If you read my first blog on social networking in the enterprise, you have some idea about why I believe social networking is going to be important to almost all organizations sometime in the very near future. You also know that I believe that organizations that are already on the path of implementing social networking in the enterprise are not only progressive and innovative but are going to have a strategic advantage over those who wait. Finally, you know that my beliefs are based upon events that are occurring today in leading companies, in the underlying technologies and in society as a whole, at least in the United States.
This blog continues the series of blogs that I mentioned I would write in order to explore other aspects of social networking in the enterprise and it’s importance. In this blog I will provide a description of enterprise social networking. I am not going to attempt to define it however.The difficulty with definitions is that they are almost always incomplete when created for new or emerging phenomena. Descriptions are often incomplete as well but from the outset they don’t claim to be, well — definitive!
Why might a description be useful to this series of blogs and why should you spend 10 minutes reading it? Simply because the term encompasses so much. It can mean many different things depending on who’s talking. If there is a shared understanding of what the term encompasses, at least shared between you and me for the rest of this series, then there is a much smaller chance that you will misunderstand my remaining blogs and I your comments.
Broadly, social networking provides a means of linking individuals and allowing interaction between and among the members of the network. Those members presumably have some common interest besides simply linking to others in the network, that is they are not seeking links for the sake of links alone (although this is a game played by some). On the Internet as a whole a social network could number in the hundreds of millions, possibly even into a billion or more people if we make the assumption that there is some interest or aspect of our lives that 1/6 or more of us on the planet have in common (besides the obvious commonalities we all share as humans).
In an enterprise the universe of network participants or members is some multiple (larger than 1) of the number of persons in the enterprise. I say some multiple larger than 1 because I don’t believe enterprises that are going to realize the most from social networking are going to limit the network to enterprise members only. There are too many potential benefits associated with mining connections between people in the enterprise and a group or groups of people connected to but outside the enterprise. Just consider family members of employees for example. What about partner organizations or companies? What about former employees who’ve left on good terms? The determining factor in setting limits is likely to be the purpose of the social network in a given enterprise. (More on this in an upcoming blog) I just don’t believe that in most cases the number of potential members of an enterprise social network will be the number of people in the enterprise; it will be greater.
A social network provides its most significant value through discovered and suggested links (commonalities) between members of the network. It provides these suggested links based on the analysis of common characteristics and behaviors. One of the elements that differentiates enterprise social networks from Internet social networks is the fact that the data used in "mining" for links is not entirely dependant upon the actions of the members. Enterprises have a wealth of data about their members. This data and the behavior of the members within the computing environment of the enterprise allow the mining of connections to occur even in cases where members enter little or no data about themselves. This is of enormous importance and value.
Social networks also allow explicit links to be created between members of the network. I don’t have to wait until a link is suggested; I can create one actively. What is important about this aspect of all good social networks, at least today, is that the members of the network have individual control over whether or not discovered or suggested links are added to their list of networked or linked persons. This is only what a given member sees and manages however, not necessarily what the software behind the "network" is actually tracking. Merely because a member does not want a connection to be added to his or her list doesn’t mean the system drops "knowledge" of that connection. Again, enterprise social networks make use of these "known but declined" connections.
An enterprise social network will also provide ways in which its members can interact. This interaction can be synchronous, for example through real-time chat, audio or video or some combination thereof. It also can be asynchronous using well known methods like messaging, discussion groups, blogs and other means of sharing and communicating. Enterprise social networks typically provide these capabilities seamlessly. Members are unaware that they are using other applications, if in fact they are, to interact with each other while "in" the social networking application and with a good social networking application they wouldn’t even know they were "in" that application at all.
Excellent enterprise social networks provide both the links and the interaction capabilities contextually. Rather than yielding an undifferentiated set of connections and links I must manage and decide how to leverage in a given situation, excellent enterprise social networks provide connection information that is specific to my current work. If I’m working on a marketing piece I will see links with people that are important for that work while if I’m researching costs of production, I’ll see links to people important for that effort.
One other aspect of enterprise social networking that should be mentioned is the visualization or visual depiction of connections or relationships. I need to know how I’m connected to someone in the enterprise not just that we are connected. How the connections are shown or displayed is important. Currently "maps" and lists are common but there’s a good bit of variation out there right now in how those maps and lists look and behave and I don’t think we are at all close to what will some day become the common way to display this information.
So to summarize my description of social networking in the enterprise:
An application dependant upon software (typically a network service) that provides a means of linking individuals and seamlessly allowing and facilitating interaction between and among the “members” of the enterprise in a contextually aware manner.
Links or connections are based upon explicit and discovered (or suggested) commonalities.
Link additions are member controlled and based on member interaction patterns and behaviors within the enterprise computing environment.
Interaction is both synchronous and asynchronous using methods like chat, audio and video; and messaging, blogs, and discussion groups respectively.
Next up: What Enterprise Social Networking Capabilities does Microsoft SharePoint Provide?
If you are interested in attending a webinar sponsored and presented by PointBridge, you can find a registration link on this abstract page:Social Networking Inside the Firewall
