I’m forgetting about here, but you get the point. And as you can see above, the ideas for two of our initiatives came from bloggers - that’s pretty neat if you ask me.

MarketingVOX's RSS feed, for example, gets about 1,200 unique readers a day according to the measurement service FeedBurner. Only half of that number actually click onto the site in a given day based on interest in a particular news story. But they generally click on a few stories before leaving and generate ad inventory roughly equal to that probably lost to RSS views.
I suppose the only missing piece is whether their general site traffic dropped by 1200--that is, if RSS represents a defection from normal site viewing. It sounds like MarketingVox is remaining status quo with RSS, which I suppose is good news, especially in the face of fears of having to serve content distinct from ads.

"Twenty five million Firefox downloads is a significant achievement, and we see that number continuing to grow," said Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation. "Firefox is being rapidly adopted by the mainstream, with this audience embracing Firefox as a more user-friendly web browsing solution."

“Why am I doing this? Well, it seemed like a good idea to be able to create an ongoing vehicle to share my thoughts and observations on Intel and our industry with our employees, and to allow you an opportunity to have a platform for your thoughts or responses. While this is intended as an internal blog, I recognize that it will become public - welcome to the Internet! As a result, please recognize that I may be a bit limited in my comments and responses to protect Intel.'’

Ok, sure, people are podcasting, but is anybody listening? Yes. There are several podcasts in the top 50 feeds we manage. A couple of these have over 3000 subscribers/listeners.
Overall, we measured 13,500 listeners to podcasts that FeedBurner managed at the beginning of January and 24,000 listeners at the beginning of February. Doing the math from the chart above, you can see that this runs at a steady average of about 14-15 listeners per podcast. When you plot the curve of listeners across all the podcasts we manage, it looks like the characteristic "long tail" power curve that we see for blog feed subscribers.

Newsburst is a personalized tool that tracks virtually any type of information on the Web: news, blogs, shopping lists, weather, search results, alerts, auctions and more.
- Follow the sites you care about
- See the newest content in one glance
Information is everywhere, and Newsburst lets you access it from one place. Read differently.

The results of our study indicate that marketers need to rethink the best times for sending email. There is no simple answer to which day is best for sending email. The results vary each month, by industry and by target audience. The notion of a universal "best day to send email" is, at best, a moving target, and at worst a myth. Instead of following industry trends (including the results outlined in this article), marketers should continue to construct logical hypotheses and validate them by testing the results.

IAB Nederland heeft met haar 13 grootste internet exploitanten en BBC De Media en Reclame Bank de netto online bestedingen over het vierde kwartaal van 2004 in kaart gebracht. De netto online bestedingen kwamen in Q4 2004 uit op € 19,8 miljoen.
De 13 bedrijven die data hebben aangeleverd zijn: MSN, Adlink, IP, Netdirect, Adformatie, Funda, Webads, Wanadoo, Veronica, Lycos, ilse media, IDG Communications en Wegener multimedia. Deze partijen vertegenwoordigen ruim 1500 Nederlandse websites, de grootste online dagbladen, webgidsen en zoekmachines. IAB Nederland directeur Igor Beuker geeft aan: “In het vierde kwartaal van 2003 bedroegen de netto online bestedingen nog € 12,7 miljoen. De € 19,8 miljoen netto over Q4 2004 is dus een stijging van 56% ten opzichte van hetzelfde kwartaal in 2003.
Over een week rapporteert IAB ook de jaarcijfers van 2004, cijfers die reden geven tot een brede glimlach". De branches welke voorop liepen qua online bestedingen over Q4 2004: Telecom/ICT met 22%, Media met 18%, Financiële Dienstverlening met 17%, Horeca-Tourisme-Recreatie met 7% en Retail met 5%. Van de online bestedingen in Q4 2004 kwam 49% uit banners & skyscrapers. Beuker licht namens IAB toe: “In het rapport van Q4 2004 ontbreken nog de cijfers van Google en Overture. De daadwerkelijke netto bestedingen over Q4 2004 zijn in werkelijkheid dus nog aanzienlijk hoger dan de gerapporteerde € 19,8. IAB verwacht dat ook Google en Overture in 2005 hun verantwoordelijkheid zullen oppakken, en cijfers gaan aanleveren”.

Klanten worden tegenwoordig gebombardeerd met commerciële uitingen van bedrijven. Als het niet via de massamedia is (waar men er een mooi woord voor heeft: clutter), dan is het wel via email, sms, telefoon of direct mail. Maar waneer klanten ondersteuning nodig hebben of als hun behoefte veranderd, dan horen ze vaak niets van deze bedrijven. Dit komt omdat de marketingafdelingen vaak wel de omslag hebben gemaakt om te denken in 'Wie' willen we met 'Wat' benaderen (i.p.v. 'Wat' gaan we aan 'Wie' aanbieden?), maar absoluut niet bezig zijn met de vraag: 'Wanneer' gaan we onze klanten benaderen.

De blogosfeer gaat de komende jaren zijn plaats in het medialandschap innemen en zal als zodanig aandacht vragen van marketeers. Blogs is van alle (niet directe) media de meest geschikte om een dialoog met klanten en prospects aan te gaan en alleen al om die reden kan geen marketeer zich veroorloven om blogs te negeren.

Een paar quotes uit een artikel van Steve Rubel (Micro Persuasion).

Today, Microsoft has more than 1200 corporate bloggers – more than 10 times the number it had just last year. They have the company’s blessing to write about whatever they want, provided they adhere to some basic guidelines. As a result, virtually overnight the bloggers have become one of the company’s greatest marketing assets, generating incredible online and offline word of mouth. In fact, Microsoft has even began to embrace them as a company.

Most importantly, however, Microsoft’s corporate blogging army has in a short time opened a transparent window onto the most financially successful company that ever existed. They have accomplished the impossible by putting a human face on a gigantic monolithic company – a giant with a bad rap. At the same time, they strengthened the company’s position as a thought leader and generated incalculable online word-of-mouth. Blogging can do the same for you – no matter your target audience or your goal. The key is to listen, learn, and then get started.

» The Rise of Business Blogging

How Biz uses Blogs at Google

How Biz uses Wikis at Google

Sam - let's call our interviewee Sam, it's suitably anonymous - lives in a three-bedroom semi-detached house in London, drives a vintage Jaguar and runs his own company. But "it's not not all rock and roll and big money", says Sam. What isn't? Spamming websites and blogs with text to pump up the search engine rankings of sites pushing PPC (pills, porn and casinos), that's what. For that's what Sam does, pretty much all day long. He - we'll use the male notation, it's easier - would do this anyway for fun, but it's more than fun; he says he can earn seven-figure sums doing this. Sam is a link spammer. He's unapologetic about it. Skilled in Perl, LWP and PHP, Sam's first professional programming was done aged 13, when he sold some code to a gaming company.