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The Connectbeam Social Computing Blog

A resource and viewpoint from Connectbeam on how social computing is changing the way we work. We cover the broader market and what we are doing at Connectbeam.

Three Ways to Double the Value of Your Social SoftwareYesterday

We gave a webinar yesterday, titled Double the Value of Your Social Software.

So how exactly does one “double the value” of social software? Well right now, organizations face a new issue of "enterprise silos" 2.0.

The great thing about companies rolling out the tools of Web 2.0 is that it lets people from everywhere contribute. Multiple people jump on wikis, blogs, microblogging, etc. Social software can tear down the departmental and geographic walls that separate employees.

So it’s ironic that these wall-busting apps end up as new walled gardens of participation. Employees update their Confluence wiki, they blog on Movable Type and Yammer away. But there’s no integration of the apps.

The core of the "doubling" argument is that integrating the various social software apps inside companies produces a new layer of value. In terms of how this happens, we developed three areas of focus:

1. Expand information’s reach
2. Create an employee skills database
3. Diversify and strengthen workers’ sources of information

The Slideshare below is the presentation we used in the webinar.

Webinar: Double the Value of Your Social SoftwareNovember 12

Are you using multiple social software apps in your organization? Each one is individually valuable. But ironically, these collaborative apps end up as new data silos, not integrated with the wider organization. Tying the apps together improves accessibility and is the foundation for employee social networks. This was the gist of our earlier blog post Fix the Enterpise 2.0 Silo Issue.

We're holding a Webinar - Double the Value of Your Social Software - to discuss the benefits of connecting enterprise 2.0 apps, and how Connectbeam does this to significantly increase their value. We welcome your attendance. Here are the details

Thursday November 20 1:00 pm EST, 10:00 am PST Click here to register

Economic Downturn: Putting a Dollar Figure on the Value of Enterprise 2.0 for CompaniesOctober 17

The times they are a-changin'. In a space of weeks, the global economy has slowed. Employees are concerned about their jobs, companies are preparing for negative growth. Everyone's in a tough period right now.

For the Enterprise 2.0 industry, this is indeed the time to demonstrate the business case of social software. On the FASTForward Blog, Jevon MacDonald penned a great piece: In uncertain times, Enterprise 2.0 takes the stage. Included in the post is a quote by Enterprise 2.0 consultant Thomas Vander Wal:

The interconnections and interactions between people spark great value, but the more costly traditional tools have missed out on this great reservoir of value, but the newer lower cost solutions offer these gems up wonderfully with a little coaxing.

Enterprise 2.0 improves three critical components of companies' success: innovation, productivity and responsiveness. During times of economic stress, productivity rises to the top in terms of priorities...

Do more with less.

In that spirit, we want to discuss a fantastic academic paper that studies the effects of IT, multitasking and social networks on companies. Specifically, the researchers studied a multi-office, geographically dispersed executive recruiting firm.

The results are eye-opening, an

Five Moves of Power Users in Enterprise 2.0October 10

Harvard Professor Andrew McAfee recently penned an interesting post, Should Knowledge Workers Have Enterprise 2.0 Ratings? The post examines the idea of applying ratings to workers based on their activity with social software applications. Ratings would be part of the toolkit of adoption techniques.

The comments to his post are a good discussion about the problems with this approach. These ratings hold the potential to undermine the spirit of "let's get people talking and collaborating" that defines Enterprise 2.0. That's not to say the idea is wholly without merit. But "ratings" carry negative connotations in this context. Maybe there are "levels" that employees could earn, without the stigma of having a low "rating".

His post did cause a discussion here at Connectbeam. Rather than focus on ratings, we wondered:

How would a power user operate in our application?

There are actually a lot of ways. This being a blog, and we're going to keep things tight. Here are five that we came up with...

The Power Moves

1. SEO your social profile. On the web, those whose success is built on people finding them are very good at maintaining their profiles. Profiles are a basis for being found (e.g. L

Fix the Enterprise 2.0 Silo IssueOctober 2

Came across a nice post by CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne on KM World, Enterprise Social Software Technology. In the post, he articulates the functional underpinnings of social computing software. If you're tracking the Enterprise 2.0 space, it's a good read.

A couple quotes caught our eyes here. First:

Vendors are also "socializing" existing software products. On the main, that is a good thing, but it should not be confused with dedicated social software tools. In the absence of accepted integration standards, adding things like tags, profiles and instant messaging services to longstanding applications can create just another set of siloed communities.

A core principle of social computing is connectedness. Adding social computing features to existing enterprise silos certainly helps, but fails to connect the larger organization.

Here's the other quote from Tony's post:

But it is equally clear that no single vendor in the marketplace excels at all or even most of those services. In fact, many successful social software case studies revolve around the dedicated application of a standalone tool.

We have not yet seen the emergence of a full-suite vendor that addresses the different needs of the market. Expect to see enterprises with