How Does Social Networking Affect Your Health and Well-Being?

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 »

Web 2.0 & the Enterprise. A Symbiotic Relationship

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.

All work is social. Work is conversation.

January 30, 2009 at 11:04 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, Management, Talent Management, social networks, social tools

Last fall, I started thinking out the various  roles and approaches of social software vendors. I was intrigued by a conversation with with Duncan MacPherson, co-founder and co-CEO of Pareto Systems and Pareto Platform. Pareto’s web-based subscription model has been augmented with a free social networking platform called my8020.com. my8020.com implements social capabilities within the application:

• It allows a user to create networks and invite friends to join them. Membership in a network requires the approval of the network’s creator
• Users can also define themselves as “networks” that others can “join,” hence providing a friending/connecting capability that enables users to endorse each other and make introductions
• It provides users the ability to search for an existing network they are interested in joining
• It provides a private blog (journal)
• It lets users manage RSS feeds
• Users can message one another via the platform

I thought this was an interesting pick-up on bringing social elements into a niche application. Then this past week I spoke with A.G.  Lambert, VP  of Saba. Saba, with the Human Capital Institute, published just this last week a research report* on opportunities for adoption of corporate social networking. Currently in Beta, SabaSocial brings social features as those listed above into the context of Saba’s talent management system. Historically an eLearning vendor, Saba purchased Centra in 2005 to become one of the leading vendors of talent management solutions. A key aspect of these systems is that they maintain information about individuals’ skills and courses taken while managing the flow of courseware itself.  SabaSocial can build on the richness of these profiles as it adds the social element.

I posted some time ago a  taxonomy I borrowed from Tony Byrne, that summarizes the different paths by which technology vendors bring our social sides to life. There are the “pure-play” vendors, Facebook and LinkedIn, that start as standalone social networking sites and are looking to build APIs that corporations can plug into. Next come the social/collaboration vendors (like Jive) that start with the assumption that work is social social networking features and integrate work capabilities (project and task management, groups, discussion forums, and so on) onto their social networking platforms.  So this offering of Saba that brings the social element into an enterprise-wide application looks like another signal that there may come a time when the lack of social networking in an application may present the barrier to entry of a product into the market.

It is interesting to see how these two vendors approach the social network integration. It’s not just in the selection of specific social tools to bring to their customers, it’s also in the understanding that networks are how works get done in successful businesses. As MacPherson said when I spoke with him, the social networking mindset embodied in my8020.com is “not to connect with the masses, but to manage my core relationships and make it possible for them to generate business for each other.”  In the case of Saba, the social element adds richness to employee profiles and makes critical expertise searches more effective.

“Work is conversation” is a tenet I adopted over fifteen years ago in Digital management workshops based on the work of Werner Erhardt (see interview excerpted from Industry Week of June 1987). Nothing happens outside of speaking and listening. So the advent of social networking — conversational capability — into all the tools we have makes perfect sense.  Work happens when ideas are being connected, relationships are being developed, learning and innovation occur, and the right people are found at the right time in the right context.

Information overload or a Filter Failure?

January 11, 2009 at 4:12 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, Notable + Quotable, Web 2.0, social media, social tools

A recent  interview with Clay Shirky in the Columbia Journalism Review provides some new insights into my previous posts on Information Load (here and here.) The transcript is in two parts. Part I addresses the question of information overload from the perspective of what’s different today than in the past, and whether we are or are not better off in terms of the quality of content, our ability to manage it, and the generational differences.

Although the interviewer, Russ Juskalian, approaches the question from the viewpoint of journalism itself the conversation resonated with content questions that enterprises adopting social media should be asking:

• At what point do we stop being nostalgic for our relationship with the media we’ve grown up using and accept that social tools are extending our ability to interact with information? And to extend and create information in new ways?
•  The first instance of information overload (defined, perhaps, as more information is available than can be consumed by an individual) occurred when the Library of Alexandria was created. It has only escalated since then, and we have somehow “controlled” our feeling of overload by adopting cataloguing and classification systems. These were, essentially, our first information filters.
• In an era in which everyone with Internet access is free to “commit an act of journalism” (I love that phrase), our previous filters and the ways that we have constructed them fail to help us sort through through all the stuff that comes our way so that we can “keep the conversation I’m having … [be] the most interesting it can be.
• These conversations are becoming so much more interesting becaue the Internet has “weakened the walls of our institutions.” Although Shirky’s context here is the university, where co-authored, multidisciplinary work is on the rise, we need to think as well about how the Internet creeps into our enterprises and how it impacts how we think about work, and think about the definition of “colleague.”
• The way out of information overload is to adopt social filters (“The only group that can catalog everything is everybody”) so we can know what our colleagues and potentially their extended ties are learning, thinking, walking around with, and making sense of. Those who remain nostalgic for the past need to unlearn the strategies that made them successful, to think and act anew (Abraham Lincoln via recent posts from Dave Snowden) and that means learning to use these new tools.

The second part of the interview veers into a discussion of the future of journalism in an environment in which [print] journalists need to understand the business model of the for-profit print media. The print media, he claims, will be the stronghold of long-form journalism as the Internet stakes out the short-form. The re-thinking of the Christian Science Monitor illustrates the new business model: daily updates on the Web, a weekly print version that addresses topics in depth. (Hat tip to Stewart Mader for reminding me to look at this more closely.)

It all comes down, I think, to how we manage our short- and even (burst-) forms of information and balance them with the long-form, reflective work — deep thinking — that is vital to learning. I’ll admit that a couple of months immersion in the burst-form media (Twitter, Facebook, and now even blip.fm) have helped me unlearn, too much, the ability to reflect and write carefully. I am deeply grateful to Cory Doctorow for posting the remedy, “Writing in the Age of Distraction.” Knowledge workers, take your lesson here.

Six Myths of Networks

December 30, 2008 at 8:56 am · Filed under AppGap Tips, Networks + Networking, social media, social networks, social tools

Here on the sixth day of net work, I thought it would be good to revisit a key piece of the organizational network analysis literature. In all my posts, I take for granted that readers here understand that we must understand networks in order to work and be successfully and effectively at work and in the world.Taking networks for granted may imply, for some people, that they think they understand how networks work, including the informal organizational networks in large organizations.

Rob Cross, before the social network frenzy, identified six myths of informal networks. Coauthors Nitin Nohria and Andrew Parker worked with Rob to refine our understanding of how to counteract these myths in a Sloan Management Review article in 2002.

Myths and counter-arguments:

• To build better networks, we have to communicate more. Actually, what we need is a lower quantity of information, and more targeted, filtered information to the people who need it.
• Everyone should be connected to everyone else. What a jumble the world would be if we tried to be connected with everyone. Consider how much difficulty we have now trying to keep up with our extending networks in FB, Twitter, and so on.
• We can’t do much to aid informal networks.  I wrote an entire book on ways that networks can be supported and sustained. Informal networks need management to give them an environment in which connection and collaboration are fluid, valued, enabled with appropriate tools.
• How people fit in to networks is all a matter of personality (which can’t be changed).  When we talk about successful personal networks, we are not talking about extroverts who excel at “networking events,” but serious professionals who deliberate and carefully create and manage relationships
• Central people who have become bottlenecks should make themselves more accessible. Accessible to more people? How does that remove a bottleneck? How about a central person works at brokering introductions to move knowledge around the network and shifts responsibilities by delegating certain knowledge areas to others?
• I already know what is going on in my network. Social/organizational network analysis practitioners know full well that a map of an organizational network always contains surprises. Sure, savvy executives may have some insights, but will always welcome the detailed analysis that includes metrics that lead to action.

Isn’t it time to start a list of myths about social media networks? Here are a few to get started. What are yours?

• The number of people you follow or who follow you on Twitter is an indication of how influential you are. Actuallyi influence is a complicated calculation that takes into account not just who follows you, but who follows them, the number of people reached, frequency of tweeting, responses, etc. See  Twinfluence’s top 50 by the “reach” metrics. (Metrics are fully explained here.)
• Social networking sites are for the younger generations. Most of the people I follow are in my own age bracket, which I’ll place at 50+, plus have you looked at LinkedIn lately?
• You can’t build quality relationships online. Many of my professional and family relationships are richer, broader, and tighter because of our online connections. (Thanks to Digital Labz via Social Computing Magazine for this one.)

Here are some corporate social media network myths from Andrew Gent:

• Use of social networking sites negatively impacts employees’ performance at work. How about some of the positive aspects of using social networks, like the way that 70% of nGenera’s 91 hires over the last year came from employee and recruiter social networks?
• Employers troll social networking sites to checkout potential employee. Maybe some managers with too much time on their hands, but shouldn’t managers be encouraging people to reach out, extend their networks so that more ideas and brains can be access to solve hard problems?

Recounting:

• Five purposes
• Four design facets
• Three network tools
• Two network sources
• One network lens

Review: Flock 2.0 Browser

November 14, 2008 at 2:26 pm · Filed under Reviews, social tools

The web is getting much more interactive with Web 2.0, but are the browsers keeping up? I recently came across one that tries to, and after giving it a go, I was left wishing I found it sooner. Flock is appropriately dubbed as a “social browser”, as it seamlessly integrates some of the more popular social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Gmail, Digg, and Flickr into the browsing experience.

Flock was founded in 2005, and the current version is their second major release. According to their site, the company is based in Redwood City, CA, and funded by several prominent angel investors. It’s actually based on the Firefox 3.0 engine, which means it’s fast, powerful, secure, and compatible with Firefox add-ons. As someone who uses a lot of extensions, this was welcome news. However, I had mixed results after installing some. Most worked fine, but Google Gears didn’t, along with a couple of others. This is unfortunate as I really need Gears for Google Docs.

This is what the Flock 2.0 browser looks like, with its start-up page:

At first, it felt a little cluttered with icons on the upper left-hand side, but learning about the functions of each made me appreciate what they’re there for. I particularly liked the well thought-out native feed reader, the built-in blog editor (compatible withWordPress, TypePad, and other blog engines), and the media bar (streams feeds of pictures and video from Flickr , YouTube, etc). The email and feed notifiers are also very handy, informing you at a glance if you have new messages. Meanwhile, the My World icon opens a tab that shows the latest on your favorite feeds, media, and friends.

It was easy to navigate around Flock’s menus, thanks to its faithfulness to Firefox’s scheme.  The only thing that I wasn’t too happy about was that the default search box for Flock is Yahoo! instead of Google, which I prefer for in-depth research. Of course, there are many workarounds to this, and only a matter of preference. Yahoo! is fine for the average user.

Unlike my experience with Google Chrome, using Flock exclusively for almost a week was virtually problem-free. Videos played smoothly, pages loaded fast, and web applications worked fine – no doubt thanks to the stability of the coreFirefox 3.0 engine. To be fair, Chrome was a new, experimental platform, and it had its own charms. Things can only get better.

In Flock’s future releases, I would suggest expanding support for more social networks, particularly those that are strong in certain regions like Friendster, hi5, Hyves, Bebo, and Orkut. Another feature to consider is IM support, to make the browser truly an all-in-one online communications hub. For now, Flock 2.0 has proven to be quite impressive, and I would consider making it my default browser, if only there wasn’t these add-on compatibility issues. Anyone who is into social media and don’t mind its quirks should give Flock a try.

Small Biz Sees Value in Social Media — Says Survey

October 29, 2008 at 12:00 am · Filed under social networks, social tools

The majority of small business owners say there’s gold in them there social media sites. Well, maybe not gold, but at least something to look into that’s potentially valuable to businesses.

SurePayroll, the online payroll service, conducted a survey asking small business owners if they believe social networking has business value. A majority, 55%, said yes. What’s more, the survey indicates that one out of every five of the small business owners polled had actually obtained at least one new customer as a direct result of using social media.

When asked which social media sites they have heard of, it’s no surprise that the 3 largest social media sites (here in the U.S.) are the ones most have heard of.  Over 80% had heard of  Myspace, YouTube and Facebook.  This chart of survey data shows that brand recognition is high for those 3 sites among the small business people surveyed.

Interestingly, though, when asked which social sites they actually use for their businesses, the picture looked different.  LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace were the top 3, with YouTube and Yahoo Groups tying for 4th place, as this chart of survey results shows:

What’s the bottom line?   Notice that LinkedIn is the hands-down favorite for small business owners to actually use.  Digg is none too popular with the small biz crowd despite being the “poster child” of social media sites.

SurePayroll’s Online Marketing Manager, David Rohrer, says small businesses need social media to stay competitive.

“It is no longer just an outlet for personal use — it’s rapidly becoming a must for business success,” says Rohrer. “Big business is tapping into the blogosphere and posting their company profile pages in online communities. Small business owners need to do the same. What’s so great about the online world is you don’t need a million-dollar marketing budget. In fact, the most effective online connections are free personal communications from a business owner to their community.”

The SurePayroll press release on this topic is here.