Enterprise 2.0 derives from Web 2.0, and refers to social software application that sit behind or are used behind the corporate firewall. Wikipedia has a good entry on the topic, and I just came across this slide deck about Enterprise 2.0 by Scott Gavin. It is very well done and told as a story, that may help you convey the concept in a more understandable way to peers in your organization. Have a look.
A while back I saw a post on Forester about a new article on a topic they called Social Technographics. It peaked my interest and they were offering copies to bloggers, who wanted to review, so I sent in a request. Never heard anything so I went through another source and got the paper anyway, and here is my summary of the key concepts:)
I always find it funny how the think-tanks come up with new terms, register them and then tell everyone how they were the first to come up with the idea. This time its 'Social Technographics' which essentially means describing a population based on their level of participation. Companies are starting to realize that demographics don't mean what they used to especially when it comes to online usage and especially social software. You can no longer equate race, sex or age to social software engagement. Forester suggests that you need to create a social strategy based on how your users map into a set of profiles. They have identified 6 increasing levels of participation. (note - participation levels are not mutually exclusive)
1. Creators: online consumers who publish blogs, maintain web pages, or upload videos at least once a month.
2. Critics: participate by either commenting on blogs, or posting ratings and reviews. Their participation is not near as intense as creators. Critics pick and choose where they offer their thoughts, and often use blogs or other items as a launch pad for their participation.
3. Collectors: save URL's, use social bookmarking, tagging, and RSS. They create meta data that shared with the entire community and add to the self organization of web content.
4. Joiners: one defining behavior - use of social networking sites. Highly likely to engage in other social software activities.
5. Spectators: read blogs, view videos, and listen to podcasts. The audience for the social content created by users in the other groups.
6. Inactives: do not participate in social computing activities. They site this as 52 percent which jives well with this study.
These profiles of course do vary by age. For example teenagers generate more content than any other generation, and joiners are dominated by Gen-Y. However age is not the only way to slice the data. User motivation (entertainment, career, family etc) as well as site features, and brand appeal can all drive different participation profiles.
The key with this is to think about these it terms of your users/customers to define the right strategy with respect to deploying social software. Make sure you deploy what will best fit the participation levels of your audience. Once you understand your audience, Forester continues that you should:
I have become much more interested in the social, cultural and behavioral impacts and changes deriving from web 2.0 and social software, much more than the technology itself. All those tools and features without any business model are reshaping our culture and the economy.
Stowe Boyd, one of the lead thinkers in this space gave a presentation at Reboot, about his concept on Flow. His presentation is available here. The clip is about 35 minutes long so take some time at your lunch and watch it.
Some of my key takeaways. This isn't by any means a summary of the talk but concepts that jumped out at me...
- First in first out processing works well at a supermarket, but not in an emergency room. We are now living in a world that is much more like an emergency room.
- We are actually moving to more of a pre-industrial/agricultural consciousness. More like that of a tribe.
- Today your time is a shared space, which conflicts with current business norms. Is what you are doing of greater benefit to you (or your boss) or does it benefit the tribe?
- The buddy list is the center of the universe. I am made greater by the sum of my connections & so are my connections.
- Productivity is second to connectivity. Network productivity trumps personal productivity
This type of thinking goes well beyond how, and what tool you should let in or look to utilize in your business to satisfy your customers, employees or give a boost to your search results or marketing campaign. Its about understanding how cultural norms are shifting and how you as a business will need to react. I like Stowe concept of the tribe, and although he used it in the context of your social network, I feel like this concept can be brought into an organizations, and supported by the right tools, will help support the productivity of the organizational tribe. The majority of companies are no longer living in a supermarket world (even if their business is supermarkets!). Business is now an emergency room.
Came across a thought provoking essay by Danah Boyd about her take on the significance of Social Software. Its an intriguing read if you are interested in the significance of this concept beyond the tech aspects into more about how it is shaping and changing social behavior.
The article begins by giving an interesting history behind the concepts of social software/social computing and the various definitions. As is often the case, researchers and developers are unhappy with 'new' concepts and come out saying that 'they have always been there', however Danah makes a great point that Social software is about a movement, not simply a category of technologies. The author goes on to say:
It’s about recognizing that the era of e-commerce centered business models is over; we’ve moved on to web software that is all about letting people interact with people and data in a fluid way. It’s about recognizing that the web can be more than a broadcast channel; collections of user-generated content can have value. No matter what, it is indeed about the new but the new has nothing to do with technology; it has to do with attitude.
Danah argues that there are three dramatic changes that have been brought on by Social Software:
1. The way in which technologies are designed - The people behind these technologies are approaching design and deployment in fundamentally different ways. The key design values of the social software movement include:
I was at a conference recently where one of the presenters threw out some blogging statistics (unfortunately I don't have the source in my notes). 17% of companies currently are blogging. 35% expect to be blogging by the end of 2007 and 48% have no plans. Almost half of the companies out there have no plans to implement a simple (and almost free) means by which to start meaningful conversations with their customers.
A year ago many companies and executives still didn't even know what a blog was. Now it is unlikely that there is a CEO that doesn't know what one is, however the problem they are trying to figure out now is how to enter into this game without screwing up... and by the way screwing up means different things depending on who you are talking to - Peers, shareholders, investors, customers, industry experts, and other bloggers. Unfortunately it seems that most are just planning to ignore it.
What companies need to understand is that we are now truly in the reputation economy. Of course having a good reputation has always been important, but in the past companies had some means of controlling reputation perception through PR and advertising. Additionally, the mechanisms by which reputation spread was somewhat limited. You may have a good or bad reputation in your town, but move out from there and its like starting over (which could be either a positive or negative depending on the company).
Its similar to the ebola virus. It has always been around, but if it hit a small village it might wipe out the town the it could only spread that far since there were little to no connections outside of the town. Then towns became closer together, and faster means of transportation got developed, and the virus now pops up in many different places and everyone gets in a panic about the new virus...Social software tools are the rapid transportation mechanisms that are allowing reputation virus's spread quickly, pop up in new areas and surprising consumers... and can no longer be contained.
And its not just blogs that determine your reputation now - A plethora of social tools are now going mainstream. Wiki's and social networks from the behemoth mainstream players to the growing population of niche social networks, are the places where your corporate reputation will be determined - not your PR engine.
What makes this entire situation more interesting is that not only are tools available for the market to define your reputation, but whatever they define will be recorded for eternity in search indexes.
So for the nearly 50 percent of companies that have no plans to blog (and presumable no plans to use any other social tools), ignoring the change is not going to solve the problem. The solution is to learn, participate, communicate, and learn some more. Above all be humble.
Yesterday I received a post on Tech Crunch regarding a company called Ning, that now has now modified their tool for creating online social networks without any development knowledge. I created one myself in about 5 minutes and also sent the link around to a few at work. One of my colleagues also created one, and we started talking about what this means. A tool like this that any web-savvy user can create with, the long tail of social networks will start. They have as Chris Anderson stated 'democratized the tools of production'. No longer is one forced to mold into one of the big existing social networks. These now mainstream social networks have critical mass in terms of size but little to no focus, on anything besides creating large friend lists and an online communication portal. I have already stated that I think large social networks will reach a tipping point. Ning's tool will allow social networks to be created on any topic/interest that one can imagine. And just like the long tail has proven for niche content creation through blogging, I expect the same to happen here.
Of course these long tail social networks will not build memberships in the 10's of millions, but that is not their purpose. Their goal is not to compete against MySpace or Facebook. They offer what the mainstream social networks can't, due to their large size. They allow small focused groups to form, bond and socialize on specific topics of interest. Think about the potential for knowledge sharing and networking that could be done now. Personal blogs started two way conversations. Long tail social networks will create focused many-to-many conversations. They may become a natural extension of active blogs, where blogs test the waters to see if the conversation is worth having, and niche social networks extend these conversations. The long tail has proven that if one person has interest in a topic, there are others.
From an advertising perspective, long tail social networks could be an untapped goldmine. A few hundred eyes or possibly a few thousand eyes, that are part of a long tail social network that has a narrow focus, it likely more valuable than 100,000 eyes in a mainstream social network, where all you really know is that these people are social and they are likely under 30.
Most companies know about social networks, and have heard the terms social media and social software, but has it went any further than a buzz word for most? These tools are more than just a way for your teenage kids to spend more time talking to your friends, post their 'deep' thoughts or pictures online. The Net Savvy Executive has created a Social Media Midterm Exam. Now by the very fact that you are reading this post either online or through an RSS reader, already puts you ahead of the game, but pass it on to some others in your organization. It may get a needed discussion going - how these tools can be applied to making your business more effective. The first two questions alone should be enough to invoke the conversation:
A while back I blogged about how Joi Ito is experimenting with new management techniques inside of WOW. Here is a great slide show from Shufflebrain about using game mechanics in the context of social software to create applications that are fun, compelling and addictive. One of the keys to social software is giving people a reason to come back after their first visit. Social software needs to do something, or people won't stay. The mechanics presented are the following:
Kevin Donaldson -- Boise, Idaho
Summary
An Entrepreneur trying to improve his ability to think on the edges.
This is no longer an active blog, but I leave the content up to add to the overall internet knowledge pool! However you can Follow me on Twitter! and check out my new blog here!
