La prossima volta che qualcuno vi dice che i socialnetwork o i business social-centrici sono nuovi e rischiosi, ditegli di leggersi un libro di storia

Lee Bryant

If you are riddled with repeated conversations about the value and possibilities that exist through participation on the social web, or if you get the occasional ‘what’s the ROI?’ query, this article may help you to enhance your current response.  So much of the progress delivered through these efforts remains unseen, but Barak Obama and team entered the space and took advantage brilliantly.  An impressive effort IMO.

IBM has a very interesting employee named Luis Suarez who has spent the better part of the last year attempting to eliminate work email from his daily routine.  How does he do it?  By leaning heavily on social platforms and their capabilities.  Why does he do it?  This YouTube video on ‘Thinking Outside the Inbox’ explains…

My first week as a public blogger, and there’s plenty to get excited about as the convergence of Web 2.0 and banking continues. I find ING’s “We the Savers” site interesting, it’s a similar idea to the Cluetrain Manifesto, but as the name suggests concerned with responsible personal finances. Whilst I applaud the sentiment, as someone who has behaved responsibly in this area for some considerable time but has watched the value of their investments plummet in recent months, I can’t help but think individual consumers shouldn’t have been the only targets of this endeavour. I also think it’s a shame the site is US-centric – this is a global issue.

Elsewhere, the UK peer-to-peer lending site Zopa appears to be going from strength to strength according to finextra and others. Whilst the competitive investment and borrowing rates are obviously part of the appeal, the directness and transparency of the model is in my mind equally appealing as we all suffer from the effects of a failure to manage the risk of increasingly complicated financial instruments.

We’ve been seeing the effects of social computing and user-generated content spread out from the internet community and drive huge changes in media, telecommunications and marketing particularly for some time now. Recently those changes have been starting to tell on more traditional organisations in other sectors. In the current economic climate, and despite the financial pressure those organisations are seeing because of it, my sense is that that trend will only accelerate.

In episode 8, we talked to  Social Computing consultant (or as he says himself in the podcast “organizational anarchist”) Euan Semple about Social computing in a business context.

I will leave you with two quotes from the podcast that I found really interesting:

“Is the internet a good or a bad thing ? – it’s a thing”

“If you can measure it, it’s not worth managing”

Enjoy =)

Click here to download the Geek Army Knife #8.

I can’t believe I forgot to mention a recent interview with me published by Shel Israel on his Global Neighborhoods blog.  Check it out here and please, leave a comment if you are so inclined.  I think it represents a nice update on the current IBM internal social computing state of affairs.

Spoke to a group of Marist College students today.  PRSA members to be specific.  Working with Adam Christensen, we presented some of the ‘why we do it’ and ‘lessons learned’ type information around IBM and social computing prior to opening up the discussion to everyone attending. 

Adam had the great idea to have the group talk about how they find information online about companies, what resonates, what they like to find, what they do with it.  We got on the topic of recruiting and job hunting and the students came up with some interesting points that support quite a bit of what our team here at IBM does. 

Top response from the group in regard to key influencers was ‘word of mouth’ or looking for information from ‘people like me.’  We see this opinion quite a bit nowadays, and although some big business folks I speak with still don’t believe or understand this, the students rely on this form of information gathering quite heavily.  They prefer friends and family over online strangers, but admitted that the strangers did have impact if there was perceived common interest and beliefs/culture.

Second most important influencer…  Google search results.  Many of us may overlook this, but it is worth paying attention to.  Overlooking a major brand representation on Google, what comes back when folks ‘Google’ you? 

In regard to recruiting specifically, the students expressed desire in being able to find respective recruiters online and finding out a little bit about them prior to connecting on the phone or in person. I find this fascinating.  They look on Facebook for them, they Google them.  They do this as well for potential bosses and etc.  What do they want to do when they find you online?  They don’t want to get an email address or phone number or to start IMing…  they want to KNOW a little bit about you.  Pictures, interests, connections, to get a feel for you, even if it is a limited view.

All in all a very interesting session.  I’d like to thank the Marist PRSA for the invitation.  I think we all learned a few things today.

Ragan have run an article on IBM’s podcasting initiative, and the platform that supports it.  Check it out!

Let’s face it, the average communications professional knows how to talk.  Through press releases, internal blast emails, intranet articles, and through things like traditional marketing and publications.  This is what many of us learned in school, spent years practicing and putting into action in the corporate world.  This is what we all had become used to until folks started talking back to us. 

The game has changed across the board for those of us responsible for social computing initiatives.  Sure, all of the above efforts still exist and have their place, but now there is more to add to the plate.  Who’s responsibility is it now to listen?  Simple answer?  All of us.

Now, when you put out a press release, odds are someone is talking about it on a blog somewhere on the www. Put out an internal blast email and someone is blogging about it on your intranet (assuming they  are fully versed in your social computing guidelines).  Write an intranet article and (hopefully) your stakeholders are commenting, discussing, debating, working together in raising awareness and strategizing toward the future.  Post marketing materials on YouTube or www and the public will surely comment.  You get my point…

Do we all know how to listen to what our stakeholders are saying?  Are you tempted to delete bad YouTube comments?  Is this wise to do?  Are you unsure about how to engage and react to criticism and constructive discourse?  Do you even realize this is sometimes all your stakeholders want/need to feel confident about your brand – some respect and intelligent discourse?  Does your organizational culture support and enable this kind of work? 

It should.

IBM’s Social Computing Evangelist Luis Suarez (LinkedIn Profile) writes a piece in the New York Times (LinkedIn Company Profile) on the impending death of email and it’s replacement by social networking.

Anyways, here’s the gist:

Email doesn’t work – Hide from email – Inbox stops growing – everyone happy (or something to that effect) – Solution: Social Networking

My take: I’m a social networking early adopter (being the community evangelist at LinkedIn helps) and I’ve finally narrowed down my social networking choices to LinkedIn (d’uh!), Facebook and Twitter (with Friend Feed adding to this Inbox multiplicity dilemma!)

What this has created is 6 email inboxes in my life (outlined below) with the addition of one IM client, and I empathize with those who participate in more than 3 social networks.

1. Home – Gmail (I LOVE Gmail! Makes life so much easier and allows me to send email from other aliases. Wish I just had to contend with Gmail)

2. Work – Microsoft Entourage (Please don’t get me started on it!)

3. LinkedIn – I spend a ton of time every day on my professional network of choice and receive and send a ton of messages with my colleagues. I also use this to share news with my professional network.

4. Twitter – Love the immediacy and inevitably check this inbox once every day

5. Facebook – Receive messages but rarely check them; maybe once a week (sometimes not)

6. Friend Feed – Force myself to check it since some folks like Pirillo, Arrington & Winer have started using it for conversations. Personally not convinced yet.

7. In addition to the above Inboxes, I do use Adium for my IM needs (esp. trying to contact my colleagues at work, when I need a quick answer). Adium allows me to pull in a ton of IM clients into one sweet interface.

How many Inboxes do you manage today?

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Some days after IBM released our Social Computing Guidelines, Sun Micro has done the same.  They too have moved from ‘policy’ to ‘guidelines.’  Do I sense a trend here in the world of social computing practices?  Yes.  Is this something your organization should be considering?  Yes. This goes beyond affirming your culture and leadership to conveying best practices for effective communications.  I suggest you give both a good read.     

Three years after we released our Blogging Guidelines, and once again created through IBM employee blog and wiki collaboration, the new IBM Social Computing Guidelines have just been published.  As participation in social platforms has grown by IBMers, both inside the company and out, it became clear that having disconnected Blogging Guidelines, Podcasting Guidelines, Wiki Guidelines etc. was no longer an effective way to share best practices.  These all needed to be pulled together into one document covering all of the current, and hopefully some future, platform publishing practices.  Self publishing is simply that, self publishing.  It made sense to consolidate.

This was a fantastic collaborative effort and the result is, in my mind, a reflection of some forward thinking. IBMers are on Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, and are on a wide variety of internal tools as well, publishing at rapid pace.  Having a clear and understandable set of guidelines will only help us all to understand this new freedom as we connect with the world.  My thanks to all involved in the creation of this new document.

The latest fad in future of news speculation is that social computing will dramatically revolutionize the news process. We are being led to believe that news outlets and news sources will be interacting with each other in what Jeff Jarvis calls a “press-sphere,” working together quasi-cooperatively to refine and advance the news. Audiences will be transformed from news couch potatoes into news athletes, switching from passive observers to active participants via social computing tools and opportunities. And suddenly, news consumers will have a taste for the work of amateurs — amateurs in their topic areas and in their writing skills.

Pardon me for being anti-social from the social computing crowd, but I think we’re getting a little carried away. Yes, social computing will be big, but in an area I consider news, but few others do — news of family and friends,. This “small news” is provided through platforms like Facebook, MySpace, and various blogging services. Note that there are no amateurs here — the user-generated news on these sites is being provided by experts in their small world of news microcommunities.

But when it comes to “big news,” at the community level and higher, social computing will largely be a way to distribute news, not to create it. News distribution will not resemble Jeff Jarvis’ “me-sphere,” with individuals at the middle surrounded by news sources. Instead it will resemble a supply chain, much as it does today, with news sources on one end, news consumers on the other, and middlemen-media in the middle. What’s new is that these new news middlemen will have to do more than just serve as passive vessels simply passing on so-called “objective, disinterested reporting” to audiences that could not get this news anywhere else. Instead, the middlemen will have to earn their keep by adding value that sets them apart — e.g. expert opinion, superior aggregation of news stories for specific audiences, entertaining writing styles, and developing a community of like-minded readers. Like talk radio, where only a small percentage of listeners call-in and can impact a program’s content, only a small percentage of online news audiences will make comments that make a difference. Social computing in “big news” will be no big deal.

There’s been a lot of overheated, pseudo-intellectual debate about how journalists will ultimately relate to our now-wired citizens, and it has spawned some pretty silly ideas, including “citizen journalism.” But, it’s really quite simple. Imagine you and your community were “unplugged.” No, I mean really unplugged, going back in time before the steam engine and the industrial revolution. Keep going, until before the printing press was invented. You are sitting in a medieval village. Now ask yourself — where will you get your news?

In your village, news is spread by word of mouth, but some mouths are worth more than others. There are those who are news leaders — who tend to set the news agenda and spread it to the most people. These include those who know things before anyone else, those who are unusually entertaining, those with specific and valuable knowledge, those who spread malicious gossip that we find impossible to resist, and those whose charisma attracts a sub-community. But note that you don’t have to be a news leader to be part of the news — just about everyone is a sender and receiver of news.

Now, fast-forward to today’s New York Times where we learn that a speech made by Obama, largely ignored by mainstream media, spread like wildfire among young people in blogs and social networking sites like Facebook. Suddenly, we’re back in an era where everyone is a sender and receiver of news. More importantly, we are now in an era where everyone can compete for a coveted position as a news leader. This is a serious, if not fatal, problem for an Old Media that insists that the only way to get news is from those with an authoritative, holier-than-thou style, who believe that sensationalism is beneath them, who overstate their ability to deliver truth, and who can’t tell the difference between their center-left bias and a hole in the ground. Would you choose to listen to that insufferable bore, or a singing, colorfully-dressed minstrel? Or to put it another way, Old Media is stuck in the Dark Ages as we enter the Renaissance.