Oct 10
I was thinking about the future of social software and it’s place in the enterprise this morning.
- Internal social networks will become the lifeblood of companies. Connecting thousands of employees and housing a majority of their thoughts, plans, and processes will be paramount to success. Social software will not be optional to survive in the business world, much like email today.
- Social software will become just as important and complex as ERP and CRM systems. We need to learn from these massive software systems… what to do and what to not do.
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- It will need to be stable and capable of scaling to huge sizes
- We will need to connect to other systems (ERP, CRM, etc)
- Reliability will be critical. Clustering, backup/restore granularity, etc. Restoring should not mean “reload the entire database from yesterday” and ideally does not involve making a request to someone in IT.
- Security will be paramount. Encryption of stored data, secure transactions with other systems, regulatory compliance, etc.
- Social software will shift to include a greater focus on content creation. We already see this trend in full swing with Google Docs, Zoho, Buzzword, and others, but I honestly think that content creation will become closer to Microsoft Office with complex publishing capabilities including databases and cross system data sharing. Users will look first to create their content with the social system itself.
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- This means that there will be ways to share this information outside of internal networks. We also need to be able to view and access content created with other systems.
- Document creation and management is just the first step. Data storage and manipulation will also become important. I already use DabbleDB for storing information (inventory, software licenses, purchase history, etc) and doing this with in house social software seems like and obvious requirement.
- Profiles will become huge. Personal and work related content will need a closer interaction. Specifically, we need to hook into things like Twitter, Word Press, Blogger, etc. When you visit someones profile, you will see their personal blog, work blog, flickr photos, facebook, myspace, linked-in, whatever all in one place.
Clearspace has already become something I cannot live without at work. Word Press, Flickr, and Twitter are my personal addictions. Now to just make them talk to each other…
October 12th, 2008 at 10:59
My question about internal social networking sites is how you eliminate all the cruft. What do you do with internal biography pages on people who don’t work there anymore? What about department websites that are years out of date, or links to HR policies that never get updated when the policies do?
As useful as these tools can be, how can managers be persuaded that it’s worth a place in their budgeting to keep the information up-to-date?
I’ve effectively stopped using SharePoint because it’s either impossible to find what I’m looking for, or what I do find is obsolete and irrelevant. I’ve also written several articles on our internal Wiki (mostly explanations of technical things, like how TCP works that I think are better than what you see in the top google searches, or explanations of how HTTP content caching works that are essentially a reader-friendly boil-down of the relevant RFC). Articles like that are essentially timeless; TCP and HTTP aren’t going anywhere. But what about articles like how to install ABC on the latest XYZ, when both ABC and XYZ are on a short release cycle? No one keeps that stuff up to date!
October 12th, 2008 at 15:15
Outdated content is a concern, but is only a big issue when the system isn’t heavily utilized and/or isn’t “open” enough.
The policies exist somewhere and being updated by someone always. If that’s not happening within the social software itself then yes, that’s a major problem. I highly advocate using the social software to CREATE content and maintain it there – I’m not just talking about uploading word docs and then forgetting to update the website each time it changes.
Further, documents are more apt to receive attention if they are editable by anyone (or at least those that know enough to contribute to the subject of the doc).
You have to embrace the social software entirely or not at all. I believe that at some point, you have to decide between using Office with a file server OR using an online collaboration tool (such as Clearspace).
At Jive, we do get outdated docs – but they are useful form a historical perspective. One thing is for sure though – if it exists, it’s in Clearspace. There’s never a concern that some policy is sitting out on a file server in a more current state as everyone uses Clearspace to create and update important docs.
Yes, we do still use Excel and Word like everyone else, just way, way less since 90% of what we create can be done all within Clearspace.
October 12th, 2008 at 15:17
Oh, and don’t let SharePoint be your only impression of social software. It handles files well, but doesn’t handle collaboration well at all. Specifically, finding content is a PITA in SharePoint as you well know.