Dan Woods discusses social media for grownups

Dan Woods, CTO and editor of Evolved Media, gave a presentation on Friday at the ECM Writer's Summit called "Social Media for Grownups." His idea is that the open web is different than inside the firewall and companies have to learn to treat it differently or face unreasonable expectations about results.

My first reaction when I heard this term was that it was a bit insulting--like those of us who are using social networking tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are in the kiddie pool, while the grownups are busy doing real work. But Woods explained that it's not that simple. "Social Media for Grownups" is simply a phrase to help his clients understand there is a difference between the two worlds, even though the two worlds may cross over sometimes.

The chief difference, Woods explained, was that on the web, when you form a community the idea is to get as many people as you can to come and join the party. Success is measured in pure numbers. Inside the firewall, he thinks it's a mistake to measure in the same fashion because a small group of committed users contributing to the documentation Wiki, for example, could be far more important than measuring in terms of the number of participants.

What's more, he says companies have to worry about 'grown-up' concerns like governance and security, which the owners of the open web tools have to worry less about or not at all. So the idea of being 'grownup' might be a bit of a misnomer because chances are, employees could be using both and using both in a similar fashion--a mix of socializing and work related exchanges. But I could see how the term would be useful for helping define borders when presenting to business customers who are trying to understand social media.

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