Social Networking

Can e-Discovery control and Web 2.0 coexist?

Ron Miller — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:08:02 -0500

Matthew Hodgson has a post this week on the {app} gap where he raises an interesting question. Can a company bent on controlling access to information allow users to go onto the open web and interact in social networking tools, or is it an all or nothing proposition? Hodgson doesn't believe it is, and he says that by restricting users from a broad swath of Internet real estate you are actually inhibiting them from doing their jobs.

I agree. You can find ways to protect your turf without completely locking the gates and not letting anyone in or out. There is too much valuable information out there, too many useful tools, too many opportunities to connect with like-minded individuals who can help and support the effort your company is trying to undertake. To limit the company in this fashion in the name of security is to sacrifice the very life blood of communication that helps your company thrive.

So take Hodgson's advice and lighten up a bit. You can be secure without shutting yourself off from the outside world.

For more info:
- see the {app} gap post

LinkedIn introduces new set of collaboration tools

Ron Miller — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:06:18 -0400

LinkedIn has always been the preeminent tool for serious business networking, but the problem is it never had any actual networking tools. Sure, you could collect folks in your network and you could post an online profile that acts as a permanent online resume. The group's functions offer a form of interaction, but nothing in the realm of social networking in a pure sense of communicating directly with your peers. That's why the new set of tools introduced this morning is so exciting. LinkedIn now provides a set of tools for directly collaborating with the members of your network.

Huddle Workspaces looks particularly interesting because it enables you to build online, secure, private workspaces where you can work with members of your network. This could allow users to set up LinkedIn networks or groups of fellow employees, then use Huddle to share and collaborate on project. Another tool, Box.net Files lets users store and share files online.

LinkedIn appears to have built the connections to these tools using Google OpenSocial technology. It still remains to be seen how well these tools will work in the real world, but LinkedIn has taken its service to another level by offering them. The implications are certainly exciting for business users who want to find better ways to access and communicate with members of their LinkedIn networks.

One on One with Len Devanna of EMC

Ron Miller — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:07:56 -0400

Len Devanna is the director of Web Strategy at EMC. If it sounds like a great title that's because it is. Devanna is responsible for the internal community platform known as EMC ONE. He says of his job, "I often feel like a kid in a candy store. I have a strong passion for all things online, and [I] get to help drive the evolution of our online ecosystem each and every day." During his time at EMC, he also helped lead the enterprise knowledge management initiative, build a field/customer/partner-facing portal and completely retool the EMC.com experience while consolidating several sites into one. I asked Devanna about EMC's Web 2.0 initiative and how that has helped increased collaboration and knowledge sharing.

FCM: How open is the company to developing social networking concepts?

LD: Extremely open. EMC has a strong culture of innovation and is therefore very much open to exploring emerging trends and technologies. We see social media as a key channel for establishing dialogue with our audience while creating more intimate conversations and relationships. Frankly, we see it as a strategic imperative. The days of broadcast communications are over. Companies need to learn to listen and engage with their audience. The opportunities afforded through social tools and techniques to co-innovate with your audience, to improve productivity and collaboration, and to better understand the needs of your customer are tremendous.

FCM: Can you describe some of the social networking projects you have helped put in place?

LD: I’d have to focus on the launch of EMC ONE, our internal community for EMC-ers. About a year or so ago, EMC VP Chuck Hollis and I were discussing the need for an internal community offering. Within weeks of that discussion, we launched EMC ONE. I suppose the time to market here speaks to EMC’s desire to aggressively adopt and embrace social media.

FCM: I heard about this EMC social experiment: A Day in the Life of EMC. Were you involved in this at all? What are your thoughts on this?

LD: Yes, this is effectively EMC ONE. About a year old now, EMC ONE has over 8K active members and thousands more watching the conversations. I’d venture to guess we have about 25% adoption across the global workforce, with 150 to 200 new members joining weekly.

The benefit and value of EMC ONE has been enormous. We’re seeing conversations taking place that cross organizational and geographic boundaries. Relationships are being forged between employees who otherwise would never have had an opportunity to meet or interact with one another. Discussions around commute times and the price of gas transform into conversations around green computing, and ultimately mature into ideas for new products or solutions.

The value of behavioral change that comes with E2.0 proficiency is also worth noting … For example, information once confined to email with limited distribution is now making it’s way to collaborative Wikis--where the employee population at large can contribute and the information is retained and indexed forever. The productivity gains alone, as we move from traditional 1.0 to 2.0 behaviors, are stunning.

FCM: Documentum has a lot of social networking built into the latest release. Did your group's role in social networking play fuel this development, or was it more market forces, or a combination?

LD: First, let me just say that I’m truly excited about where this is going. The convergence of traditional EMC tools and functionality with 2.0 offerings, such as wiki’s and blogs, is quite appealing to me. The notion of an internal group collaborating on content within a wiki, then being able to seamlessly push it into enterprise workflows that run it through approvals (if any), then on to a translation house before ultimately ending up on the web is quite cool. Until now, bridging the gap between such 2.0 tools and ECM systems has been a sizable integration effort for IT.

To your question, I’d have to say a combination of the two … While I work at EMC, I’m also a customer. As you’d suspect, Documentum is the ECM engine behind our web properties. As part of the team responsible for understanding the online needs of the enterprise, we’re acutely aware of the tools and capabilities companies need to successfully move into the 2.0 space. Having real world experience in deploying social tools across EMC has given us perspective around what people need to be successful, and has armed our product teams with invaluable first hand data. As you suggest, there’s clearly demand from the market as well.

FCM: I noticed that Documentum's marketing team made use of social networking for the release of the latest version--even by using Facebook. Were you involved in that? If so, how?

Yes, I had the pleasure of being part of this team. It’s indicative of the EMC culture--always trying to do something new and innovative.

As noted earlier, I really do have a passion for this stuff, and that’s no secret within EMC. When the Marketing/PR team decided to experiment with social tools to support the launch, they brought me in to provide my point of view. They did a great job with Facebook and, in fact, have quite a following there now. You may have also noticed a social media press release supporting the launch--giving bloggers and media outlets better tools to syndicate the message. YouTube also played a big part in this launch, providing chalk talk videos that cut right to the heart of the matter. We’ve invested in so much more: Twitter, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, etc. As you can see, we’re all about trying new things to better connect with our audience.

FCM: What social networking tools are people using? Are employees encouraged to use Facebook and Twitter? I know you do, but in general are they encouraged to use these types of tools, or to use in-house tools inside the firewall?

LD: We’ve tried not to be prescriptive around tools. Doing so would only hamper creativity. EMC ONE is clearly at the epicenter of our internal social deployment and provides blog, discussion and wiki capabilities. Beyond that, I’ve seen plenty of EMC-ers on Twitter, Facebook and all of the other usual suspects. Yammer has my interest right now, and has seen some pretty solid adoption within the company. In my opinion, it brings a new dimension to real-time collaboration among project teams. It’s always interesting to see which tools stick and which don’t, and watching this evolving landscape is absolutely fascinating to me.

It’s also worth mentioning EMC’s FriendFeed account. Check it out to get a sense for the variety of things EMC is doing in the social realm.

Gartner says half of social networking projects will fail

Ron Miller — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:26:30 -0400

In an article this week on CNET, Gartner analyst Adam Sarner says his research shows that over 75 percent of Fortune 100 companies plan to undertake some sort of social networking initiative, mostly under the marketing and public relations umbrella. But in a startling prediction, Sarner says half of those projects will fail. Why? Because the companies will offer contrived social networking projects and consumers can sniff out when they are being played.

In an earlier time, when blogs were emerging, marketing departments latched onto them as a way to communicate directly with an audience, but many blogs failed for the same reason Sarner says social networking efforts will fail. The companies provided content that served their own interests, rather than the audience's.

There's plenty of good use cases for social networking in the enterprise, yet I'm hearing more and more lately about social networking falling under the marketing department. Yes, marketing and PR can make use of social networking tools, and they should, but so should the rest of the enterprise, and for the same reasons. It offers a good communication tool, but if a company uses social networking only as an internal vehicle for company messages it will quickly lose its audience. It has to be more than that.

Social networking is about sharing content and collaborating--whether it's internal or external. That means it's a give and take exercise. If you truly care about your customers it will show. If you are trying to use social networking as a sales tool, that will show also. You have to keep it real or the social network with wither and die.

For more information:
- see the CNET article

IBM opens Bluehouse social networking beta

Ron Miller — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:18:34 -0400

IBM is going full bore with Enterprise 2.0 and cloud computing, and announced this week that it was opening its Bluehouse social networking software to public beta shows. Bluehouse is based on Lotus Foundations software. According to NetworkWorld, the move also marks a change in marketing language, as IBM embraces the word "cloud" in place of "SaaS" (Software-as-a-Service). Cloud computing and SaaS are synonymous terms referring to hosted software run via a web interface. The customer only purchases a subscription to the service, rather than investing in expensive hardware and services to implement the system.

All of that would seem to counter to the typical IBM sell, which normally includes hardware and plenty of consulting services to make it work, but even IBM sees the writing on the wall. The competition is providing Enterprise 2.0 services on a subscription basis, and in order to compete it must do the same. I wrote in my Editor's Corner last week on how many companies might turn to SaaS (or Cloud Computing; choose a term you like best) as the economy heads further and further south.

For more information:
- see this NetworkWorld article

Socialtext launches version 3.0

Ron Miller — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:28:52 -0400

The web was buzzing on Tuesday with news about the latest release from Socialtext. Up until now, Socialtext has been mostly known as an enterprise Wiki vendor, but they have added new functionality that brings an array of Web 2.0 concepts into the enterprise. According to an entry on Socialtext's blog from chairman, president and company co-founder Ross Mayfield, Socialtext 3.0 has three main new features:

Socialtext People - Social networking for the enterprise.
Socialtext Workspace - Group-editable wiki for easy, flexible, enterprise-wide collaboration.
Socialtext Dashboard - Customizable home pages that let each person decide where to focus their attention.

Robert Scoble does a nice job of rounding up comments around the web on his Scobelizer blog, and includes an exclusive video of Mayfield demonstrating the new features. What's exciting is that it combines several different consumer-style Web 2.0 apps, including Facebook- and Twitter-style functionality, and packages them in an enterprise context.

The centerpiece is a customizable social dashboard that lets you design what information you want to see, which people you want to follow, and so forth. It remains to be seen how this operates in the field, but on paper, it certainly looks very exciting. If your company is thinking about Enterprise 2.0, you should explore this new product.

For more info:
- check out Scoble's web round-up
- watch 60 second demo of new features

Gartner predicts recent troubles in financial services will lead to more regulatory compliance

Ron Miller — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:54:52 -0400

Monday was a disaster on Wall Street. Financial services firms continued to get pummeled in the wake of the mortgage crisis and Wall Street responded with a 500-plus point plunge that the Boston Globe dubbed "Black Monday." What does this have to do with content management? Well, it could have a lot to do with it if Gartner is right when it says that the recent troubles on Wall Street could lead to increased regulation that could actually dwarf the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations that were enacted in the wake of the Enron scandal. Many companies were introduced to enterprise content management because Sarbanes-Oxley forced them to manage their content better, or face serious consequences. In fact, ECM was closely related to regulatory compliance for much of this decade until more recently, when ECM began to shift toward social networking, knowledge sharing and collaboration.

This level of regulation, if it comes to pass, could transform the content management industry yet again, or expand a niche that had taken a back seat to collaboration and knowledge sharing. When you combine that with the news last week about the CMIS content management standard, it could bode very well for the future of the content management industry. Able to sell on several fronts, and bolstered by a standard that opens up disparate content repositories, we might be looking at an enterprise content management renaissance, with your company possibly looking at an increased need in content management services.

For more:
- read this ChannelWeb article
- check out this NetworkWorld article

Elgg gives you safe, open source social networking

Ron Miller — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:33:34 -0400

Social networking offers lots of collaboration and knowledge-sharing benefits. If you've been looking for a safe, open source social networking alternative to the likes of Facebook, you should take a look at Elgg. You can set up social networks similar to Facebook, but you can have complete control over who belongs, and if content and information gets exposed over the open web or not. This means you could set up networks by project, department, or even company-wide as you see fit for the needs of your organization. Each user also has granular privacy, allowing individuals to control who sees what information about them. Because of this control, Elgg has proven popular with educators looking for a low-cost social networking tool that gives administrators control over where student content goes. Enterprise environments have similar requirements, and Elgg satisfies the needs of both settings. Check out Elgg

Social networking gains traction in enterprise

Michael LoPresti — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:41:10 -0400

Late last month, McKinsey released a global survey report entitled Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise. It was the second annual study the company conducted on Web 2.0, and it found that companies that are satisfied with the use of their Web 2.0 tools are starting to notice changes in their operations. Additionally, the study found that more companies are using such tools than last year, and they're using them for more complex business purposes. McKinsey's data shows that social networking has leapfrogged to the top of the heap of Web 2.0 tools, ranking second only behind web services in a survey of which tools are most important to an enterprise. Fast's Hadley Reynolds, who wrote a commentary on Fast's blog, says the study shows that the "lumpy adoption experience and shifts in tool use is something we should expect from an emerging set of practices."

For more:
- read Reynold's commentary

Alfresco integrates Sharepoint capability in new release

Ron Miller — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:23:07 -0400

Open-source content management vendor Alfresco released Alfresco Labs (Beta) 3 today, which acts as a seamless alternative for Microsoft Sharepoint. The latter capability is the result of a 2004 EU Commission ruling that ordered Microsoft to publish the Sharepoint protocols. Alfresco appears to be the first company to take advantage of this availability, and provide an identical Sharepoint experience for end users while using an Alfresco repository to store the content. Other enhancements include the new Surf platform based on Alfresco Web Scripts--a light-weight development environment similar to JavaScript--and an interface that enables business users to build small web applications to share content, collaborate and customize their user experiences. In September, they will be releasing a social networking application built on the Surf platform they are dubbing Alfresco Share.

This is a significant announcement. Alfresco has always offered a solid open-source enterprise content management alternative; with its ability to replace Sharepoint, if it works as advertised, it can provide end users with a comfortable experience using familiar Office tools while giving IT the flexibility to build its infrastructure any way it likes. Since Alfresco is open source and the Sharepoint protocol is now published, we should start seeing other companies follow suit with similar Sharepoint competitors. It should be interesting to see how this plays out, and how Microsoft and other competitors react to this news.

For more information, read:
- the CMSWire post
- DaniWeb TechTreasures Post