Introduction to social software in the enterprise “There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.” - Quoted from John Hagel on Web2.0 Maish Nichani pebbleRoad Studios

Introduction to social software in the enterprise What are social tools? Social software enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication and to form online communities. [Wikipedia] In short, it’s all about enabling interactions among people around shared content.

Introduction to social software in the enterprise Social tools as a mindset » Social endeavor, where users are… » Eager to express themselves in different ways… » And willing to participate in conversations… » All with the help of easy to use tools Social tools as a technology » Open APIs » AJAX » Tags » Web standards » …

Introduction to social software in the enterprise Why now?

Introduction to social software in the enterprise Why now? » Technorati is now tracking over 50 Million Blogs. » The Blogosphere is over 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago. » Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size every 200 days, or about once every 6 and a half months. » About 175,000 new weblogs were created each day, which means that on average, there are more than 2 blogs created each second of each day. » Total posting volume of the blogosphere continues to rise, showing about 1.6 Million postings per day, or about 18.6 posts per second. » This is about double the volume of about a year ago.

Introduction to social software in the enterprise Why now?

Introduction to social software in the enterprise So, why now? Notion that some people have the answers and others don’t Many people know pieces of answers and no one can know it all

Introduction to social software in the enterprise Social tools - { CREATING }, FINDING, SHARING, COLLABORATING » Blogs - sharing/collaborating » Wikis ( - sharing/collaboratinghttp:// » Del.icio.us ( - finding/sharing bookmarkshttp://del.icio.us/ » Flickr ( - finding/sharing photoshttp:// » iTunes - finding/sharing music or podcasts » Digg ( - finding/sharing newshttp://digg.com/ » OhmyNews | GlobalVoices » YouTube ( - finding/sharing videoshttp:// » Writely ( - collaborative writinghttp:// » Mashups ( - Mashuphttp://dccrimemaps.blogspot.com/

Introduction to social software in the enterprise Ross Mayfield Jean Burgess

Introduction to social software in the enterprise What an organization wants Academic knowledge Working knowledge New knowledge

Introduction to social software in the enterprise What an organization gets AcademicWorkingNew

Introduction to social software in the enterprise Social tools as ‘painting white space’ AcademicWorkingNew

Introduction to social software in the enterprise Corporate blogging » Information sources » Communication tools » Project management » Competitive intelligence » Marketing » Knowledge management » Customer service » Replacing a company newsletter Grassroots KM through blogging

Introduction to social software in the enterprise The British Council’s wiki » Monthly meetings: agenda written up, discussed and followed up on a wiki page » Company information: all client details created and updated regularly on a ‘as-experienced’ basis » Bug reporter: all bugs in training courses identified and corrected and a record kept for others to use » Timetable manager: all changes to training dates, events, meetings updated and kept on a single wiki page

Introduction to social software in the enterprise Raytheon’s social tags » Users submit URLs with a list of tags that best describes them » These user submitted URLs and tags appear on the search results page “Our surveys show that the sites submitted via this process repeatedly rank as the result deemed “best” for the user’s query. It is the single best thing we’ve done.”

Introduction to social software in the enterprise The glue -- RSS » RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an XML format for sharing information on a real-time basis RSS Aggregator

Introduction to social software in the enterprise Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle (Gartner) Collective intelligence is an approach to producing intellectual content (such as code, documents, indexing and decisions) that results from individuals working together with no centralized authority. This is seen as a more cost-efficient way of producing content, metadata, software and certain services.

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