social media stuff

[Dan McCarron]

google pokes a hole in the dike: http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202800794

[David Hisbrook]

I'm glad to see this discussion. Not only is it central to us, it's very central to some of our clients. Do we name clients here?... Nah, not a good idea. Let's just say we have SaaS clients and software app clients. 'Nuff said.

Anyway. here's an interesting story ripped from today's headlines:

Google Aims to Break Open the Closed World of Social Networking

Just had a GoToMeeting presentation from Renee at Awareness. I'm trying to figure out --
1. if we want them to build all the web 2.0 for clients who shall remain nameless
2. if we want to cobble together widgets from them with stuff from us
3. is we want to use their POV as a starting point for our own development

[David Hisbrook]

http://systematichr.com/?p=806

…When implementing any type of social media, or any technology for that matter, you should obviously have a pretty darn good idea of why you are implementing it, and how it will bolster the overall business strategy…

[Bret Starr]

I'm not sure that a company can control social media. In fact, the more they try to control it, the less successful it will be. A lot of companies are looking at social media as a tool for building a community - but in the business world, I'm not sure that's possible. Innovative companies will launch social media just to see what happens with only some loose guidelines in place regarding ROI and business strategy.

[Dan McCarron]

Jim Stroud (a Recruiting Searchologist dude) has a really cool site - check out the widgets on the right side, especially the podcast about boobs.

http://jimstroud.com/2007/11/06/kicking-the-tires-on-powerset/

[David Hisbrook]

http://systematic.hrblogs.org/2007/09/11/social-media-in-the-enterp...
From Systematic Viewpoints.

Collaboration requires a balance of freedom and governance to thrive.

In the post, he uses a Sharepoint example where “employees had been given broad access to Sharepoint. Folks rushed out and set up their own spaces, and now nobody collaborates across them. As a result information and knowledge is more hidden than it was before ‘collaboration’ became broadly available.”

There are two points here. First, employees are quite excited to collaborate and find ways to distribute their knowledge. In general, people are eager to get the word out for the great work they are doing. This assumes two things: 1) there are of course people and silos that are very secretive for various reasons, and 2) people are engaged with their work and do indeed think it’s great work.

The second point however, is that given their own means, collaborative efforts without a good process to coordinate all the energies will result in failure. We call this governance, and more than enough has been written about the topic. However, it’s worth pointing out in the context of the specific example. When we talk about ways to collaborate in a Web 2.0 environment, we say that governance is critical. But too many people think about Web 2.0 governance as applied to wiki’s, blogs, etc. However, very many organizations have deployed the Sharepoint technology without realizing that the collaborative possibilities are just as great and the need for governance is as well.

The balance between freedom and governance is critical. Employees will collaborate on their own, given the right tools. But the maintenance and health of that collaboration takes work, and there is a fine line between governing the process and stifling collaboration.