Social networks and constellations. Pt I
I’m going to start a small series about social networks and how these should fit in and improve our current ways of life, mostly focused on the corporate aspect.
The backyard
A few years back, the intranet was a mix between a wiki and email. Setting a meeting implied sending some emails with CCs, checking an agenda and waiting for a reply.
Web 2.0 brought some new tricks to the table, but very few companies made good use of the new means of communication. Activity feeds, events and meetings scheduling, crowd sourcing, management of knowledge base and experience.
Nissan planned N-Square, inspired by IBM’s internal system.
Google uses some in-house applications like Moma for human resources.
IBM has BeeHive, for interaction between all employees.
Microsoft launched TownSquare, as a platform for internal social networks initially positioned as “Facebook in a suit”. Microsoft SharePoint from the Office bundle is more publicly known and I’d say that fits better in any organization.
The above solutions try to be almighty, thus losing the adaptability factor. Each company may have a unique structure and workflow, so the adaptability of this framework needs to be the strongest point. Human interactions between employees and bosses change over time and new needs arise. These needs need to be gathered and implemented in the backend, helping the company be more aware of it’s own entity. Self-awareness gives you the capacity to learn from your mistakes as well as your successes. It enables you to keep growing.
Why waste time training new guys/girls, when you can share a video of the main tasks ?
Why should only the marketing experts do the work ? Maybe the mailroom guy had a stroke of genius. An internal social network helps flatten the hierarchy, thus the boss of the boss can find out what the new guy came up with.
37 Signals did a good job on monetizing this need, but I don’t think a combination of Basecamp and Campfire are of great help and they can’t compete with an in-house solution, tailored to specific needs.
A too simple approach, like microblogging might not be enough, but it would be a good start. Information needs to travel fast, in any form: text, video or audio.
Given the various people that might be working for a company, another strong point should be usability of the interface. Everyone from between 18 and 50 years old should be compelled to use the system. Usability is something that older intranets severely lacked. I won’t tell you about computers as big as a fridge, but think about Microsoft’s Outlook. Some people need training course to use Outlook, while there are no training courses for using iPhone apps. A friend was telling me that his 5 years old daughter just picked up his iPhone and she already saw all the pictures in there.
Having spent the latest two years building social networks for clients and seeing social interactions, at Odeon we have saw where people go wrong and where they succeed. The social-network framework we built and we keep evolving as new ideas and opportunities appear, tries to fit all these needs and provide a good platform to let improvements guide the way to better results.
How can this help your business ? Let’s have a virtual cup of coffee and see.
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