Friday, June 27, 2008

Social tools in the enterprise. Contradiction in terms?

Just added a new post to /message. All thoughts welcome!

4 comments:

  1. Only if we allow the label 'Social' to mean that which is not strictly to do with work...

    If we think of these technologies in terms of 'Community' or 'Group' networking then they can become a huge benefit to efficient and effective collaborative information sharing and knowledge gaining.

    Whereas perhaps 'Social' is more about gaining experience then the enterprise equivalent might be more about information and knowledge.

    Calls centres, research labs, sales teams... all examples of how these tools could fit well. Now whether they are being used as such anywhere is slightly different...

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  2. Hi Chris, social tools are about connecting people. Limiting the amount of connections available (by keeping them within the enterprise) I think limits the value. That's what the post at /message discusses.
    See you at eat'n'tweet!

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  3. Hi David,

    That too was my instinctive reaction, and enterprises undoubtedly have a lot to gain from joining the wider conversation with their customers and markets. Let's face it, if we don't talk _with_ our customers, they'll talk _about_ us anyway behind our backs.

    But then I thought about the analogy with social media tools in the consumer space, and I thought, if families and friendship groups are allowed to keep stuff private from time to time, why not corporations.

    Every time I post a photo on Flickr I make a conscious decision whether to show to family, friends, or everyone. The choices are subtle, based on a desire to protect my loved-ones' privacy, to protect personal information, or simply to avoid inflicting too much domestic trivia on people who don't really want to know.

    Services like Facebook have succeeded because they give their users control over how wide each conversation goes. Getting this right for enterprises will be equally important.

    Regards,
    Matt

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  4. Matt, check out the post on /message. I make the point that there are some things we will want to keep private - relating to implementation (true IP).

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