Archive for social networks
by Jenny Ambrozek
April 29, 2009 at 10:58 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Management, Networks + Networking, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web Apps, productivity, social media, social networks
Subtitled “Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff” the book is a must read, and especially useful as a primer for those still needing to understand the fundamental changes in doing business as the Internet has matured from Web 1.0 to:
“an entirely new level with Web 3.0- an era that is entirely about innovation and collaboration.” (Foreword page ix) 
An excellent overview of the book, in author Clara Shih’s own words, is in 2 parts at the Entrepreneur’s Journeys blog . Not surprizingly the book’s home page is on Facebook and 24 x 5 star Amazon reviews indicate the book’s value.
The book section titles– starting with “A Brief History of Social Media’ through “Transforming the Way We Do Business’ to “Your Step-By-Step Guide to Using Facebook for Business”– reveal the key themes. Reflecting the author’s hands on experience as the developer of FaceConnector and head of Enterprise Social Networking Alliances and Product Strategy for Salesforce, the book is filled with lived experiences of companies using social networking to “build better products, reach new audiences and sell more stuff.”
If there are gaps in the book they reflect the state of the industry. For example, “The ROI of Social” is addressed in half a page (205) beginning:
“Understandably, a large number of you are focused on ROI and might feel frustrated that there has been no clear quantifiable data around ROI”
and concludes suggesting;
“ROI will become much more quantifiable and standardized”.
Have you read “The Facebook Era?” What did you take away?
~ Jenny Ambrozek
by Matthew Hodgson
April 28, 2009 at 9:05 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, social media, social networks
Web 2.0 technology presents the modern organisation with a plethora of means for communicating new information to staff. While some of us are now running to install wikis and blogs as a vehicle to achieve enterprise 2.0 nirvana there are some important considerations that need to be given time before we jump for, say, Yammer over Twitter, that go beyond the fear of our internal information being communicated outside the organisation.
A very interesting article by Sinan Aral, Erik Brynjolfsson, and Marshall Van Alstyne [1] on access to information through social networks provides some food for thought on this issue. It’s a fascinating examination of how information flows from one person to another and complements a number of other similar studies that look at how social relationships can either block access to information or enhance access to it.
Obviously, traditional communications models focus on the delivery of information as a top-down process, and as a result, limit the amount of shared knowledge that can be passed between the organisational silos. Because of the linear nature of knowledge transfer blockers can be a significant problem in accessing new information.
Some organisations, though, have adopted various collaboration tools as a means of complementing existing traditional communications channels in an attempt to break-down internal silos and blockers that can limit access to new information. In some instances, these tools also facilitate collaboration with clients and stakeholders outside the organisation.
While there are some obvious advantages with this approach it still doesn’t fully address modern research on how people access information. Aral and Brynjolfsson et. al.’s research notes that:
- Network diversity is associated with higher levels of productivity for task based information workers
- Network diversity is associated with performance, in part because diverse contacts provide access to novel information and resources
- Age, gender, industry experience, education have little effect on access to diverse information, highlighting the importance of network structure for information advantage.
These findings support a more expansive adoption of social media tools within the workplace to more efficiently leverage the social networks that individuals have both inside and outside the organisation, particularly given the homogenous nature of networks within an organisation due to the constraints and norming factors of culture.
The important take home message is simple — the more you leverage individual’s social networks the greater their access to information and the higher the levels of productivity that will result for them and the enterprise.
M
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1. Aral, S., Brynjolfsson, E. Marshall Van Alstyne, E. M., 2006. Network Structure & Information Advantage: Structural Determinants of Access to Novel Information. Workshop on Information Systems Economics.
by Patti Anklam
April 9, 2009 at 8:08 am · Filed under
Collaboration, Communities, Culture, Enterprise 2.0, Intranets, Web 2.0, Work Design, social media, social networks
I’ve been working lately on two projects with companies building social networking platforms with a purpose. While some aspects are clearly around technology, features, and the like, there are also the subtle aspects that go into understanding how these sites will be used. In a meeting with one of the clients, we talked about this difficult area of how to ensure that the use of the site aligns with its purpose: will people interact on the topics that we want them to, will the site discourage irrelevant content or social tourists from joining?
The word “social architecture” came into my head (or all of our heads simultaneously, it’s always hard to tell, isn’t it, when an idea emerges from the collective consciousness in a conversation?).
Like a good web 2.0 doo-bie, I tweeted that I was interested in using the term but needed to understand it more. My friend and colleague, Andrew Gent, tweeted back a definition, but then went on to do much more: he researched it, thought about, and has written a wonderful blog post, Social Architecture, that offers the definition that he tweeted back to me:
Social architecture is the conscious design of an environment that encourages certain social behavior leading towards some goal or set of goals.
Andrew’s blog details the current use of the term with respect to social media as well as its history in the field of architecture. When I began my own superficial search, the thread I followed was biased toward the design of the interaction of various social media (Sam Huleatt: “To me, social architecture is best thought of as a cross between three elements: interface design, social media functionality and user engagement strategy.”) which didn’t reflect what I needed. Andrew has, I think, hit on the more sociological and social engineering (without the negative connotations of that term) disciplines needed to shape a user’s experience.
While Andrew’s context is the corporate intranet, where it is possibly simpler to design intent and purpose into the environment, my work is currently leading me to social networks in the world, a case where an individual company wants to draw people into a network to expand its field of vision and expertise. No answers yet, but Andrew’s exposition is a terrific start and I thank him very much.
by Jim Ware
April 6, 2009 at 5:52 pm · Filed under
Collaboration, Collective intelligence, Communities, Distributed Work, Management, Work Design, social networks
The answer: good things.
I’m just back from a conference in Vancouver, BC, where Jon Husband just happens to live. I was smart/lucky enough to have announced publicly that Charlie Grantham and I would be in Vancouver for a few days, and Jon was gracious enough to get in touch and suggest we meet (since we never had).
The three of us ended up having breakfast together last Friday, and then Jon was the perfect host, offering us a ride out the airport for our trips home.
Of course, Jon being the champion of Vancouver that he is, the ride took a little extra time (which we had plenty of) as he gave us a mini-tour of the downtown and surrounding area.
I had been in Vancouver before, but not for over 20 years, so it was an eye-opening tour. I’ve always had good feelings about the city (stemming from a wonderful summer in the mid-80’s characterized by many late evening dinners down near the harbor).
But even more important than enjoying Vancouver was enjoying getting to know Jon. We (including Charlie) discovered way more in common than any three older gray-haired guys who had never met before have any right to expect. As Jon described on his own blog last week (“Back to the Future . . . of Work“), we share many intellectual curiosities and probably even more views and values about organization, work, people, and even politics.
So here’s to the value of face to face meetings. In spite of our mutual fascination with what Jon calls “wirearchy,” we also agree wholeheartedly in getting together physically to share a real space, not just a virtual one.
Of course, that f2f meeting never would have taken place without the AppGap blog and our e-newsletter (where I’d announced the Vancouver trip in the first place), so I guess we owe some thanks to Hylton Joliffe and the folks at Intuit too for originally making Jon and me aware of each other.
But the nice part of now having “pressed the flesh” is that I’ll have a whole lot more context from now on as I read Jon’s blog comments. And I suspect we’ll see each other again in the not-too-distant future.
Thanks, Jon, for your hospitality and for your always-stimulating questions about the future of work and of management.
by Jim Ware
March 7, 2009 at 3:03 pm · Filed under
Communities, Distributed Work, Networks + Networking, Web 2.0, Web Commuting, social media, social networks, social tools
(this is a slightly edited and updated version of a post from The Future of Work blog. The original version is here.
First, look at this chart showing the shift from “real” interaction to reliance on electronic media (it comes directly from the article that stimulated this post – Well Connected? The Biological Implications of Social Networking“)
Now, I am as enthusiastic about social networking technologies and their ability to connect us with friends and colleagues all over the planet as the next person, but Marc Van Eeckhoudt just sent me the article that includes that chart.
It’s just been published in Biologist, a British magazine: “Well Connected? The Biological Implications of Social Networking.”
The core message in the article: more and more people are becoming “loners,” and that’s really dangerous for their health. Unfortunately it is not clear from this article whether or not people who rely primarily on electronic means of communication can overcome those health risks.
Read the rest of this entry »
by Matthew Hodgson
February 19, 2009 at 11:01 pm · Filed under
Collaboration, Communities, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, social media, social networks
Decades of psycho-social research on team work suggests that effective teams have both strong task-based behaviour as well as good social cohesion.
“A high-performance team works together to achieve mutual goals, recognizes that each member is accountable and committed to achieving team goals, communicates effectively with each other, shares the joy of achievement and the pain of not meeting goals, shares information, helps each other, and recognizes that the success of the group is dependent upon each individual” [1].
Without both the factors of task and social cohesion a team tends not to be as effective.
In some cases, though, modern businesses struggle with the idea that being social has a business benefit. Taylorist management practices in particular only focus on those things that are measurable and directly associated with the task rather than understanding whether or not social interaction is of benefit to the task at hand. The result is seen in many modern managers who believe that their employees need to be busy and not wasting time (where wasting time equals socialising). Particularly, this attitude has impacted on the adoption of social media within the enterprise because networking with peers and colleagues through Facebook, for example, is believed to be time-wasting and of very little actual value to “busy work”.
Recent MIT research, however, is challenging this idea [2].
MIT research shows that 40% of creative teams productivity is directly explained by the amount of communication they have with others to discover, gather, and internalise information. In other MIT studies, research shows that employees with the most extensive digital networks are 7% more productive than their colleagues. Furthermore, those with the most cohesive face-to-face networks are 30% more productive.
This reinforces similar research by Aral, Brynjolfsson & Van Alstyne [3] that highlights the importance of these networks because they “strongly influence information diffusion … and access to novel information”. Availability of these networks, their research shows, is a highly significant predictor of worker productivity.
Since information does not diffuse randomly in organisations, but rather reflects the nature and structure of human relationships, providing the right tools that support human social relationships, communication and interaction, will provide a significant ROI to the enterprise.
M
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1. Bulleit, B. 2006. Effectively managing team conflict. Cary, NC: Global Knowledge Training LLC.
2. Pentland, A. 2009. How Social Networks Network Best. Harvard Business Review, Feb, p 37.
3. Aral, Brynjolfsson & Van Alstyne. 2007. Productivity Effects of Information Diffusion in Networks.
by Shiv Singh
February 3, 2009 at 9:57 pm · Filed under
Collaboration, Communities, Enterprise 2.0, Intranets, Web 2.0, social media, social networks, social tools
I spoke at the Social Networking Conference in Miami two weeks ago on “Web 2.0 and the Enterprise: A Symbiotic Relationship.” As someone who’s advised Fortune 1000 companies on Enterprise 2.0 strategies as well as their Social Marketing ones, I see those two worlds blurring very much.
Historically, they’ve been treated as two very different beasts but I believe with the consumerization of the enterprise and the portability of social graphs the walls that divide the two are breaking down. And not just that but to do one effectively, an organization will need to be practicing the other as well. View my deck from the conference.
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