How effective is three degrees as a knowledge management system?Summary:ScreenshotsAmanda D. McCoy KMS385t – Turnbull 1/13/20197:31 PM“three degrees” – A System Evaluation of the Beta ReleaseAmanda D. McCoy – KMS385t Spring 2003; Professor Don TurnbullIntroductionIn 2000, Microsoft created a new group called the NetGen Lab and eventually located it inits downtown offices in Seattle after it matured and became the NetGen Division. The group was primarily made up of recent college graduates hired exclusively to explore howthe Internet generation (age 13-24) could influence the future of Microsoft products.1 The 18-month-old group beta-released the fruits of NetGen’s labor early this year in the form of “three degrees”, a new instant-messaging, music sharing, and peer-to-peer networking program. Three degrees uses Microsoft’s peer-to-peer update and MSN Messenger 5, running on Windows XP with Service Pack 1. Once the NetGen Division discovered what their target market did with the Internet technology they had at their disposal, the decisionwas made to create an application that included the market’s favorite features. The three degrees beta currently allows users to engage in the following activities: Instant-messaging, music listening, image sharing, and group forming. Below is an exploration of the technology in three degrees, including its user experience, its usefulness as a tool forsocial networks, computer-supported-collaborative-work-environments, and as a knowledge management system. The technology– How is three degrees different from other P2P networks?Three degrees is marketed as a consumer product using Microsoft’s Peer-to-Peer upgrade for Windows XP. Until now, widely available peer-to-peer technology has been a glimpse on the consumer product horizon, with peer-to-peer products developed before today targeted primarily at enterprise companies or small to medium sized businesses. Or, in the case of Gnutella, not targeted at much at all. Other companies such as Groove Networks had the mind share, with the introduction of its peer-to-peer platform in 2000 claiming to host a variety of peer computing applications and business solutions. Napster was equally, if not more infamous, largely due to the legal ramifications of sharing music through its client/servers application until it was forced to change its method of operationsin 2001. Three degrees is in no way similar to an early Internet cowboy that harnesses the full power of unwieldy peer-to-peer technology, and subsequent near-anonymity, suchas Gnutella.2 If three degrees were on a spectrum that communicated control of the technology and its management of user information; three degrees would be on one end while Gnutella would be on the other. That is, the control of who is part of the network is well managed with Microsoft’s .NET information and its registered users who are participating in the beta. Every person must register for the beta download, and have a Microsoft passport login or an email that can be used by MSN Messenger. Additionally, Microsoft is using a peer-to-peer networking certificate created by each peer for authentication purposes. This certificate is self-signed and is also used to provide information about the peer identity. While other peer-to-peer networks operate without central servers that might include security databases used to authenticate, Microsoft’s does not.31Amanda D. McCoy KMS385t – Turnbull 1/13/20197:31 PMThree degrees relies on the premise that its users will be inviting friends, and friends-of-friends to join groups. It relies on what I will call an inward>outward>inward approach. In this sense, a three degrees registered user must send an invitation to another user to join. That user must also sign up to join, so the peer-to-peer network structure is only truly created when that second user signs up and becomes literally part of the Microsoft network first. In comparison, some peer-to-peer networks operate outside of the world-wide-web, and while some peer-to-peer instant message can occur without the use of a server host, three degrees is most likely to be running MSN Messenger 5 using the same infrastructure as non-XP users. That said, three degrees is making use of its peer-to-peernetwork functionality to listen to music on one group member’s local machine, and share winks (animated expressions) simultaneously with other group members. To simplify, I would call three degrees a peer-to-peer network within a network.Is three degrees a good example of groupware or CSCW?Is three degrees Lotus Notes? No. Is it Net Meeting or SharePoint? Not by a long shot. The buds of collaboration are visible but to add groupware functionality now would mean it was perhaps too “grown-up” and not youthful enough. That said, the discussion forums already contain suggestions by users (one 17 years old) to add shared whiteboard space,and the ability to share files such as documents and PowerPoint presentations. It is clearly not being targeted as groupware, so I won’t try to pin this claim on the application just yet. At least a dozen articles have been written with regard to NetGen’s goal of producing a product that targets the user’s main goal. In this case, socializing. As it stands now, NetGen’s product development process is probably more indicative of CSCWthan three degrees. However, it would be naïve to assume that three degrees lacks the potential for this. Just because NetGen thought the target market is more interested in swapping images of friends at parties, it doesn’t mean they won’t send their homework assignment in the form of a .doc to their English teacher at school, or send documents to their workgroup in college. The guts of real time collaboration, such as document editing, commenting, browsing etc. do not exist in three degrees, unless one counts the functionality of Messenger 5, which in actuality, is the more collaborative of the two when it comes to the idea of “work” and not “play”. Another pitfall regarding the manner in which group participation is currently used is the potential for chaos. Any user can controlthe play list of music at any time, even moving around the order of songs, or deleting them altogether. I imagine it would be potentially annoying, since the group can only listen to one song at a time. In many CSCW tools, there is an admin or moderator. This concept doesn’t exist in three