Microsoft director defends SharePoint 2010 social features

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the social features in SharePoint 2010 and I wasn't exactly effusive. Based on the list I received in the press release, I wasn't wowed by what I read. I recently got the opportunity to discuss these new features with Christian Finn, director of SharePoint and get his perspective on these new features.

Three core scenarios

In my post on the new features, I wrote: "I'm actually a little disappointed in this announcement because it seems a little thin to me."  When I asked Finn about this, he naturally disagreed, saying "We don't agree that it's thin. We nailed core scenarios around 3 scenarios." He went on to outline these scenarios, which include:

• Social networking: The ability to connect with others in the organization.
• Social content: This includes blogs and wikis for sharing content.
• Social feedback: The ability to tag documents and other content.
  

Finn admitted that 2007 lacked some core functionality, especially that tagging piece, which I was surprised hadn't been added until now, but Finn said SharePoint 2010 has filled that gap and then some. The new version includes the ability to create a tag profile, so you can find out about what interests an individual based on their tag history.

But Dan Keldsen of Information Architected thinks the social features are bound to be behind the curve, just because of the time it takes to develop a product like SharePoint. "Microsoft is always going to lag behind their smaller and more agile competitors. It's simply the nature of the development cycle for Microsoft. Features that were "locked in" for design 2 years ago are finally going to ship in 2010. In the meantime, smaller competitors such as Box.net, PBWorks, SocialText, Jive as well as Google (via Google Apps, Sites and now Wave...) have been running like the wind to build light-weight platforms with social computing features first and foremost, while SharePoint has this functionality added afterwards, clearly as an after-thought."

Different Role for Partners?

Because 2007 lacked some core social functions, it was up to partners to fill "gaps in the plumbing," as Finn put it. But in 2010, he says Microsoft is providing much of the social functionality, and this means a new role for the partners. Instead providing tools to cover missing functions, Finn says, "[The partners] can innovate on top of what we've done."

As an example, he points to how to use the increasing amount of social data that should be available in SharePoint 2010.  Finn says there is much more rich data about who employees converse with, how they spend their time, what they read and so forth. He says SharePoint provides some ways to track this information, "but we don't do deep visualization of this information in a visual social graph way, so that's an opportunity to build on top of what we're doing."

Keldsen says none of this is actually very relevant to his clients. "I can't say that I have seen many clients who are choosing not to use SharePoint simply because the wiki isn't good enough, or because tagging isn't embedded well. It's because SharePoint simply doesn't accomplish what they want, at the pricepoint they're looking for, and it's a concern above and beyond individual features."

Still a Step Forward

The fact is that I haven't seen SharePoint 2010, so I can only take Finn's word for this, and of course it's his job to give it the most positive spin possible. Keldsen says, "Anything that can be done to integrate the user experience more tightly, to avoid having to jump into separate systems for tagging, or to declare records, or determine how to pipe in your own feeds from multiple sources, is going to drive usage, and (one would hope) the productive use of these systems." So to that extent, Kelsden (and I) see the new functionality as a step forward.

But whether these features are quite as rich as Finn makes them out to be remains to be seen. I have the feeling that the partners will probably have a bigger role than he suggests, but we will have to wait until the product is out there and the feedback is in to make definitive judgments about this. - Ron

I went on Twitter yesterday and I asked people what questions I should ask Finn in my interview and people suggested I ask about governance, record keeping and CMIS, but unfortunately these are not areas that Finn typically covers. I'm in the process of setting up a second interview with a relevant contact and I will write about these issues in a future post.