Anthony J. BradleyThere have been a slew of surveys and press recently that have indicated that social media is a security threat and a productivity drain and that many, if not most, enterprises are “banning” social media (examples; Half Survey, BBC, survey, Marines, Hollywood, WSJ, and NFL).
This may lead people to believe that enterprises are not pursuing social media. This is not the case. Although many organizations challenge the business value of the social Web, the vast majority are exploring social media. Social Web is a term that has evolved to include the social sites on the world wide web that are open to the general public. These are the sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Wikipedia. Enterprises are prudent to think hard about how to use these public sites for business value. But the social Web is also evolving to encompass specific community environments as well. See my blog post on the social Web and health care. Enterprises can’t ignore these sites.
However, social media is the broader term that covers just about any use of social software including workforce facing implementations (often called Enterprise 2.0) and more controlled communities. There exists a large set of social software technologies that are targeted at non-social Web implementations of social media. Gartner just last week published the 2009 Magic Quadrant for Social Software (available to clients or for a fee).
There are several social media options to explore including:
- Personal use of the social Web
- Business use of the social Web
- Internally facing (workforce) enterprise use of social software
- Open or closed community
- On-premises or SaaS
- Externally facing (e.g., social CRM) enterprise use of social software
- Open or closed community
- On-premises or SaaS
Like much of life, social media is not as simple as “do” or “don’t do” but is a strategic examination of when the business value justifies the risks. Enterprises need to examine all these possibilities for their business value and potential need for governance.
Some Gartner research to help you includes (available to clients or for a fee):
- Establishing Policies for Social Application Participation
- Seven Key Characteristics of a Good Purpose for Social Software
- Ten Primary Design Considerations for Delivering Social Software Solutions: The PLANT SEEDS Framework
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3 responses so far ↓
1 uberVU - social comments October 30, 2009 at 1:32 pm
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by Position1Media: Don’t Confuse Social Media with the Social Web http://bit.ly/153zdY...
2 Doug Hadden October 30, 2009 at 3:57 pm
This observation is long overdue. There is a big difference between leveraging existing social web applications and leveraging the metaphors and usages from social web applications.
Many B2B and B2G companies and governments should strategically enter the social web. But, they should be exploring the advantages of social media for internal organizational use and connecting with customers, partners and citizens. And closed social media systems can ready companies to move into social media.
3 Saqib Ali October 30, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Anthony,
Lot of organizations have posted their Social Media Guidelines (Policies????) on the internet:
http://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm
http://www.sun.com/communities/guidelines.jsp
http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html
http://www.rightnow.com/privacy-social.php
http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/07/sap-social-media-guidelines-2009/
and more…..
Reading these guidelines/policies you can determine the culture and the social dynamics of that organization.
In the not too distant future, job seekers will be reviewing the social media guidelines for the organization prior to applying for a job……
And if the organizations want Digital Natives on their team, they need to make sure that Social Media Interaction policies are not too restrictive.