Knowledge management should be integrated with social media tools and network. It is crucial for competitiveness, business, catastrophic or epidemic containment or political campaigns. Relevant information gathering and timely delivery and the layout of presenting it can win wars, lawsuits, epidemics, competition or election campaigns. At the end of the day many crucial decision makings rely on the big tech infrastructure as well as the way other organizations and the public uses it.

Social media and digital traffic generate income from micro-users via proper tooling and online communication solutions. In this way Big Tech is able to “bait and hook” industries, governments, organizations using their “micro users mass base” and vice-versa.

Big tech companies and their customers compete on traffic retention, which means once a user is in their platform, the provider tries to make the user stay in the websites or its applications before moving to other platform. Hence, in order to survive, those companies will have to diversify and compete on the same type of services: including search services, video and streaming, collaboration/messaging, advertising/presence and eCommerce.

Each time a new service emerges as traffic drawer or a lead-magnet, big tech will try to make an hidden hostile overtake or develop similar applications that would keep the traffic in their hands. Such was the buyout of Youtube, Waze, Instagram, Whatsapp, Skype, and so on. Congress and the government agencies facilitated those noncompetitive steps for obvious reasons.

Projections indicate that big tech parent companies will swallow news and communication companies over time and that other companies might transition into media companies. Amazon evolved from online bookstore into an integrative platform that offers streaming, news, and almost every imaginable tangible product and service delivery system for end-users, corporations and governments. The company evolved to be holding projects and contractors of government for security software and networking solutions as well.

The technological barrier of developing algorithms and end user services are getting easier to overcome. In the same time the end users are getting more savvy and have more online information access then the providing service organization customer desk agent. Customers, suppliers and employees are demanding an increasing level of serviceability, a better look and feel of user interfaces which should be easy to learn and improved information access and disclosure. In many cases the customer or supplier have more information on competitive solutions then the servicing agent.

In that sense IT managers have to deliver an reprogram their applications, keeping in mind that every user that moves away means lost revenues on added values or traffic and advertising income. The other face that IT managers should adapt to, is the competitiveness loss, inflicted by the inability to collect crucial data and transfer it to the field and decision makers on time. If small companies use open platforms and social media from the get-go the legacy close information systems are in a competitive disadvantage.

Added values of online services and traffic generators are priced based on usage, traffic volume/quality and the ability to present and sell qualitative information based on statistics gathering, analytics and targeting. In many cases those values are overstated or understated by biased analysis and bought models and polls that overlook on some parameters. The effectiveness of the traffic generation is derived from the ability is implemented through algorithms and user dependency and affect the charged price for services or even the market price of IPOs or stock value.

During the last 20 years, companies that were involved in social media and achieved a threshold of user volume, established a market value that surpasses the price of tangible goods companies and some of the “military industrial complex” capitalisation value of government contractors. Some say those companies are integrated in the “Military Industrial Complex” through their services of data and traffic analysis and collection. Another extreme theory is that “Big Tech” is in the process of overtaking the “Industrial Complex”.

The ability to program social media software is getting more viable by the day due to open code and reusability standards, open platforms, reduced storage and hosting costs and decreasing bandwidth communication prices. Thus, Big Tech companies or organizations that use Big Tech services have to adapt and evolve fast and improve their technological infrastructure for retaining their user base and government contracts.

With an emerging clutter of online services an entity that needs to use that information faces many challenges. There is no unified cross platform and cross entity solution that enables efficient gathering information bits that can be linked or stored for later use simultaneously for multiple purposes at the same time. Corporations, organizations and governments have a difficulty of allowing their employees and customers/users to use their information and knowledge over open networks in an efficient way as well as classifying and declassifying this information. They also face difficulties servicing their customers or target audience through a common communication tool that is not behind a firewall or under restrictions that are confined by procedural regulation.

Data analysis and modern knowledge management systems should integrate social media information and presentation layers. This is a game changer on conventional IT departments and data mining practices, since information should be relevantly classified and collected also from open clouds while maintaining the firewalls and security mechanisms needed to protect the organization.

In many cases the information within those entities is not available to the right person or algorithm in the existing unforeseeable circumstances. When the information is in a database or over the cloud it might not be accessible from the available physical place or devices on time because the lack of the needed application access, know-how, network or just a password is not working or available when mostly needed.

Sound and adaptive knowledge management is critical for survival and competitiveness. It serves:

1. Information storage, classification and delivery for operative purposes at the front line.
2. Having the right information with the right presentation layer implies an organization can understand and react to the agents of successes and failures in each department.
3. The organization can communicate and respond to authorities, customers, providers, customers, taxation and judicial claims.
4. Basis for analysing what are the implications of prior organization changes vis-a-vis market changes, and hence the ability to pinpoint opportunities and risks.
5. Basis for managerial decision making and response to non foretasted events.
6. Knowledge base at the technical and managerial level should redundant and be kept in a way that prevents a key member holding critical information on procedures or technicalities for leveraging this position. Even if not told explicitly, shareholders and management that understand that mission critical leverage, have to succumb and can’t replace this person. In some cases they have to increase benefits for this person and the relevant entourage (Friends and Family) .

Most entities have the information in the “heads” of their members or their databases but other members are not aware of the existence of the much needed information or how to get it on time and the right shareable manner. Hence, many operational tasks and management decision making are not taken to the next level. Other then getting information from the outside, a sound knowledge management solution depends on how collecting internal knowledge, classifying, making it available for immediate operation use or managerial decision making. When consultants give advise on information management they don’t have the whole picture and the information available inside the consulted entity and outside the entity, which forces organizations to rely on learning from evolving environments through knowledge management and using consultants to consult on what is evolving and what they are missing. In that sense consultants are not a replacement for knowledge management.

A viable solution should incorporate a device independent means of searching, pushing and sharing information data. The information haw to be picked up and classified by algorithms or persons and the information that is built under the right arrangement of these bits accordingly with relevance, context and categorisation.

A right knowledge management solution can win wars, political campaigns, business success, epidemic containment or catastrophe management.

The Cartelization of Big Tech

Many small companies are bought out or are forced to close after Congress gives preferential SEC 230 immunity to the lobbied big tech while deplatforming smaller companies. One of the tools of deplatformting competition, is using a post from a third party that wasn’t politically correct or denouncing cyber security risk or national security breach. By definition of human behaviour, all systems are vulnerable to breaches or political incorrectness, which makes closing or dissolving a social media company for that, an excuse tom maintain a cartel similar to the Fed regulation in the 1920-30s.

One method of unfair competition or forces buyout is denouncing cyber security risks, politicisation or reverse engineering the application offered by other market participants. This requires also cooperation or cartelization through “standardising” boards. Creating those committees is done as a double bladed sword that enables watching and learning from big competition while rising the walls on entry level or Survivability to small players. Another method is setting the guidelines to Congress on “Open Platform” 230 sec rules and oversight as well as getting contracts with government by participating in bid requirement drafting.

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