Twitter-capability improves ROI for Enterprise2.0 September 25, 2008
Posted by qua in Uncategorized.add a comment
I like this article by Matthew Hodgson, posted on Sept.8, at Social Computing Magazine.
The ROI of Social Computing
http://www.socialcomputingmagazine.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=607
Matthew’s conclusion:
This is where modern organizations find their investment in social computing tools is paying off. Tools, like Twitter, give employees instant access to their trusted network of colleagues, friends and experts. Blogs allow people to have access to other people’s thoughts in a storytelling style that communicates in a much more personal and effective way than a clinical report ever can. And then, of course, individuals can comment and ask the author a direct question and have a discussion that leads into the use of other social computing tools.
It’s this access to people that the investment in social computing tools brings. When considering closing down the walls to applications like Facebook or Twitter, consider the impact on workers inability to access the experts in their professional networks. When considering bringing social computing tools into the organization look at how they will support and strengthen communication within your internal communities of practice. This is the ROI for social computing and when used as part of an array of tools that help connect people, facilitate communication and collaboration, then it can rejuvenate your intranet and make it live!
Why managers and execs “don’t get it”. September 8, 2008
Posted by qua in Uncategorized.Tags: enterprise 2.0, social computing, social networking, web2.0
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I guess it shouldn’t be that suprising that so many managers and execs, even those in IT, don’t grock the business value of social computing. Some are thrown off the the term “social”. They equate it with playing around (not that there is anything wrong with that 
.
We can call it something else, like “professional networking” , or “knowledge networking”. But then KM always struggled with that word. Its a truly new paradigm (another word that has become appropriated and therefore may not help managers)- or several new paradigms that are converging. (the long tail, power to the edge, peer production, wikinomics, etc)
Social networks are not lost on the US armed forces and even the CIA. “Power to the Edge” is a term applied to using social networks to help soldiers in the field make life/death command decisions more quickly. And CNN reported recently about A-Space, the CIA’s social network.
Many who are critical or skeptical of the value of social computing in their enterprise are not fluent with these tools and ways of working. Working this way is not like viewing static webpages, or reading an IM. It is a synergy of multiple capabilities used together (e.g Twitter, blogs, IM, email, wikis). The metrics that are typically used for web traffic are not sufficient to measure value for this. New metrics. like “aggregated idea-views” , along with “sentiment” and other new metrics will need to be developed.
In any case, there are completely new models and economics in play, and I believe managers have a responsibility to peer over the edge into the new world.
