It's a hallowed tradition in technology when you need something: build it. And once built, use it to support your core business. Nowadays big companies call it "Eating Your Own Dogfood." So we know that the Microsofties were tortured with Office/2007 (motto: you thought you knew where things were....) long before any of us.

What do YOU Need to Automate your Social Networking Tasks?

We've looked at minor productivity enhancers and semi-automated tools, but they all lack key elements (automation, reporting) or have architectural issues (RSS Bookmarker's server centric design).

At the end of the day, there is a lack of actionability and ROI. Which comes from solving part of the problem or solving it the wrong way. In the end, what is missing is a technology stack that is focused on solving the end-to-end problem.

Technology Stack

Technology stack is a term of art that discusses the solution's technical elements and their combination, specifically relating each piece of the stack to part of the critical path for the solution of the business problem through technology.

For example, choosing your OS might revolve around current investment, running cost, etc. In this case the choice of Windows/Server over Linux would not only relate to the other technical pieces (ex: VB versus PHP) but to the real world of budget and staff ability.

I believe the minimum technical stack to automate Social Network System usage will look something like this:

Components Included

Client Side:

• Browser (ex: IE, Mozilla, Opera)
• ClientOS (ex: Windows, Linux, MacOS)

Server Side:

• ServerOS
• Database (ex: MySQL, Oracle, etc)
• 3GL "glue" language (ex: Perl, VP, etc)
  
• Reporting (ex: Crystal, Excel)
  
• Workflow and Admin
  
• Web Application Manipulation Language
  

Please note that the server is only conceptually separate from the client. You could certainly run it all on one machine, but if it is built in this fashion you'll be able to bring a horde of minions online when you're swamped with success.

This is the same reason you need to build in your thinking about Admin (user creation, security) and workflow (who does what in which order) from the beginning. You don't have to fully invest in activating it all at first, but if you don't slot it into the design, the retrofit will be horrible. And expensive.

I am certainly not going to get involved in the relative merits of Linux/Windows, Mozilla/IE, language_a/language_b - because we all have opinions and skills there, along with infrastructure and educational investment.

You want to use SQL Server or MySQL or Oracle? Fine, because that means you are solving the database nature of the problem. You want your Workflow/Admin in Nuke or WordPress or Joomla? Fine, because you're solving the problem at the right architectural level with the right tools.

What I want to focus on is the most difficult and arcane piece of the equation, the part that makes this application interestingly different than yet another CRM business application, this piece is the:

Web Application Manipulation Tool

The most basic assumption to start with is that you are developing an application to save you time, money, and to produce a competitive advantage. And that you are not going to write your own web browser with a built in voice recognition and replay capability. In Urdu.

The pointy end of the problem solving spear is a tool that you can use to programatically manipulate a web page: click buttons, insert text from your database, collect results, etc. This is a web application manipulation tool.

It must have the following capabilities:

• Supported application - from a commercially viable vendor or an active OSF-type community
• Mature product - must have developers documentation and have deployment successes
• Flexibile - Must handle a wide variety of web-based applications

Available Options for Web Application Manipulation Tools

We started with a list of over 20 contenders and boiled it down to the the following serious products:

• Macro Express
• iMacro
• CoScriper
• AutoIt

All these products placed strong showings in the above requirements, clearly leaving rivals behind.

To Be Continued.....

The next article will compare and contrast these four candidates and place them on the SEO Capability Grid.