Is Microsoft’s Sharepoint an example of social media inside a walled community?
The idea of ‘social media’ within a firewalled community strikes me as both logical and incongruent.
Logical, because I can of course, understand why an organisation only wants social networking to occur within its own walls. Who wants to give away knowledge and insight to a competitor, right?
So where’s the incongruence?
For me, its in the tension between social media’s inherent tendency to break down walls, increase connection and transparency and the need of business to use that effect locally in pursuit of a competitive advantage.
If there’s one message coming through to us in the 21st century – a cold, wet fish-slap-in-the-face – it’s that, as a species, we really may be close to the end of that ‘win-lose’ way of doing things. Are we as a species ready to look at that? Will we – and our ideas about business – be able to evolve into something sustainable for the human species?
And does social media really have a role to play in that process?
What do you think?
Sam, I see no issue with social media within a walled community. At the Palo Alto Research Centre they installed a networked coffee perculator. Whenever a fresh pot of coffee was brewed, it’d send out a message to the network, resulting in people walking over to get a fresh cup.
The result? Their researchers started talking to each other, sharing problems and ideas, which led to increased productivity.
As organisations grow large, they fragment. I suppose the USA is an example of how large organisastions end up: there is a federal government, but they’re not in charge (or even aware) of everything. States have a large degree of autonomy.
While the degree of autonomy may vary between organisations, the fact is that the fragmentation exists. Walled social media can blur the boundaries of each fragment, leading to increased communication and increased cohesion.
And as far as Sharepoint goes, I’m a huge fan! From the free Sharepoint services right up to Sharepoint 2010 (the latest version of Sharepoint Server). It is an extremely powerful product.
I disagree about the end of the win-lose method of doing business, though. As long as greed exists, win-lose will exist.
Good points, William – I’m interested to see it working in practice (you know where I’ll come if I get stuck, lols). Maybe there’s a positive side: maybe the skills of better collaboration and sharing (even within the walled community and in service of profit) will permeate and change how we do things for the better?
Howdy — we here at NewsGator have about 200 of the Global 2000 running SharePoint Social on our SocialSites platform. While many have extended their communities beyond the firewall, many have not yet — and are still finding great value in accelerated innovation from social information sharing and work across traditional group silos. All on SharePoint (with outposts via for example the iPhone)!
Thanks, JB – that’s really interesting stuff!
I’ve been listening to the Newsgator Social Sites 2.0 video.. I’m still amazed how we’re building worlds-within-the-world.
Who knows, in the face of de-valued Google ‘knowledge’, maybe the walled social network will be where it ends up being ‘at’. At least in that world, the definition and control of knowledge is driven by shared interests (company profitability, employee experience etc).
In the ‘free’ world, the only interest currently driving the organisation of knowledge is Google and those playing the Google Game.
Wooo.